I AM E-BOOK

Aims of the tool

The partnership brings together the expertise and creativity of a number of very different institutions. Art museums, history museums, memorial sites, an art education organization, and a youth organization have joined forces to bring their specific competences and experiences to a cooperation project. The aim is to enable participation in cultural life and the culture of remembrance. We are united by the desire to make our institutions more inclusive and attractive, especially for young people with learning disabilities.

Description of the tool

Our reflections gave rise to the idea of developing a methodological “toolbox” for educational work that opens up new approaches to our topics and sites for young people, especially with learning difficulties and intellectual disabilities1. Furthermore, it was important for us to share our experiences and make them available to colleagues in other museums. This e-book is a guide to the two intellectual outputs that we have developed.

Intellectual Output 1 (IO1) is a proposal for Virtual Museum Tours. These tours have been especially relevant during the COVID-19 outbreak, when many museums were forced to reach out to their audiences digitally. We have developed five different types of virtual tours that museums or memorial sites can adapt to their programs: prerecorded interactive visit, interactive live visit, prerecorded insights, live insights and a virtual classroom.

Intellectual Output 2 (IO2) is entitled Sensory Journey and is directed at young people with learning disabilities. The Sensory Journey is a methodical approach for enriching our experience of a museum or memorial site using different senses. Educators, youth workers, and mediators can create their own sensory tools so that young people with learning disabilities can explore a museum or memorial site and gain access to the works, exhibited objects or topics by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

Aside from step-by-step instructions, case studies with photographs and videos are included so that educators, youth workers, mediators, or other museum staff can be inspired by this cooperation project.