School Photographs. Suggestions for a Participatory Museology

This paper examines a new approach to the museum education, inspired by participatory museology and based on the ‘social use’ of photographs in the museum environment. The contemporary museology of a critical, post-modern and constructivist matrix poses the new idea of a museum intended as a place of meaning-making, narrative construction as well as social practices. Within this context, we adopt the categories of social objects and the participatory museum put forward by Simon (2010) in order to propose – in the light of the experience carried out in the Paolo & Ornella Ricca Museum of the School in the University of Macerata (Italy) – new educational projects and programs based on the ‘social potential’ of school photographs. As important part of the historical-educational heritage preserved in these museums but still undervalued from an educational perspective, photographic material in fact offers itself as the fulcrum of social and collaborative practices that can transform museums into places where visitors, students and communities can play a more active role.