LOODA Looking for Datas. A Training Manual for European Children's Museums

The need to provide training and action on skills in terms of data collection and selection in order to be able to set up social impact assessment plans is increasingly becoming a primary objectiv...

The need to provide training and action on skills in terms of data collection and selection in order to be able to set up social impact assessment plans is increasingly becoming a primary objective for cultural organisations such as children's museums; having within children's museums those skills that allow the identification of needs and the evaluation of the impact of their cultural offerings to the community becomes extremely relevant in the skills of the staff working in children's museums. The project represents the improvement of the skills of Children's Museum operators strongly linked to the improvement of the museums' capacity to produce a positive social impact in the territories where they operate. The aim is to create an output that can be used by the whole European community to improve the overall knowledge of Children's Museums.

LOODA took place over a period of 20 months between March 2022 and October 2023, a first part was dedicated to the definition of a survey to be administered to the museums of the Hands-On! network in order to have a first scenario about the knowledge and awareness of these institutions on the topic of data collection and selection in order to set up impact assessment paths; this was the starting point to set up the subsequent training phase which took place online for its first phase and then took place live in September 2022 in Milan at the MUBA and in November in Pisek at Sladovna. This phase of work made it possible to strengthen the skills of the professionals of the partner organisations and to develop the logical framework from which to determine the tools to be used for the pilot testing phase at the MUBA and Sladovna museums held from February to August 2023. The current version of the manual, an output envisaged by the project, was completed in October 2023.

LOODA presents as a concrete output of the project the realisation of the manual, the outcome of the whole process from the training phase to the construction phase of the toolkit and its pilot testing at the MUBA and Sladvona sites. The manual will be disseminated and promoted to European museum networks, specifically children's museums (Hands-On! International, 21st Century Children, NEMO, etc.). The manual will initially be sent to some organisations, with the request to analyse it and try out some of its tools, in order to receive further feedback and to be able to refine it. The output of the project is to be regarded as a starting point for further exploration of the subject matter, and is at the same time a ready-to-use tool.