The Neighbourhood at the Museum

2018 – 2020

We have long been talking about the combination of culture and health and how cultural participation represents an opportunity to increase the quality of life and well-being in general. Culture is in fact a fertile sphere of social development and museums are the ideal place to achieve cohesion: in this sense, the Museum Pass becomes the perfect tool to achieve social inclusion and to encourage active cultural enjoyment, thanks to its role that on the one hand lowers prices and on the other serves as a mediation between museums and the public.

These are the main guidelines of the project The Neighbourhood at the Museum devised by the Abbonamento Musei Association in cooperation with the Turin Neighbourhood Housing Network which operates throughout the city with the aim of improving the quality of life in the city's neighbourhoods through the growth and development of Neighbourhood Houses.

The project, implemented in the years 2018-2020 and supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo, had the aim of bringing museum heritage closer to the sections of the population traditionally less involved in cultural enjoyment and to increase the circulation of the card.

The initiative was divided into two main stages: the first step involved making the Abbonamento Musei Piemonte Valle d'Aosta available free of charge to five Neighbourhood Houses in Turin that operate in the area of competence pursuing a logic of inclusion and active participation (Casa di Quartiere Vallette - Le Vallette; Casa nel Parco - Mirafiori Sud; Hub Cecchi Point - Aurora; Più Spazio4 - San Donato; Bagni Pubblici Via Agliè - Barriera di Milano).

In this way, the Museum Pass has taken on the role of a tool at the disposal of local associations working to encourage active participation and inclusion of citizens in the local community.

For the next step, the Association has worked out a path to accompany this new public in the museums with an annual programme of activities built ad hoc on the basis of the characteristics of the interlocutors and which promotes knowledge and discovery of the museums and the region.

In 2019, again with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo, The Neighbourhood at the Museum developed in a new territory (in Settimo Torinese, in the first city belt) and changed its name, becoming Seventh goes to the Museum.
Thanks to the collaboration with the Fondazione ECM, an organisation that pursues social solidarity goals and develops and supports cultural activities in the region, the Archimede Library was identified as the place of reference for the group of people who, for a year, had access to the Abbonamento Musei Piemonte Valle d'Aosta and the opportunity to participate in a programme of reserved guided tours to discover the museums of the city and the region.