Gamification and culture proximity as tools to promote local heritage within secondary education

Local heritage, the sum of all the variety of “cultural contents” often undisclosed within bigger museums and smaller institutions, plays a huge part in tracing the identity of a place and its inhabitants. However, it is sometimes difficult to transmit to the audience. The popular dissemination of the “less known” yet very dense history might not be immediate due to a perceived distance from everyday life, especially for younger audiences. Focusing on the Italian territory, particularly the metropolitan area of Milan, an on-site analysis shows that culture-related activities within secondary education institutions often lack network programs. They are frequently confined to the activity and passion of a single teacher or group of teachers, mostly linked to traditional ways of engaging with museums and exhibitions. Younger targets are accustomed to highly engaging, visually captivating, and interactive mediums, while many Milanese institutions still struggle with outdated technologies and limited interaction. The cultural system sometimes promotes poorly inclusive initiatives: while museums are ideally designed to engage a wide variety of audiences, teenagers are often overlooked. There are various workshop initiatives for younger children, whereas the 13-18 age group is frequently excluded from more interactive and dynamic experiences. This population is often absent from the curatorial strategies of museums. Cultural institutions, though not uniformly advanced across Italy, have occupied an important space on the Internet for some time. This is illustrated by the myriad of virtual museums, online exhibitions, and platforms like the Google Art Project, which allows users to view tens of thousands of digitized works from renowned institutions such as the MoMA, the National Gallery, the Tate Britain, and the Van Gogh Museum, as well as some Italian and Milanese museums, albeit in reduced form. However, this digital presence is often based on a one-sided definition of the museum experience, with little input from users. The development of digital devices, combined with social media experiences, has led visitors to expect greater involvement and the ability to personalize museum offerings, even to the extent of creating content. Gamification approaches prove useful in this context. As cited sources suggest, gamification is an excellent strategy to bring cultural content closer to an audience that may not be particularly inclined to engage with museum themes in traditional ways. Potential strategies could include imagining an ideal museum in a virtual space composed of digitized works alongside personal content, creating hybrid temporary exhibitions where users can learn about contemporary cultural producers, or assuming the role of proto-curators by contributing to the selection of pieces for an experimental exhibition. The irreplaceable nature of the museum experience, understood as the contemplation of works and collections, remains clear. This article serves as a pilot study for future research on the development of democratic and democratizing tools that can help younger audiences perceive the local museum not as a rigid institution but as an engaging, educational, and captivating experience.