Museum tours and discussion via zoom in museums of the world for the incarcerated students in the Corfu Prisons - Collaboration of the Museology Research Laboratory of the Ionian University and the Second Chance School of the Corfu Prisons, 2022-2023
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Whispers, as soft, quiet and pleasant sounds, in a deafeningly anxious and sometimes quiet condition like that of confinement, can take on inappropriate dimensions! Thoughts like these "gave birth" to them Museum Whispers in the Panopticon! Where Panopticon, contemplate beyond Bentham's famous building- eye, within it a school. Second Chance School, Corfu Penitentiary! Initially, the meeting of three people (Artemis, Kyriakos and George), who envisioned, planned and implemented the specific program, with the common denominator being their own prison experience and the deep conviction that imprisonment is a matter of education. In this case Museum!
Next, five tele-visits-stations that were implemented last school year in museums of the world with the always willing participation of all participants evident: Doha (Museum of Islamic Art), Athens (Hellenic Automobile Museum), Antwerp (Museum of Contemporary Art), Johannesburg (Vredefort Dome crater), Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum). Every time a unique culture visit. Islamic art and stories from the museum with the greatest impact on visitors, history of the car through a "digital 4-wheel driving tour", contemporary art and behind-the-scenes tour of a museum, visit to the oldest meteorite impact crater found in Earth and finally an exploration of world history and art from antiquity to the present day.
The process is familiar but at the same time unprecedented every time. An introductory text for each museum, an introductory text for the enclosed participants, the contact with our unique tour guides, the life-giving tour - even from afar - but above all the interaction. And every time the same liberating realizations: The meetings of people are undoubtedly valuable, the greatness of the human condition that sometimes makes mistakes, the stripping away of stereotypes and prejudices and the realization of how equal we all are in the end, if we remove any labels!
And this coexistence of Museum, School and Prison, by extension culture, education and fruitful dialogue, which proves that man, if he wants, can do everything and as they also say from "inside"... "all people have a goodness within us a creativity and something special. It just sometimes takes the right people to bring it out of us. School is suitable, to bring out these things, creativity, kindness, wisdom, how to see things from another point of view! Because every person here has made a mistake and... someone may pay a little, another may pay more... but this feeling does not cease to be the same for everyone. The school, in short, is something that will unlock the creativity and kindness of every prisoner, so that he can get out and make a new start!” And what's better than Museum Education?
After all, culture can make man better, improve him morally, promote him. And it seems to be affected by the standard of living of the prisoners of a country, according to Dostoyevsky. And the most amazing thing? The multiple benefits of the museum-here-culture do not only concern the trainees who are incarcerated, they concern us equally, all involved, since we certainly benefit and become better people.
Museum Education can do penitentiary miracles!
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Dr. Artemi Papandritsa, researcher and former teacher at the Second Chance School for Prisoners
Dr. Kyriakos Kolesis, former Director of the Second Chance School in Corfu Prisons
Dr. George Papaioannou, Director of Museology Research Laboratory, Ionian University