The Museo Tattile Statale Omero has been collaborating for several years with Italian and international institutions, universities and partners, participating in projects that are consistent with its institutional aims: to promote the growth and cultural integration of people with visual disabilities.
Europe
On January 19th 2024, the Museo Omero signed an agreement with the Heritage International Institute, a new academic, cultural and artistic centre of international excellence which is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The centre aims to create a network to preserve cultural sites as an integral part of the identity of all peoples through collaborations with universities, institutions and libraries. In the words of Gianluigi Mastandrea Bonaviri, the HII’s academic director, who is currently serving at the Italian embassy in Cairo and is professor of diplomatic and consular law at the Alma Mater University of Bologna: “On the one hand, the Heritage International Institute intends to make our art and history better known outside Italy and, on the other, aims to build bridges between the various countries through culture”.
The Museo Omero is a partner in Invisible, Guidelines to make architecture and visual art accessible to VIB (Visually Impaired and Blind), an on-going European Erasmus plus project.
The Invisible project is headed by the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna and is intended to encourage the sharing of best practice in order to render the study of architecture, and art in general, accessible to students with visual impairments.
In particular, the Museo Omero will be involved in drawing up guidelines on the use of architectural models and will host an international workshop the 6th of December 2024.
The Omero Museum also participated in the Erasmus+ NEXT-MUSEUM Project: promoting digitization in small and medium-sized museums through the enhancement of the Digital Curator.
The project, led by the Marche Cultura Foundation – Museums and Cultural Sites, saw active collaboration from four countries – Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Spain. The Museum contributed with training modules and in the creation of the accessible installation “I Guerrieri Cagli,” hosted at the Archaeological Museum and Via Flaminia Museum in Cagli.
The current Doors. Please Touch project, is promoted by the Museo Omero in collaboration with the Lebanese Red Oak Organization whose President is Nadine Abou Zaki.
The initiative aims to make museums and places of culture in Lebanon more accessible to people with visual disabilities and to promote a multisensory approach to art for the benefit of everyone.
The Amusing project (Adapting Museums for Inclusive Goals, 2019-2022), has now concluded.
Its aim was for the international partners, Greece, Spain, Lithuania and Italy, to share best accessibility practices. In particular, the project, which was headed by the Conselleria de Valencia, focused on the use of 3D printers for the production of copies, models and other educational aids for schools and museums.
On the invitation of the Fondazione Marche Cultura and Icom Italia, the Museum will be present at the Lithografeion Theatre in Patras from 7 to 11 November 2022. It will bring its expertise on accessibility to the Transnational training course & workshop for Digital Curators project, an activity included in the Erasmus + MUSEUM-NEXT project: Stimulating digitization at small and medium-sized museums through the enhancement of the Digital Curator.
Italy
Since October 2020, the Museum has been included in the Museintegrati circuit, a research and support project that aims to raise awareness of sustainability in the ecosystem of Italian museums. The Science Museum of Trento is the leading body in the project and has Icom Italia and the National Association of Scientific Museums as partners.
Finally, the Museum is working on the Autism Project, a pilot scheme aimed at making museums and places of culture more suitable environments for promoting inclusive learning and recreational experiences for children and young people with autism.
The project enjoys the collaboration of the Regional Centre for Evolutionary Age Autism of the Infantile Neuropsychiatry department of Marche Nord United Hospitals and involves designing a prototype “workspace” that can be set up in the museum rooms, and which can be replicated in other cultural places in our Region.
Since 2015, the Museum has collaborated with the Sferisterio of Macerata in the InclusiveOpera project, creating relief drawings of the scenery and collaborating on guided tours for people with visual disabilities.
In 2015, the MO was the scientific partner in a joint project with Marche Region’s Department of Culture “The museum of everyone and for everyone” – a wide-ranging project, unique in Italy, with two main aims: to attract more visitors to museums and train specialised operators.