a new
museum culture
a museum for everyone
a new approach to archaeology
“VIETATO
NON TOCCARE, NOT TOUCHING
PROHIBITED”
a new
way of looking at accessibility
an non-stop workshop
a new way of designing
The “Not touching prohibited” tactile and olfactory route
is a museum-cum-workshop aimed at exemplifying good practices to be
adopted in the design of spaces dedicated to art and culture.
The purpose
of the “not touching prohibited” project is to remove barriers
of various types, starting with the removal of architectural barriers
to create spaces that are completely accessible to people with motor
disabilities. Sensory barriers that alter visual perception and emotional
barriers, or the perception under certain psycho-physical conditions
of dangerous, unsafe or tiring environments, are also to be removed.
“Not
touching prohibited” is an innovative, universal way of thinking
about design, whose reference model is not a particular type of visitor,
but MAN and the changes he faces during his lifetime.
Visitors
are invited to be blindfolded at the entrance to the exhibition and
are then entrusted to a guide who will lead them around in groups of
two or three.
We use
the term “entrust” because suddenly not being able to see
and entering an unknown environment provokes a strong emotional reaction,
which the guides are trained to help the visitor overcome.
This
is how the visitor begins the route in the dark: exploring by touch
and perceiving by smelling and hearing, using senses that we believe
we employ all the time, but immediately realizing how much they depend
on sight. The first reaction is to try to understand by retracing the
pathways of one’s memory, but not everything that the visitor
“sees” with the hands is already known: only then are the
senses that are always present but rarely used really put to work.
Accessible
design for a wider range of visitors
The “not touching prohibited” team can design and realize
tourist and museum routes and exhibitions accessible to all sorts of
visitors.
The design process includes not only the creation of a route without
physical and architectural barriers in the strict sense, but also without
sensory barriers which often prevent people from using knowledge autonomously.
Accessible design comprises several steps:
- feasibility study;
- evaluation of historical, artistic and landscape constraints;
- analysis and identification of possible interventions;
- creation of a modular route based on scientific and didactic guidelines.
In the case of the “not touching prohibited” tactile and
olfactory museum-route, universal design has taken the form of a series
of examples of good practice that include “posts” with original
archaeological finds or reproductions and casts to be explored using
one’s hands: by creating a “walking-touching route”
and providing a handrail to help orientate blind and visually impaired
people inside the museum; by positioning panels with contrasting colours
and large print for visually impaired people; by providing tactile maps
for the visually impaired, blind and those with normal vision; by creating
a lighting system that complies with the real needs of visually impaired
people; and by creating smelling posts, background sounds and a natural
setting (e.g. woods, inside a cave etc.), capable of involving all the
visitor’s senses.
The last of these good examples will take the form of the production
of exhibition guides and catalogues in Braille for the blind and in
large print for visually impaired people.
Consultancy
on accessible design of museums and exhibition areas
Advice on universal design can be offered to designers and professionals
in the culture sector who want to make museums and cultural routes in
general accessible. Our consultancy service includes an analytical and
functional study of spaces and aims to provide guidelines for design
and renovation, adaptation and testing of the exhibition set-up.
Training
in “not touching prohibited”
Training is one of the key elements of this project and aims to provide
a whole series of cognitive tools not only for specific roles such as
museum guides or tourism professionals, but for anyone who works in
close contact with the public.
The training can be divided into separate but interrelated modules.
The first part involves experience-based educational workshops for the
acquisition of the relating skills necessary in order to work successfully
with people with both motor and sensory disabilities. The method used
includes lessons, case analysis, role playing and team learning. The
second part is dedicated to accessible design and can be seen as an
open workshop that takes the form of feasibility studies, simulations
of environments etc.
The topics
dealt with can be outlined as follows:
- Language and the image of disability: relationship between individuals
and disability, changes in terminology, the ICF (International Classification
of Functioning, Disability and Health).
- A look at various disabilities: motor, hearing, visual disabilities;
approaches and awareness of the various methods of interaction.
- Aid relationships, interpersonal communication, verbal and non-verbal
communication, active listening (from traditional methods of helping
to aid relationships), empathy and settlement of disputes.
- From accessibility rules to rule accessibility: a legislative excursion
into the accessibility of information, communication and IT; reflection
on the real accessibility of the legislation itself.
- The principles of universal design and a wider public: reflection
on the design and planning of spaces and services that everyone can
use, from architectural barriers to Design for All.
The lessons
will last a total of 50 hours and will be held by a teacher assisted
by two tutors.
Embracing communication
An exhibition designed to be accessible to everyone must also have a
communication strategy that caters for all types of visitor, including
those who are less receptive to traditional methods of communication.
Accessible
communication must always be simple, direct and multisensorial.
From
a communicative point of view, the decision to call the exhibition “not
touching prohibited” represents something unusual and a break
away from the norm. The exhibition’s “not touching prohibited”
theme is based on a cognitive surprise: by using a universally recognised
form of veto and reversing the meaning, the phrase is rendered unusual
– a break from the norm – especially in the context of a
strongly characterised environment such as a museum.
Every
town that hosts “not touching prohibited” will have its
own advertising campaign. The aim of this natural and necessary choice
is to create a strong bond with the host area. The individual campaigns
will however have in common the “not touching prohibited”
mission: to make culture universally accessible.
“Not touching prohibited” is also a special invitation to
let one of the senses rest in order to prompt the other four to work.
The use of these senses instead of sight means rediscovering the playful
side of learning and returning to childhood, where not just sight but
the whole body is used in the learning process and we reach out to the
external world.
The campaigns
will also be characterised by strong graphics that lend themselves to
immediate and unambiguous understanding. This is partly achieved through
the colour scheme, which is dominated by black and white: a contrast
that makes reading easier for the visually impaired.
Prehistoric
archaeology in “not touching prohibited”
The “not touching prohibited” tactile and olfactory museum-route
is set in the cultural-scientific context of prehistoric archaeology
and faces the dual challenge of the need to make the issues related
to the subject matter as accessible and interesting as possible and
the wish to give a comprehensive and useful picture of the various research
areas: this is done by experimenting with solutions and routes that
are completely new even for those involved in creating them.
The first
challenge concerned the choice of objects to be explored, which are
all copies that experimenters have carefully reproduced according to
original models using, when possible, the same materials and especially
the same techniques as those employed in the different phases of pre-history.
The problem was then to combine the necessity of presenting the finds
in a way that they could be understood by touch, once an appropriate
explanation had been supplied, with the wish to provide as complete
and clear a picture as possible of the cultural context to which they
belong. The exhibition is organised in a series of “posts”
or tables that hold the objects that the guide will progressively bring
to the visitors’ attention. The visit begins with some background
information on the context in which the exhibition is set, in order
to overcome the sense of disorientation that visitors with “normal
vision” in particular experience when blindfolded: this is accompanied
by the consultation of a tactile map of the museum and a timescale to
help represent the chronological period covered by pre-history, including
the duration of the different phases that it was characterised by (the
Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Metal Ages), which are represented by sectors
of varying lengths.
The first post is set up to present all the different types of both
organic and inorganic raw materials used in prehistory to build tools,
ornaments, clothes etc. Tactile familiarisation with these raw materials
is essential considering that visitors will subsequently encounter different
kinds of objects made with the same raw materials, which will thus be
more easily recognisable.
The visitor is then presented with the casts of five skulls, attributable
to hominids who have marked the main stages of human evolution.
In this experience, the guide has the essential task of directing the
visitor’s hand to the parts of the skull that have undergone the
most evident and significant changes.
Moving on to the Palaeolithic table (Old Stone Age), the visitor can
handle a series of tools used by man in his everyday life for tasks
such as hunting and various types of craftwork. These are mostly tools
made of flint, bone and horn, but also include ornaments or pieces of
art, such as the famous prehistorical venerina or mother goddess. The
next post, dedicated to the Neolithic period (New Stone Age), has been
designed to clearly render the idea of the radical changes in the economy
and lifestyle brought about by this new period in time, when the increased
use of clay led to the production of the first ceramic pottery.
Further on, at the Metal Ages station, visitors encounter a number of
objects related to metal working, starting from the cast that the molten
raw material was poured into.
There are also a few monolithic posts with important carvings that refer
to key moments in European prehistory. In this case, visitors are encouraged
to focus on the smell that the stelae (stones) emanate, which reproduce
smells that are important to contextualize the representations: the
smell of moss and hides for the Palaeolithic stelae, which are inscribed
with the naturalistic representations of animals that are often found
inside caves; the smell of hay for the stelae referring to the latter
phases of prehistory which portray scenes related to agriculture, such
as ploughing.
Final
remarks
“Not touching prohibited” embodies the first task of research:
to improve the environment that we live in.
2003 – European Year of the Disabled – saw a boom in museum
routes and exhibitions accessible to disabled people. With a few exceptions,
these were short routes, where a disabled individual could gain a “taste”
of culture.
“Not touching prohibited”, on the other hand, is inspired
by the idea that the enjoyment of art and culture cannot be transitory
or limited to a single event, but should be continuous and immediate
for everyone.
We could therefore begin to speak of a real “not touching prohibited
system” that - through the creation of a consortium of institutions
that promote the project, i.e. the University of Siena (specifically
the Office for Students with Disabilities and the Department of Archaeology
and History of Art), the CRUI (Conference of Italian University Rectors),
Formautonomie training centre and the Clessidra company - may become
an important employment opportunity for young graduates of our university’s
various degree courses.
The distinctive
characteristic of “not touching prohibited” lies in having
grouped together a series of actors with different professional profiles,
who have almost always worked alone. The “not touching prohibited”
enterprise both designs and forms networks of communicators, engineers,
architects, museologists, archaeologists and craftsmen, although its
main mission is to train.
Its real
challenge, in fact, is to train new professionals capable of working
in the widest sector in our country, i.e. culture.
