The EU-funded Tomato Project brings an accessible museum experience home through play

Brussels – Going to the museum without leaving home, playing, discovering, and learning while having fun. A tailor-made guided tour for people who would otherwise find it very difficult to travel to see display cases and artwork. This is the Tomato Project — the acronym for The Original Museum Available To Overall — which embodies the mission and vocation of making culture accessible to everyone. Funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe program, Tomato targets particularly children and youth from physically, mentally, or socially disadvantaged backgrounds.

So far, eight museums from five different EU countries (Italy, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic) are participating in the project. For Italy, it means the possibility of discovering more easily the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice and the Esapolis Museum of Zoology in Padua. The network, however, is more extensive (16 partners from eight member states) when considering those involved in the implementation phase of kits and smartphone applications.

The uniqueness of Tomato lies in the combination of board games and augmented reality. A board with museum-specific figures and cards allows people to reproduce the basic features of the museum, with its rooms and attractions, in the comfort of their own homes. At the same time, the dedicated app – available for Android and iPhone – allows them to go even deeper with a virtual tour of the museum.

So, in the case of the Museum of Oriental Art (MOA) in Venice, there is a special cardboard box containing more games inspired by MOA’s exhibits that explain the museum’s contents in a fun and interactive way. A booklet with the illustrated story of Monk Fu, the brave little monkey, and the guide will also accompany the museum’s virtual tour. And then wooden elements to build a kamishibai butai (the portable theater used for traditional Japanese storytelling) with the storyboards of Momotarō, the peach boy. Also, it is possible to dress a little monkey in paper or cloth clothes and cut it out.

“The Museum must be a place for everyone,”  Marta Boscolo Marchi, director of the MOA, emphasized. “Acquire information while having fun: only in this way can even the youngest people rediscover their history and perceive the collections as valuable for their lives.” Education among peers without distinction “has a fundamental role in this process of appropriating content in an active way.”

The project is open to anyone who wishes to join. Individual museums can come forward anytime and develop their game-learning kit. Meanwhile, Italy is at the forefront of this particular project. Gruppo Pleiadi and Venetian Cluster, together with the Veneto Region and the Veneto Regional Museums Directorate of the Ministry of Culture, have enabled the creation of the kits for the playful-interactive experience, while in Venice a targeted educational project developed by the Museum of Oriental Art with the Diaz Primary School of the Istituto Comprensivo Morosini, has brought the physical kit into classrooms as well.