Creating Communications. New communication strategies and tools to connect and promote UNESCO world heritage
This second project aimed to create a communicative channel between culture, places and people, powered by the concept of wonder and magic, capable of fostering public interest and involvement: a medium between the classical European museum tradition and the modern digital world, reinterpreted and reconstructed. The target audience is young people in their twenties. The actors involved were the curator of the Civic Museums and contact person for the World Heritage Office of the Civic Museums of Padua, the manager of the Civic Museums of Padua, the contact person for didactic and educational activities of Biosphaera s.c.s., and the content and project manager of Camuffo Lab.
The Civic Museums of Padua are a nonprofit institution for the management, preservation and enhancement of civically owned cultural heritage, together with the Civic Libraries (City of Padua, Regulations of the Civic Museums of Padua, 2013). They include several locations, including the Scrovegni Chapel, the Civic Museums, several palaces, the Loggia and Odeo Cornaro.
During the meetings, the institution highlights the need to change the way Museums are communicated: the public must be attracted by curiosity, as the dynamics of artistic enjoyment and the visitor’s knowledge base have changed.
Linked to this was the need to involve citizens more, starting with stimuli aimed at activating public-level thinking mechanisms, involving the sector of young people in their twenties referred to as Generation Z, currently underrepresented in museum spaces (Vicino, 2021). At the time the SACHE meetings were taking place, the Padua Civic Museums were working on the “Padova Urbs Picta” project, which aimed to get the Paduan cycle of paintings dating back to the 1300s on the World Heritage List (undertaking completed in July 2021).
CamuffoLab is a graphic design and graphic research studio based in Venice: it mainly deals with the creation of graphic identities and publications, exhibitions, websites and digital experiences in the artistic field, for public administrations or private entities. Dealing with artistic directions, book realizations, catalogs, naming activities, trademarks and logotypes, corporate identity, digital strategy and other important fields of graphic communication, this entrepreneurial reality appeared aligned with the museum’s need to innovate its communication strategies.
Biosphaera is the nonprofit social cooperative working in the fields of communication, education and cultural project development that we presented earlier.
From the synergies and needs activated by the dialogue between these three actors, the idea of magic lanterns, of Wunderkammer capable of creating suggestions in the audience or showing power and prestige emerged. From the proposal previously presented by Biosphaera of the traveling hub that they have implemented in other projects, they develop the idea of a “WunderCam,” a colorful and flashy box placed in public spaces that invites people to look inside. A monitor would be placed there where a video would show an exhibition or a museum space, to create a real emotional connection with the museum buildings: active during the day and at night, the box was supposed to make the museum come alive.
CamuffoLab would be in charge of public engagement, being experts in the field of communication, stimulating citizen involvement through learning activities, and formulating questions to be asked on the boxes aimed at arousing public interest. In this vision, the museum is moved from its original and usual context to favor a more interactive approach that can engage different target audiences.
During the various meetings, the project evolved to be more in line with the candidacy and enhancement of the two UNESCO sites that the Museums were already working on, and the project idea was named “The Scrovegni Herbarium,” literally “The Scrovegni Herbarium.” It involves making two life-size boxes located near the ticket office of the Eremitani Museum and the Botanical Garden of Padua, with the aim of symbolically uniting the two UNESCO sites, the Botanical Garden and Padua Urbs Picta. The boxes are to be a tool for discovery and immersion, able to bring the two sites together through a common path that recalls the frescoes and the city of Padua. The innovative perspective here is the communication strategy, which does not only act on reputation but is aimed at attracting new generations through the media channel of videos, sounds and graphics, conveyed through unusual and fascinating objects.
It was assumed that the realization and return of the project would take 7 months, but the actors were unable to find the necessary resources, so the project has not yet been realized.
We can consider this second prototype as an attempt to create a strategic partnership between museums and businesses, born out of immersive communication that brought out needs and requirements. We can take into consideration the positive environment fostered by SACHE and see it as an exemplary model capable of creating synergies and fruitful dialogues between different subjects with different needs, who thanks to these stimuli together were able to devise a project based on innovation and knowledge exchange.