INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
On Tuesday 3rd December, in occasion of International day of persons with disabilities, announced by United Nations since 1981, CAMeC – Modern and Contemporary Art Centre of La Spezia will join the initiative aimed at proposing the topic “Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future” for 2024. Previously, on 5th October CAMeC was returned to the public with a new look that was the fruit of collaboration between the City and Carispezia Foundation.
SEEING WITH CLOSED EYES. A TACTILE ITINERARY FOR EVERYONE
It is the occasion to visit the new Accessibility Room, a result of an important independent project, for which the City of La Spezia won the NRRP call for bids concerning “Removal of physical and cognitive barriers in museums, libraries and archives to allow a wider access and participation to the culture” in 2022. The purpose to amplify the communication of its own heritage has, indeed, guided the intervention developed by CAMeC in this field, offering the chance to everyone to see and to understand the patrimony itself independently.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ACCESSIBILITY ROOM
While the right of accessibility for mobility-impaired persons has been recognised and protected for years – and it is basically linked to demolition of architectural barriers – the other types of disability (visual, auditive, cognitive etc.) strongly compromise the access to visual art, create issues and demand very specific planning actions, linked also to a different organisation of cultural offer. In this perspective, the Centre of La Spezia intends increasing its activity in favour of social inclusion, ensuring the accessibility extension of its contents to all users’ categories with a series of ad hoc projects. The intervention has seen the realisation of a new setting up and additional tools dotation dedicated to a complete accessibility and contents fruition of museum: an internet portal (to which it is possible to get access also from the new Museum website www.camec.sp.it ) and a new functional APP specifically usable by different abilities, an introductory multimedia station, placed at the entrance, the apposition of tactile plantar signals nearby stairs and services, the realisation of new Accessibility Room, with the project “Seeing with closed eyes: tactile itinerary for everyone”, created by Cristina Maucci with scientific direction of Eleonora Acerbi.
With a specific attention to visually impaired and blind visitors with deafness and motoric difficulties, this space dedicated permanently offers the opportunity to meet and to know an anthology from CAMeC’s heritage, thanks to a diversified and expanded didactic apparatus, that demolishes the perceptual and sensorial barriers: adherent to wall, a bilingual historical-critical caption (in Italian and English) and a multimedia station, easily available also in pushchair, inclusive of a tactile assistance that reproduces the work formal content, if two-dimensional, or the reproduction, if sculpture, in braille and in relief captions, audio support headphone, digital support with video in LIS (Italian Sign Language).
THE WORKS
The exhibited works are 8, especially appropriate for an inclusive fruition: particularly they are suitable for a tactile, easy and pleasant reading for blind or visually impaired visitors. At the same time, the 5 paintings and the 3 sculptures provide proper documentary relevance of CAMeC collections, also in the international arena. The most distant work through time dates back to 1949 and it is owed to Renato Guttuso, winner of the first Painting National Award “Golfo della Spezia” (Gulf of La Spezia); it is the oldest nucleus incipit of museum collections, that this important exposition consigned to the city. The works of Baj, Berrocal, Capogrossi, Dubuffet, Kosuth, Mirko belong to the Cozzani collection, an encyclopedic anthology, composed of refined and forward-thinking tastes of collector from La Spezia. Instead, Luca Matti’s canvas is the latest acquisition and meets the constant updates objectives of permanent collection.
Not in last resort, however, it intends to deliver the opportunity to all visitors to live a different fruition experience (that is deepened with focused workshops and dedicated visit experiences), also by means of “emotional” videos, that allow to explore the work. In the new Accessibility Room it will be possible to see “the art how you have never seen, heard and touched”
THE PROJECT
The project “CAMeC per tutti” (“CAMeC for everyone”) has been funded through Public announcement for the presentation of Proposals of improvement intervention of physical and cognitive accessibility in cultural places, destined to public museums and cultural places which they doesn’t lead to MIC (Ministry of Culture) , to fund for the scope of NRRP (National
Recovery and Resilience Plan), Mission 1 “Digitalisation, innovation, competition and culture”, Component 3 “Culture 4.0” (M1C3-3), Misure 1 “Cultural Heritage for the next generation”, Investment 1.2 “Removal of physical and cognitive barriers in museums, libraries and archives to allow a wider access and participation to the culture”, funded by European Union – NextGenerationEU and managed by Ministry of Culture, with the coordination of investment by the Museum General Management.
