Founded in 1860, the museum of Palazzo Madama is now housed in one of the oldest and most fascinating buildings in the city, with architectural and historical evidence from the Roman age to the Baroque by Filippo Juvarra. The collections contain over 60,000 works of painting, sculpture and decorative arts from the Byzantine period to the nineteenth century.

An eighteenth-century Meissen tea, coffee and chocolate service in porcelain, formerly in the possession of the Taparelli d’Azeglio family, was successfully purchased in May 2013 by the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino through a vast crowdfunding campaign, the first ever attempted by a museum in Italy. The piece was to be auctioned as part of Bonhams million pound London sale of the Marouf Collection in May, but it was secured by the museum in a private treaty sale. In less than two months, the museum was able to gather the sum required.

The success can be ascribed to the exciting story of dispersion and recovery, which undoubtedly involved emotionally the Museum’s visitors and attracted new audience, especially among young people. Moreover, the story  was perceived as closely connected to the history of the Museum and of the city. The acquisition increased the sense of community and the trust in the Museum’s policies.

Museum website: www.palazzomadamatorino.it

More than just visits, Les Visites de mon Voisin are storytelling, high-performance, alternative routes that give a transversal reading of the city, through its urban planning, its history, its sociology. They provide an alternative guided tour in the city or different buildings of Brussels.

The content is very rigorous and the tone and approach is very relaxed. The visits have a performative dimension with a “gesticulate conference” approach. Different digital tools are used during the visits to illustrate the subject with archive images, pictures of the maps, photos as a way of grasping the city in all its depths (for instance WhatsApp, through which neighbours send archive images directly to visitors’ phones).

A “second face” of the project takes place on social networks. Les Visites de mon Voisin plays as a small alternative media about the city, history and town planning.

The “neighbours”:

Gaspard Giersé “is a Archaeologist and artist, fanatical about history, urban planning, human geography and above all about creating cross-cutting content where everything connects, in this city he knows like the back of his hand, from squats to royal palaces. With his passionate approach tinged with Brussels mysticism, he delivers a vision of the city full of lightness and subversive pedagogy”.

Vassilia van der Heyden is a high-flying producer and strategist in the world of entertainment, multiple talents to set the framework for Les Visites de mon Voisin. From the collection and recovery of all different keys and a remote guidance of the groups, she reigns supreme behind the scenes of this project.

To find out more visit https://www.lesvisitesdemonvoisin.com/l-equipe and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/VisitesdemonV

‘It is night-time. All the visitors and guards have left the museum. The restaurant and gift shop are closed. The museum sleeps…or maybe not?!!!’ NOT SO! Exhibits come to life and a trail of encounters and events lead to a hunter’s paradise garden and a film screening.

This film was created by a group of eleven children, aged 7 to 10 years old, during a five-day workshop organised by the Education Department of the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece. While experiencing the procedure of creating an animation film, the children familiarised themselves with the museum’s collections representing three historical periods of the Greek culture. The scenario, drawings, stop-motion photography, narration and sounds were all the product of teamwork with every child playing a basic role in the procedure. The group created a fresh and entertaining short film, inspired by the museum and its collections.

The Benaki Museum in Athens, is one of the Museums featured at the SYNOPSIS project for its ability to employ Storytelling for Fundraising.

See the film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1_eBRZx2vI

Oderzo Cultura Foundation is a non-profit organization that protects and promotes thecultural heritage of the Opitergino territory, in the Italian region of Veneto. With the exhibition “L’ANIMA DELLE COSE, RITI E CORREDI DALLA NECROPOLI ROMANA DI OPITERGIO” they use a storytelling methodology to explain six centuries of history. Through the voice of Phoebe, one of the inhabitants of the Roman Opitergium, the journey brings the visitors through unpublished finds, to discover the ancient city and its inhabitants: characters and lifestyles from the world of the dead that reveal themselves in the world of the living.

The exhibition will continue until February 2021. Find out more  https://www.oderzocultura.it/lanima-delle-cose/

“Arte en Ruinas”, created by José Luis Díaz, was originally conceived by its author as an online blog to record the history and current situation of historic buildings in the region of Extremadura. The blog aims to vindicate the care and importance of the region’s material cultural heritage. José Luis kindly agreed to take part in SYNOPSIS as a Best Practice case study, so we hope you will feel inspired when visiting this site.

Currently, and thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, the stories on this blog have been published in a book Arte en Ruinas. Guía del Patrimonio Olvidado de Extremadura, which can be purchased online. In addition, a virtual map of Extremadura has been created which locates all the historical buildings for those interested in going to discover them!