Verso il museo multimediale della lingua italiana
DOI: 10.1401/9788815410283/c7
Ann B. Friedman Bringing Words to Life at Planet Word
Notizie Autori
Ann B. Friedman è fondatrice e CEO del Planet Word Museum di Washington, DC; alla sua
iniziativa si deve il restauro della Franklin School, l’edificio che ospita il
museo. Per nove anni è stata insegnante di lettura e scrittura. Dal 2010 al 2016
è stata presidente del board della SEED Foundation, nata
per fornire opportunità educative preparatorie al college a studenti
svantaggiati. Attualmente è uno dei nuovi direttori dell’American Alliance of
Museums. Fa parte del board dell’Aspen Music Festival and
School e della National Symphony Orchestra.
Abstract
I’m Ann Friedman, the founder of Planet Word in Washington, DC, the world’s
first interactive museum dedicated to words and language. In our physical museum, we
divided the broad topic of words and language into three main categories: how humans
acquire language and the amazing variety of those 6.000 living languages; what we
can do with words; the power of words in advertising and people’s lives. Then we
specified six core values that all our exhibits had to embody to. They had to be
some combination of fun, playful, unexpected, meaningful, motivational, or
inclusive. To bring all these words to life for visitors (just like you’ll have to
do virtually) we used lots of technology: voice-recognition technology, motion
activation, and projection technology, sound, animation, and compelling color and
design. Visitors would talk to the museum, and it would talk back. And every visitor
would leave the museum having written a little, read a little, spoken, and listened
– every part of the language arts.
I’m Ann Friedman, the founder of Planet
Word in Washington, DC
[1]
, the world’s first interactive museum dedicated to words and language. I hope I
have some helpful tips for you as you contemplate opening a virtual museum about the
incomparable Italian language.
I realize that there’s one big difference
between our two museum models: Planet Word is not virtual – it’s in a very real, 51.000
square-feet National Historic Landmark building. To be honest, lots of people suggested that
I go the virtual route, because it would cost a lot less money and be a lot quicker to open
than the 7 years it actually took to finish Planet Word. But I was determined to occupy a
physical museum. To explain why, let me take you back to the origins of my idea.
First of all, everyone’s world view is
shaped by seminal events in their early years, and for me that was living in Beirut and
Jerusalem, two cities divided by civil strife, in the 1970s and ’80s. After experiencing so
much unnecessary division and discord (unfortunately still with us today) I promised myself
that when I moved back to the United States, I would do something to build community –
something that was, at that time, still a hallmark of American life and politics.
The second big influence was my career as
a beginning reading and writing teacher. I loved teaching kids to read and introducing them
to reading and poetry and wordplay, so when I retired, I wanted to continue working in
literacy. I believed then (and I still do) that literacy is the key to a healthy democracy.
But everywhere I looked in America literacy was on the decline. Reading test scores were
stagnating, there were staggering numbers of functionally illiterate
¶{p. 76}adults, newspapers and magazines were going out of business, and
young people weren’t reading for pleasure anymore.
So, my thought was, why not try to
reverse those negative trends by trying something no one’s ever tried before: creating a
museum devoted to reading, words, and language? To make reading cool again. I visited a new
museum in New York City that was doing exactly that with math concepts, so, I thought, why
not try a museum of words and language? A museum can do things that individual teachers or
parents can’t do by themselves: museums have large spaces, they can afford cutting-edge
technology; they have access to celebrities and funding; they can bring people together in
immersive, participatory experiences.
And a museum can help building that
community that was so important to me after living in the Middle East. It could bring people
together to learn, to experiment, to use their words to communicate and to debate civilly.
For all these reasons, I was convinced
that only a physical museum would fit the bill. Now I know that you’re
planning ¶{p. 77}a virtual museum – and although it’s not the direction I
chose, I think you can create something great in the virtual sphere because of all the
technological tools we now have at our disposal: virtual reality, augmented reality,
holograms, 3-D photography, to name a few.
And the great thing about a virtual
museum is how wide its reach can be – you’ll be able to welcome people from all over the
world, people who would never be able to visit Italy – especially during a pandemic! But the
all-important thing is to decide what story you want visitors to come away with, and to the
greatest extent possible: show, don’t tell. That’s true for a virtual museum even more than
for a physical one. Telling is didactic, that’s for schools. A museum, real or virtual,
should be fun and surprising and engage visitors. They should be given the opportunity to
chart their own path and discover what’s interesting to them.
So in our physical museum, we divided the
broad topic of words and language into three main categories: how humans acquire language
and the amazing variety of those 6.000 ¶{p. 78}living languages; what we can
do with words (like singing, joking, writing poetry and stories or giving speeches); the
power of words in advertising and people’s lives. We had to decide what concepts to include.
And then we had to fit those concepts into the space. Lucky for you, with a virtual museum
you won’t have to worry about space limitations – you’ll have infinite virtual space. Only
time and money will limit your choice of what topics to include.
Then we specified six core values that
all our exhibits had to embody to. They had to be some combination of fun, playful,
unexpected, meaningful, motivational, or inclusive. For me the most important of those
values was meaningful. If an idea was fun or playful but it wasn’t
meaningful, it didn’t end up in the museum.
And we also decided that Planet Word
would be a descriptive language museum, not a prescriptive one. We wanted to show words and
language as they are really used. We wanted to avoid rules and grammar so we wouldn’t
intimidate anyone from visiting. Everyone would be welcome at Planet Word no matter what
language they spoke, what ¶{p. 79}accent they had, or how much they knew
about literature. At Planet Word there would be something to interest everyone, and everyone
would see themselves reflected in the museum through the books and poems and songs we chose
or through the really broad range of activities. You like rap music? Well, there’s an
exhibit for you. You like the environment? Well, there’s a speech you’ll like to hear. You
like cooking? We’ll bring a cookbook to life for you.
And we wanted Planet Word to be a free
museum, because language belongs to all of us: we are all curators of our words from the day
we are born.
To bring all these words to life for
visitors (just like you’ll have to do virtually) we used lots of technology:
voice-recognition technology, motion activation, and projection technology, sound,
animation, and compelling color and design. Visitors would talk to the museum, and it would
talk back. They would be inspired by words all around them: on the walls, on the lockers,
and even in the restrooms. We wanted to make sure that every visitor was surrounded by words
and awe. And every visitor would leave the museum having written a little, read a little,
spoken, and listened – every part of the language arts.
Note
[1] https://planetwordmuseum.org (retrieved on March 2023).