La Spezia: CAMeC celebrates the Day of People with Disabilities with the new Accessibility Room.

From Tuesday 3 December, on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, proclaimed by the United Nations since 1981, the CAMeC – Centro d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea della Spezia, returned to the public on 5 October with a renewed look resulting from the synergy between the Municipality and the Carispezia Foundation, adheres to the initiative, which for 2024 proposes the theme Amplifying the leadership of people with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future.

It's an opportunity to visit the new Accessibility Room, the result of an important independent project, for which in 2022 the Municipality of La Spezia won the PNRR tender relating to the “Removing physical and cognitive barriers in museums, libraries and archives to enable wider access and participation in culture.”

The aim of expanding the communication of its heritage, offering everyone the opportunity to meet him and understand him independently, he has in fact guided the intervention developed by CAMeC in this area.

The mayor of La Spezia Pierluigi Peracchini declares: "The city of La Spezia is proud to celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by making the new Accessibility Room available for visits inside the CAMeC, a space exclusively dedicated to people with disabilities. This project, realized thanks to the PNRR tender won in 2022, represents a concrete step towards the elimination of physical and cognitive barriers in places of culture, making our heritage more accessible to all. The renovation of the CAMeC, the result of the precious collaboration with the Carispezia Foundation, has transformed our Modern and Contemporary Art Center into an even more welcoming and inclusive place. This great work of synergy is a source of pride for the city and an example of how art can be a tool to promote participation and inclusion".

While the right to accessibility for people with motor disabilities has been recognized and protected for years - and is mainly linked to the removal of architectural barriers - other types of disabilities (visual, hearing and cognitive, etc.) they strongly compromise the enjoyment of visual art, pose problems and require very specific design interventions, also linked to a different organisation of the cultural offering.

In this perspective, the La Spezia Centre intends to increase its activity in favour of social inclusion, ensuring the expansion of the accessibility of its contents to all categories of users with a series of ad hoc projects.. The intervention saw the creation of a new layout and the provision of additional tools dedicated to the complete accessibility and use of the museum's contents: a web portal (which can also be accessed from the new Museum website www.camec.sp.it) and a new functional APP specifically usable by people with different abilities, an introductory multimedia station, placed at the entrance, the placement of tactile plantar signals near the stairs and toilets, the creation of the new Accessibility Room, with the project See with your eyes closed: ptactile path for everyone.

This permanent dedicated space offers, with particular attention to visually impaired, blind, deaf and motor-impaired visitors, the opportunity to meet and learn about an anthology from the CAMeC heritage, gthanks to a diversified and expanded didactic apparatus, which breaks down perceptual and sensorial barriers: on the wall, a bilingual historical-critical caption (Italian and English) and a multimedia station, easily accessible even from a wheelchair, including a tactile aid that reproduces the formal content of the work, if two-dimensional, or the replica, if a sculpture, captions in Braille and in relief, audio support in headphones, digital support with video in LIS (Italian Sign Language).

The works on display are 8, particularly suitable for an inclusive fruition: they lend themselves especially to a tactile reading, easy and pleasant for blind or visually impaired visitors. At the same time, the 5 paintings and 3 sculptures well document the relevance of the CAMeC collections, also in the international context. The oldest work dates back to 1949 and is by Renato Guttuso, winner of the first National Painting Prize “Golfo della Spezia”; it is the incipit of the oldest nucleus of the museum's collections, which this important exhibition has delivered to the city. The works of Baj, Berrocal, Capogrossi, Dubuffet, Kosuth, Mirko belong to the Cozzani collection, an encyclopedic anthology, composed with refined and far-sighted taste by the collector from La Spezia. Luca Matti's canvas is a more recent acquisition and responds to the objectives of constant updating of the permanent collection.

Last but not least, the aim is to give all visitors the opportunity to live a different experience of fruition (which is deepened with targeted workshops and dedicated visiting experiences), also through 'emotional' videos, which allow you to delve into the work. In the new Accessibility Room you will encounter 'art as you have never seen, heard, touched it'.

The project “CAMeC per tutti” was funded through a Public Notice for the presentation of Proposals for interventions to improve physical and cognitive accessibility in places of culture, intended for museums and public places of culture not belonging to the MIC, to be funded under the PNRR, Mission 1 “Digitalisation, innovation, competitiveness and culture”, Component 3 “Culture 4.0” (M1C3-3), Measure 1 “Cultural heritage for the next generation”, Investment 1.2 “Removing physical and cognitive barriers in museums, libraries and archives to enable wider access and participation in culture”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and managed by the Ministry of Culture, with the coordination of the investment by the Directorate-General for Museums.