The students of “Caio Plinio” step into the shoes of the great man from Como whose name their school bears and become encyclopedists for a day, preceded, however, by three months of preparation. The exceptional event is taking place today, May 15th, at the Pinacoteca di Como from 10am to 4pm, thanks to the collaboration between the Como association Sentiero dei Sogni, Wikimedia Italia and the Civic Museums, who have organized a day of Editathon, or writing of entries from the Wiki platforms, aimed in particular at creating a tour of the art collections of Palazzo Volpi on Wikivoyage, the free tourist guide accessible online throughout the world.
Being present with curated entries on the Wikimedia Foundation channels, i.e. the Wikipedia encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Commons photographic/documentary database and, indeed, Wikivoyage, as well as with precise mapping of the paths on OpenStreetMap, creates a 9% tourism impact according to a study carried out in Spain. Therefore, in addition to the educational and cultural value that the experience will have for the girls and boys involved, the planned initiative is also part of a strategy for communicating Como’s cultural heritage to the world and also to the citizens themselves.
25 students from class 3 participate in the Editathonto Tur1, i.e. the tourist address active within the “Caio Plinio” technical-commercial institute. Their preparatory journey began last February 14, with a visit to the Art Gallery led by Pietro Berra, journalist and president of the Sentiero dei Sogni association, aimed at capturing and highlighting the most significant works present in the collections and describing them in a way that bring out the importance they have had in the socio-cultural evolution of our city and the world: from the cycle of medieval frescoes of Saints Faustina and Liberata, very modern examples of female self-determination, to the portraits of young people, a legacy of the first museum in history, up to the Como landscapes between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries and, obviously, to the twentieth-century excellences represented by futurists, rationalists and abstractionists.
In recent months the students have studied nine works in particular, which will be proposed as “highlights” of the various sections, supported by a multidisciplinary team of teachers: Carmela Ciccarello and Alessio Saulino of Art History, Laura Greco of Italian and History and Giovanna Foa of Corporate Tourism Disciplines.
The Civic Museums have made available images of the works and maps of the rooms necessary to illustrate the visit itinerary, while the technical-IT skills are ensured by a team of volunteers from Wikimedia Italia, which is now led by the national vice-president Stefano Dal Bo. The materials that the students upload to Wikivoyage during the Edithon will then be further reviewed in the following days to guarantee the scientific rigor of what has been written, before being published online.
“We very often hear it said that we live in an “era of change”, in reality it is more correct to say that we find ourselves operating in a “change of era” where the museum centers of our city have a decisive role – declares Enrico Colombo, Councilor for Culture. The census on Wikidata of the entire collection exhibited in the Pinacoteca allows us to make our heritage more accessible, and to consolidate ourselves as a dynamic and constantly growing museum reality since, after the Egyptian Museum of Turin, it is the second museum in Italy to have digitized and disseminated its heritage, making it accessible beyond physical borders. This is a very important milestone for us because a model of data openness is being launched that also aims to encourage interdisciplinary research. The added value is undoubtedly the presence in the Pinacoteca of the editathon involving the young students of the Caio Plinio Institute, in synergy with Wikidata and Sentiero dei Sogni, who accompanied us on this journey. The change of era in which we live is given, precisely, by the regeneration of the museum heritage from an inclusive perspective and close collaboration with the community and the realities that inhabit it”
“We were very keen to propose and organize this initiative in the two thousandth anniversary of Pliny – underlines Pietro Berra for Sentiero dei Sogni – because the Wikimedia Foundation has the same intentions declared by Pliny in the dedication to Titus at the beginning of the Naturalis Historia, that is, to bring culture to everyone, and it does so in a participatory way, as does our association. It is an opportunity to make students experience Wikipedia and similar sources not as “copincolla” sources of information, but rather as dissemination channels to which everyone can contribute in an informed and documented way. Furthermore, it is essential that future tourism operators immediately understand how much the Art Gallery deserves to be described as an essential point of interest for culture enthusiasts visiting Como: at the Uffizi you can see copies of Jovian portraits, at the Vatican Museums in the gallery of geographical maps it says “Museum” instead of “Como” on the map of the Duchy of Milan, but too few tourists still take the opportunity to see in our city what remains of the first museum in history and to look into the eyes, so for example, the portrait of Christopher Columbus considered the most faithful in the world. For the children it was an exciting discovery and, together with their teachers, they have already proposed to continue the collaboration with the Art Gallery in the future”.
