The XXXIX cycle of the Research Doctorate Intangible Heritage in Sociocultural Innovation of the University of Milan Bicocca-Department of Human Sciences for Primary Education Riccardo Massa has started, thanks to a PNRR MIUR – Ministry of University and Research grant, financed from the European Union – NextGenerationEU. Among the grants envisaged, one sees the MA*GA Museum of Gallarate as the institution in which the research will take place.
The MA*GA Museum, in fact, was one of the six organizations selected by the University for this innovative doctoral proposal which involves collaboration with different institutions in the implementation of the scholarship.
The theme of intangible heritage immediately emerged as the conceptual red thread that links the educational practices of the MA*GA Museum, among the most consolidated in the Italian museum panorama, to possible research and action on experimental strategies and practices for involving the museum public.
The visual artist Corinne Mazzoli is the doctoral student who won the scholarship for the MA*GA Museum by interpreting, with the project presented for the competition, the proposed purpose of “enhancing and expanding tools, methods and approaches that make public of the museum a community of practice, through situated learning processes that are based on participatory artistic actions and the construction of opportunities that involve the active and lasting involvement of visitors”.
The project idea nominated by Corinne Mazzoli is based on the study and use of the live educational role-playing tool (edu-larp) as a participatory practice to be proposed to the public of the MA*GA Museum and to the educational sector in particular. From this initial starting point, action research will start that connects play, learning and museum education.
The main training stages of the course include, in addition to university commitments, a presence of over six months at the MA*GA Museum and at a foreign institution, moments in which Corinne Mazzoli will continue her research, comparing it with the international panorama . At the end of the research and training, the artist will present a prototype educational project, a possible training tool to be experienced with an increasingly participatory audience.
Franca Zuccoli, tutor and coordinator of the doctorate, full professor of Didactics and Special Pedagogy, underlines the cultural case, in the field research work carried out by the doctoral students – who for six months collaborate side by side with the internal representatives of the identified institutes – and in the six months abroad at other places chosen in line with the project, and then returning to Italy . The approach is inter- and transdisciplinary, despite maintaining a strong focus on the doctoral student’s specific disciplines.
Already from the first steps of this new adventure, this is the second cycle, we are observing the adherence of the proposed research to the demands of the contemporary world, in addition to the doctoral students’ ability to develop studies and proposals that maintain a constant cultural comparison in a perspective that places local, national and international research in dialogue.” Deputy coordinator for the University of Milan-Bicocca is Ivan Bargna, full professor of Aesthetic Anthropology and Media Anthropology, while for the MA*GA Museum the project is followed by the director Emma Zanella and by Lorena Giuranna, Head of the Heritage and Alta Formazione, which comments “Museum education through artistic practices remains the main tool of pedagogical innovation to fully understand the entire meaning of Art in our society”.
Corinne Mazzoli is a visual artist and researcher who lives and works between Milan and Venice.
For years his artistic practice has made use of videos, photos, installations and performances and is focused on identity constructs and gender stereotypes in relation to the online representation of the body. In each of your projects you have paid attention to the socio-urban contexts and the dynamics that influence the development of community ties.
In 2008 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and in 2012 in Design and Production of Visual Arts from the Iuav University of Venice. You are currently a PhD student in Educational Sciences at the University of Milan Bicocca.
Since 2019 he has been a video art teacher for the Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking at Ca’ Foscari, Venice.
In 2021 he won the Italian Council research grant (X edition, 2021) from the Ministry of Culture thanks to which he published the volume COUNTER-TUTORIALS.
