Palazzo Merulana
The Cerasi Foundation involved CoopCulture in this challenging management project that places at the centre cultural participation of the communities and audiences engagement. The former “Ufficio di Igiene” (Health Department) has now become an exhibition space with more than 90 artworks of the Roman school and the Italian twentieth century.
Social inclusion and participation
Palazzo Merulana represents a urban, social and cultural repair element for its neighborhood: the range of audiences invited to live daily Palazzo Merulana testify the will to represent a reference point for the community itself.
Throughout its four floors and a surface of 1800 square metres, Palazzo Merulana offers many possibilities to the visitors:
- First floor: welcome, sales, visit (free entrance to the Culture Concept Store and sculptures room)
- Second floor: exhibition spaces (permanent collection)
- Third floor: temporary exhibition spaces (in dialogue with the permanent collection artworks)
- Fourth floor: penthouse room for cultural initiatives and private events
- Terrace: private and cultural events
Co-design of activities
Palazzo Merulana activities and events are the result of a participative project, which began in 2018, called Culture Hub. Thanks to moments devoted to analysis, confrontation, reflection and dialogue among stakeholders, Culture Hub participants seek shared solutions and define together cultural activities planning.
Professionals involved
During the first year of activity, Palazzo Merulana involved more than 600 cultural operators, realised almost 120 projects for a total amount of 150 days of cultural events: an initiative every two days.
Considered the complexity of the project, the realisation and the management of activities and services in Palazzo Merulana required complementary and transversal skills: a team composed by museum welcome experts, cultural mediators coordinated by a multidisciplinary scientific committee and audience development and community engagement professionals.
Palazzo Merulana represents an example of innovative cultural heritage management, always devoted to communities, audiences and territories needs. At the end of the first year of activity, this experience and the effects generated on the local community and the territory have been collected in Palazzo Merulana First Sustainability Report.