Empowering Small Museums: Digital Technologies and Grassroots Efforts for Sustainable Futures

Small local museums in the last years, far from large urban centers and tourist routes, have experienced difficult times related to the scarcity of available resources and public disengagement, in favor of big events. This means trudging to fulfill the mission that ICOM has defined: the preservation, safeguarding, fruition, and construction of inclusive and democratic spaces. Small local museums play a function of presiding over local culture and reflecting on the present. Much academic research presents studies on the use of technologies within cultural heritage digitization projects, but the field reality of small museums often tells of difficulties in having funds and expertise to use basic technologies. The case I present is a doctoral research I am conducting at the Museo Etnografico dell'Alta Brianza, in Galbiate, Italy. In recent years the difficulties have increased so much that this institution is unable to complete projects to catalog the material collection or the photographic collection, just as the owning institution has decided not to pay for Internet services to make usable the audio of anthropological lectures held over the years. The same activities for the public are carried out thanks to the time that volunteers devote to the museum to which they are emotionally attached, since the only employee, the director, is unable to perform all the tasks involved. In this situation of difficulty and a precarious future, a group of young volunteers is co-constructing a project from the bottom up to think about how they can do research today and the way to succeed in giving the museum a sustainable future. Digital technologies, in this field, have the role of a real social actor, capable of directing choices, shaping future expectations, manifesting discomforts, contradictions, and limitations. What is being built is crafted and shared knowledge aimed at exploiting what digital platforms offer for free. But at the same time, digital capitalism forces people to pay for some services, which becomes difficult for a group of Young volunteers without financial and technical support. I carried out a real participant observation, working together with the group of volunteers, first reflecting on the role of local museums within their territory, then realizing an autoethnographic exhibition, and finally discussing the next steps to be taken to open a dialogue with the local communities in which it is the museum that goes out of its seat to fulfill its mission, thus also giving the museum itself hope for the future. Digital technologies, within this field, are not useful accessories but actors with whom it is necessary to know how to interface. Through the analysis of the expectations, possibilities, difficulties, and finally, the results obtained by the group of volunteers, it is possible to reflect on the needs that small local realities may have, breaking out of the contemporary rhetoric of technology within everyone's reach. Digital technology can become an actor in building the sustainable future of a small local museum, but it is important to know the possibilities and resources needed to implement the different projects.