MUSAE (Museums, Social Use and Accessibility as a Contrast to Marginalization) is a two-year project funded by a banking foundation in Umbria, with the aim of building museum itineraries for accessibility of the exhibition spaces and usability of art for people with sensory and cognitive disabilities (blind and partially sighted, deaf, people with Alzheimer’s). Conceived and built in interaction with the main local associations of people with disabilities, the project is part of the broad framework of funding that the banking foundation dedicates to the so-called community welfare, placing itself in line with a now established trend that sees a shift from the public to the private sector in the availability of funds dedicated to interventions in the social and health field. In this way, a sort of third sector market is produced, materialized in the systematic practices of planning, evaluation, reporting of actions and their social and economic impact. In our work, referring to the design, coordination and research experience for community engagement activities aimed at establishing an operational network between partners and local realities, we will try to reflect from an anthropological perspective, on two lines of analysis distinct but intimately related to each other. On the one hand we will focus on the complex dynamics of the relationship between museum operators, managers of structures, artists and associations of people with disabilities with respect to the creation of usable contents such as videoguides in LIS, books in Braille, multi-material works and synaesthetic performances of interpretation of some works. On the other hand, we will try to reflect on the impact that the reporting and evaluation systems established by the foundation have on the partnership and the actions of the project with respect to categories and values such as “accessibility”, “autonomy”, “community”, “welfare”.
