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PRE CONFERENCE EVENT

WORKSHOP "NEW MODELS ON HEALTH&LIFE MUSEUMS"

June 2, 2004; from 16:00 to 19.30
At CCIB Forum 2004
Organized by: Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau
and Science Communication Observatory (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

This workshop focuses on a specific type of museums, particularly those centred
on medical, health and life topics. Sometimes these museums have recovered old
collections of medical and surgical instruments, anatomical pieces, etc. In
others, the approach focuses more on educational, pedagogical and health
promotional functions. A third type of centres experiment with new and
provocative proposals… Finally, in some cases these three functions are
combined.

The goal of the meeting is gathering representative professionals from
different countries in order to study, compare and debate the-state-of-the-art
of these Museums by comparing some specific cases. Which are the functions of
these museums and how they are concealed? Which are the used tools? Which is 
the target audience and the real one?The Workshop will aim to set the
main challenges and think about future models.

REGISTRATIONS

Registration closed. Waiting list registration through mariajose.gonzalez@upf.edu

PROGRAMME

From 16:00 to 19.30 Workshop on “New Models on Health and Life Museums” Chaired by Vladimir de Semir, Comissioner for Science Culture at Barcelona City Council and director of the Science Communication Observatory (UPF) and moderated by Sílvia Bravo, Observatori Científic de la Ciutat Mediterrania. The workshop "New models on health & life museums" aims at discussing on -and reach some conclusions about- the main trends and the greatest challenges that this kind of museums have to face nowadays in a knowledge based society framework. More specifically, the discussion will focus on how to make the best out of pre-exiting collections and, as well, which strategies would seem more adequate to spread knowledge and make health & life museums successful. More specifically, speakers and participants will get engaged in a discussion aimed to answer the three following questions: Which role must Life and Health Museums undertake regarding · The preservation of the historical memory of Medicine? · The education of societies on medical issues, its progress and the importance of research? · The creation of networks of interdisciplinary communities (researchers, science communicators, teachers and the public as a whole)? The workshop is a pre-programme activity of the 8th International Conference of the network PCST (Public Communication of Science of Technology), that will have over 300 participants. The workshop venue is the same as for the PCST conference: the Convention and Congress Centre, at the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004. More specifically, the workshop will take place in room B2 at 16:00, and it will last until 19:30. Both the presentations and the discussion aroused at the workshop will be the main contents of an issue of the journal "Quark" which will devote a monograph to the issue. All participants in the workshop are invited to a guided visit to Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, the second eldest European hospital (six centuries) and a living Art Nouveau's monument which has been declared Unesco Human Heritage. Sant Pau is currently undergoing a great transformation in relation to the opening of a new building, which will host all the healthcare activity. The moving will let 16 pavilions free for another uses, mainly research and teaching but, also, educational activities, heritage recovering and diffusion, and science and medicine popularisation. The creation of a museum on life sciences is among the projects. Those interested in visiting Sant Pau Hospital must register previously through this website. The guided tour takes about 75 minutes and there are four possible timetables: 9:30, 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30. To register to the guided tour, please send a mail to jcaceres@santpau.es and specify your name and the timetable you choose. More information regarding Sant Pau guided tour will be available at the workshop. The workshop's dynamics The workshop will have two parts. The aim of the first one (2 hours) is to offer a broad view on the state-of-the-art of the current discussion on life and health museums' models. It will open with the presentations of five speakers, all of them being top experts coming from different parts of the world. Each presentation will last 15 minutes. After that, a discussion among the speakers will follow in order to go further into some of the contents that they had exposed. The speakers are: · Arnold, Ken (UK): "Medical collections and exhibitions: how to use the power of objects to create a unique form of knowledge". Head of Exhibitions at the Wellcome Trust, studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation for Princeton University, on the history of English museums. He has worked in museums on both sides of the Atlantic, and he currently programmes two galleries devoted to exploring the culture of medicine (its art, science and history) and manages a range of funding initiatives aimed at promoting interaction between contemporary medical science and the arts. · Asensio, Mikel (Spain): "The project of the National Health Museum in Spain". Psicologist interested in the cognitive mechanismes that explain how to transfer knowledge, he lectures at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid besides taking part in post-graduate programmes in other Spanish universities. He's also carried out researches for various American and Spanish museums and he is currently working as a consultant for the project of a National Health Museum in Spain. · Massarani, Luisa (Brasil): "Health and Life Museums as education agents and articulating devices for interdisciplinar communities". Co-ordinator of the Studies Centre at Fiocruz Life Museum, and co-ordinator of the Science and Development Network for Latin America and the Caribbean, which focuses on how to apply science and technology progress in order to promote economic and social development. · Páramo, Ernesto (Spain): "Would a science centre be very different if it had started from a great collection?". Director of the science museum Parque de las Ciencias de Granada, he was also the responsible of its museographic project in 1990. He teaches in various programmes on science museums and science popularisation, besides being a science writer and working as a consultant on various cultural and science museums projects. · Schiele, Bernard (Canada): "Main challenges of health and life museums today: how will they have to evolve in the near future?" Professor at the Communication Department, University of Quebec at Montreal, he got a Ph.D. on educational technology and has written "La révolution de la muséologie de sciences" (1997). He is member of various associations involved with museums and the advancement of science. · Skydsgaard, Morten (Denmark): "Medical collections today: how to make the best out of them?". Curator of the history of medicine area at the Steno Museum, the Danish Museum for the History of Science and Technology. Once having set up the main issues in the current debate on health and science museums, the second part of the workshop will be devoted to discussion and interchange among the participants. It won't be, though, an open discussion but one focused in answering the three following questions: which role must Life and Health Museums undertake regarding · The preservation of the historical memory of Medicine? · The education of societies on medical issues, its progress and the importance of research? · The creation of networks of interdisciplinary communities (researchers, science communicators, teachers and the public as a whole)? The speakers will open the discussion, followed by other personalities -coming both from academic and professional grounds- that have also been invited to take part in the workshop, and the rest of the participants. On this regard, some of the invited experts, among others, are: Pierre Fayard, director of the LABCIS (a research centre on science communication, sited in Poitiers University); Carme Prats, subdirector of Cultural Heritage at the Catalan Government; Gemma Revuelta, associated professor on scientific communitation at Pompeu Fabra University and Deputy Director of the Science Communication Observatory at the same university; Vladimir de Semir, Comissioner for Science Culture at Barcelona City Council and director of the Science Communication Observatory; Alfons Zarzoso, curator of the the Catalan Museum for the History of Medicine... All presentations and discussions will be recorded and edited in order to be included in a monograph on life and health museums that the journal "Quark" will published later in the year.