THE ‘MUDIB’ DIFFUSED MUSEUM OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MILAN– BICOCCA HAS A DEVICE TO ACTIVATE PARTICIPATION: THE CASE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION

The MUDIB, Bicocca diffused museum, is the museum of the University of Milan-Bicocca. This university was founded in 1998, based on a law prohibiting the excessive numerical growth of existing universities. However, this new institution did not foresee the presence of a museum. In contrast, many of the universities in the Milan area were characterized by the presence of one or more museums, each focusing on a different disciplinary field. Over the years, however, the various departments, currently numbering fourteen, have begun to enhance some of their previously owned collections. For this reason, the University Center BiPAC, linked to the university's cultural heritage studies, launched an initial census campaign, which led to a subsequent cataloguing. In 2023, the museum was established, which has defined some of its goals. Within the museum's offerings, great importance is given to the participation of students, university staff, and citizens. This museum, in fact, is characterized by being a university museum, a local museum, a diffused museum. As a local museum, it fosters connections with the neighborhood and the city. As a distributed museum, it does not concentrate its collection in a single exhibition space, but rather highlights the objects present in the various departments, maintaining their connection to the various disciplines to which they are connected, or organizes exhibitions in public spaces. The museum carries out a variety of activities, from cataloging and displaying works within the university context to creating new exhibition spaces with significant objects that narrate the history and research of the departments to organizing an annual exhibition and promoting a photography competition for the university community and the general public. The museum's activities place great importance on the participation of students, university staff, and the public. This article focuses on one initiative in particular: the photography competition. The competition was launched three years ago, after realizing that the university's photography collection was almost exclusively dedicated to the construction of buildings, a collection that inadequately represented contemporary transformations. The idea was to launch a competition that would allow people to tell the story of their lives in Bicocca. The title "Life in Bicocca" has been characterized by different subtitles over the years. The first year: “Stories from the protagonists.” The second year: “Meeting with the sciences.” This year, the subtitle "Glimpses of everyday life" was proposed by a student and received the most votes from a selection of proposals submitted by other students, faculty, researchers, and university staff. Participation has steadily grown over the years, as has the quality of the photographs, which have proven to be essential documentation for understanding life in Bicocca, as well as for sharing educational experiences and more. This competition includes numerous participatory activities, designed to encourage reflection on university life and the relationship between the university and its community. From this perspective, the museum is seen as a tool for participation, but also as an opportunity for informal education, in which tangible and intangible heritage make a significant contribution. This paper will focus on the tools used to encourage participation, the mediation strategies employed, and the documentation produced.