Conference Program

In galleries and art museums, creative expressions from the present and past meet a diverse audience in terms of age, socio-cultural background and motivation. As historically educational spaces, they can be formal learning environments for visitors, but also non-formal (such as guided tours or activities led by experts) and informal (with reference to audio guides, information panels and interactive screens).

Today's most innovative exhibition spaces are heavily involved in digital transformation, which is capable of attracting an increasingly wider audience that plays an increasingly active role in the visit. New technologies can play a fundamental role in the appearance of art spaces: they can influence the container, i.e. the way in which the works are displayed and presented; the content, i.e. the way in which the work itself is narrated; and the way in which the work and the visitor encounter each other, creating participatory scenarios of enjoyment that are integrated into the architecture of the cultural institution. The opportunities offered by digitalisation promote inclusive experiences, both intergenerational and socio-cultural. Generative Artificial Intelligence tools can be used very effectively. In fact, starting from the observation of collections of works, art spaces can become spaces for the transformation and negotiation of collective experience.

They can be privileged places for activating shared practices of meaning creation and for the co-construction of new narratives, through exchange and dialogue that bring into play lived experiences, past experiences, values and ideas. In particular, workshop activities integrated with visits to galleries and art museums can be configured as inclusive and transformative spaces for social practices, oriented towards sharing and generating new meanings for experiential, contextual and situated learning.

This contribution offers a reflection on these aspects and documents experiences of museum education workshops, carried out with heterogeneous groups of different age groups, based on innovative teaching methodologies that integrate generative Artificial Intelligence. It also proposes workshop activities based on the theoretical framework of Making Learning and Thinking Visible (MLTV), which is divided into various activities with specific objectives based on shared protocols (Thinking Routines) and on the methodological framework of Augmented Reading.