Moving Emotions towards confidence in the Transformative Appropriation for a Meaningful Understanding of cultural heritage: a neuroScientific approach to EUropean Museums

META-MUSEUM aims to create empathic encounters where citizens can understand the CH transformative nature through active participation, emotional involvement and co-creation; to develop the “TransforMeans theory” and related new professional skills, based on Neuroscience evidence; to provide cultural professionals with principles and tools for designing cultural experiences and to monitoring the effectiveness of communicative/narrative solutions; to reach different segments of citizens, included disaffected public and non-public; to foster empathy, confidence and resilience toward contemporary changes; to validate an appropriate measurement of empathic responses, confidence and resilience in CH users, via Neuroscience’s method.META-MUSEUM adopts a transdisciplinary approach and a strict interrelation between theoretical and experimental work.

The first one will explore and develop in-depth the “TransforMeans theory” principles, develop stimuli to make people understand the CH transformative nature and encourage co-creation and personal interpretation.

The experimental work will measure the audience's cognitive, psycho and neurophysiological responses to stimuli, and interpret indicators related to confidence and resilience (intended as a capacity to positively react to changes).The “TransforMeans theory” principles will be tested in 3 different settings (pilots): 1) traditional cultural setting: museums; 2) non-cultural setting: hospitals (WITHOUT focusing on “therapy results”, but only on the CH power on people particularly lacking in confidence and positive thinking); 3) hybrid setting (physical and virtual), in urban contexts and via social media.The META-MUSEUM objectives mobilise multidisciplinary expertise, provide evidence-based principles and guidelines; promote better and more democratic access to CH, improve personal participation and CH understanding, enhance confidence, and address the SDG4, SDG10 and SDG11.