An accessible Museum is much more than a building that anyone can physically enter. It is a space where more and more people, of all genders, ages and social conditions, want to enter and where they want to return several times throughout their lives. Basically, it is a question of changing the paradigm "from public to users" of museums, he illustrated Dahlia Paul, Regional Director of Culture of the Algarve.
«Museums and Accessibility», with the second motto referring to this broader perspective, was the theme of the XNUMXst Cross-border Meeting of Museum Professionals, which brought together officials and employees of museums from Portugal and Spain in Alcoutim, last year. weekend.
Dália Paulo, Rui Parreira, Director of Cultural Goods Services of the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve (DRCAlg), and Pedro Nascimento, from the meeting's secretariat, were the guests of this week's radio program «Impressions», organized jointly by the Sul Informação and by Rádio Universitária do Algarve. The interview went live yesterday Wednesday and can be heard again in its entirety on Saturday, at 12 noon, on 102.7 or on the RUA FM website.
DRCAlg and the Alcoutim Sanlúcar Transfrontier Association (ATAS) were the partners of the Portuguese Museology and Museologists and Museographers Associations of Andalucía, which launched this initiative with the objective of grouping and increasing the qualification of professionals working in museums and similar bodies, with the objective of raising the level of technical services provided to these entities and, through them, to society.
“When we talk about accessibility, we immediately think of people with reduced mobility and people who have some difficulty. But this meeting aimed at various types of accessibility, that is, it intended to debate the museum as a space in which everything has to be accessible. And we are talking about contents, whether virtual or exhibitions, and the way in which that content is seen», framed Dália Paulo. A very current theme, which “it was important to bring here to this cross-border space”.
“There is a Spanish museologist and architect who says that if people don't go to museums, we have to meet them in the streets and call them into museums. And that's also accessibility. Talking, expressing and presenting the museum as an institution that is part of society, that wants to be with people and is not something we go to just once in a lifetime,” he added.
“Museums are like people. There are those that are more accessible and others that are less so. And when we talk about accessible people, they are the ones who are most open to listen to us, to communicate with us… people who are available. It's the same with museums, they have to be available. Museums are no longer made for people, they are made with people», reinforced Rui Parreira
This new vision can be summed up in the image of «having a museum that communicates», which, with the technological advances and the habits of access to knowledge and culture that they have promoted, requires that communication be done «24 hours a day». “We have to be more attentive, reach out to people more and use an understandable language,” said the regional director of Culture.
An understandable message should still not be confused with childish or simplistic speech. Mediating the purely scientific discourse into a universal language is the great objective, but always without losing the rigor and quality of the message that is intended to be conveyed.
Just keep is not enough
As in all areas, whenever there is a need for change and adaptation to progress, in the Museums there are also the so-called «Velhos do Restelo», although Dália Paulo assured that at the meeting «he didn't see any there».
In this field, Rui Parreira has a well-defined idea. «There is resistance in museums and there are, above all, two situations that mark the experience of the teams that work in them. One of them is based on the view that museums exist essentially to conserve their collections».
“Not long ago, I heard a Museum director say that, even if all other services closed as a result of the crisis, the museum's obligation was to preserve its collections. It could close services, exhibitions, the public could stop going there. What the museum has to do as its top priority is to keep the collection entrusted to it in the best possible condition to bequeath to future generations. This, being unquestionable, is a form of resistance», considered Rui Parreira, who added that a purely conservative and «entrenching» view of museums «is totally outdated».
“Another aspect is the fear of using new technologies, something that also has to do with the museum's inability to act as a mediator. We often see, in exhibitions, what goes directly from the scientist to the museographer, without going through the museologist. In other words, the language that will be made available to users of an exhibition is created, worked and elaborated by the scientist, who does not admit that there is an editor for his work, because that is the real essence. Therefore, they are exhibitions that consist of panels and text, what I usually call standing books», added Rui Parreira.
“People must see the use of museums for their lives. When we talk about accessibility, it is precisely to make the knowledge that is produced and transmitted through museums universal, not just to make the space physically accessible», he summed up.
To communicate well, the recipients must be involved.
One of the interventions of the Transfrontier Meeting of Museum Professionals was linked to communication for the deaf and autistic. «There are curious experiences of how, in some French museums, commented tours for the deaf began to be prepared. They did it with the deaf themselves, that is, using language for the deaf and involving the disabled in the museum's work», began by saying Rui Parreira.
At the meeting, a Spanish experience of a Foundation that "developed an interactive communication application for the deaf" was presented, based on "viewable text". A solution that has been applied “not only in museums, but also in palaces and forts” in the neighboring country.
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