Initiatives designed to foster museum accessibility for people dealing with the challenges of dementia were first launched just over a decade ago in the United States, but have already spread considerably in Europe as well. In the Italian panorama, Tuscany has had some significant results: after the first projects at Palazzo Strozzi and the Marino Marini Museum in Florence, today programs for people with dementia have been launched in nearly every Tuscan province thanks to the Musei Toscani per l’Alzheimer network.
The initiator of a Musei Toscani per l’Alzheimer project within the Mudev system was the BeGo – Benozzo Gozzoli Museum in Castelfiorentino which, in 2013, participated in a training project promoted by the Marino Marini Museum in Florence along with several association, supported by the Region of Tuscany. Since 2014, program activities have been regularly offered and included in the museum’s range of educational services.
From 2015 to 2019, the planning effort– made possible by bringing together the skills and knowledge of museum educators and professionals in the geriatric field- expanded to progressively involve a growing number of museums and assisted-care facilities around the local territory. In 2018, the project expanded to include libraries in the Rea.net. network as well: the active involvement of librarians contributed to promoting the creation of narrative-creative activities involving poetry for people with dementia.
The year 2020 was of course disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic, an experience that abruptly altered plans and programs: like all institutions, the Mudev’s museums, closed or open only with extremely limited access, wondered how to continue to make their assets accessible and usable for the public, and especially how to continue to foster relations with caregivers, and between caregivers and the people they care for, who were among the subjects most affected by solitude, isolation, and lack of contacts with communities.
Technology and the web were a natural response, a means to try to avoid interrupting relationships that had been built over years, and to experiment with new forms of communication using the historical-artistic heritage found in local museums.
Aided by the training course for remote activities promoted by the Musei Toscani per l’Alzheimer system, a program of monthly online appointments via Zoom was planned.
The program of remote appointments was called Museums for Alzheimer’s – Far away but close, and it was the first response to the need to re-establish contacts, to maintain relationships built over years of in-person activities at museums with the elderly and their caregivers, and to share the beauty of the heritage our museums hold, even, and especially, in a particularly difficult and painful period, feeling close to one another and supporting one another.
