Design teaching and cultural companies: Languages, tools and methods toward a profitable involvement

Abstract

The topic of this paper is focus on the relationship between design teaching and the different kinds of cultural partners in the field of the cultural design. In this context we mean the company as cultural company. In fact the cultural production is increasingly a lively area of intervention and of business. We assume that it is very important to involve the real interlocutors in the process of design teaching and especially in the field of the cultural design where the complexity of the system is an interesting pretext for to create the useful situations. Specifically we study the relationship between the design disciplines and the humanities sciences as a basis to know the methodologies to enable the contact and the synergies with the cultural institutions (museum, territory communities...). In fact museums, associations, majors, communities of the territories are mainly managed by profiles humanities. The hypothesis is the design teaching programs can be a necessary tool to put innovation in the cultural system (in the specific realities) and (symmetrically) the cultural partners are an important filed of experimentation, but for this target is necessary that design develops the tools and specific modality of dialogue. A demonstration of what will be explained two different experiences of design teaching where the relationship between design and the anthropology culture represent a model of collaboration. The first one regards an intervention (in terms of strategic and exhibit design research) in the Anthropological Museum in Florence; the second one regards a cluster of interpenetrations (in terms of strategic, communication and exhibit de innovasign research) about a cultural identity of the Italian Alpine (partner involved: region Lombardia). In the latter case we work mainly on immaterial cultural heritage (festivals, rituals, gestures, knowledge...)

Key words: design and humanities, cultural design, anthropology, rituals, creative ethnography document.