Naples in the Hands

This chapter presents the experiences of how an Italian university based in the city of Naples, in order to open up and transform itself into a place to be able to include students with disabilities in all aspects of social life, got involved in activism about museums and art. In order to ensure a ‘disability cultural citizenship’ where there are diverse multiple possibilities of access to be shared, a central concern is a new form of participatory activism. The opportunity to use in the museums, different languages and types of visits that can be combined together, especially when visitors have complex disabilities, makes a visit a multi-sensorial and multi-dimensional encounter. The narrative dimension is built through dialogue, evocation, imagination and intrigues in order to keep the attention of an audience for knowledge and needs diversified; that means to enrich speeches with anecdotes, readings, music, visual props and ideas to better tell the past.