Educational Offers of University Museums: Toward a Shared Redesign with Territory

Nowadays we are witnessing a complex development of cultural demand as well as an escalating enrichment of educational networks: even university museums are committed to interact through their human and material resources with a wider audience. This paper focuses on the educational processes involved in two experiences carried out at the University of Padua: 1. the “Museum of Education”, which was born as a place where to preserve and to study the history of education but which has soon widened its educational offer to schools and to the territory, by suggesting multiple and diversified approaches as requested from schools, cultural associations, local authorities, etc. 2. the partnership between CAM (University Centre for Museums) and ISS project for Padua, whose aim is to improve the teaching of science. CAM and ISS are co-developing and sharing a common language (about educational and didactical issues) and they are jointly planning to develop new educational programs with schools and museums. Both experiences suggest we need to plan the University Heritage for the future, applying a constructive dialogue between partners. This dialogue could pave the way for a shared redesign of the educational offer, which will then be perceived as a network of different organizations working to achieve common goal by using complementary strategies.