Matilde Conti, Maria Giulia Romano, Michalina Fidos, and Mari Suoheimo
A project in the Participatory Gigamapping course tackled making a design museum accessible to low-income children aged 3–5. The complex issue required a systemic approach to reveal interdependencies among social, educational, institutional and economic factors affecting museum engagement. We collaborated with PACO Design Collaborative, experienced in socially oriented museum projects and a local kindergarten focused on art and design education. Their involvement grounded the project in real practices, though direct engagement with low-income families and children themselves was not part of this phase and remains a priority for future work. The project began with extensive desk research to build the base gigamap, identifying key actors, processes and conditions across micro, meso and macro levels. This analysis covered legislative frameworks, funding, socio-economic barriers, institutional roles, and the cultural ecosystem surrounding children’s museum access. Using analytical and participatory tools such as ZIP analysis and a stakeholder workshop, we identified system tensions, gaps and opportunities, which informed a scored prioritisation of leverage points and “hot zones” for resource-efficient interventions.
While this paper shares its methodological approach with other case studies developed within the Erasmus+ project Early Education in Museums for an Inclusive Future (MusEdu) (which promotes inclusive early childhood education by integrating museums’ artefacts and exhibitions), its specific contribution lies in the distinctive nature of the ADI Design Museum case itself. Unlike museum contexts where design or cultural engagement with children must be built from scratch, ADI is a well-established institution rooted in Milanese and Italian culture, with an active Junior Lab and ongoing children’s programmes. This raised the bar for the intervention rather than lowering it: the challenge was not to introduce design or children’s programming into an unfamiliar setting, but to make an already-established, culturally prominent design institution genuinely accessible to a specific and currently underserved audience despite an existing infrastructure.
Keywords: systemic design, gigamapping, inclusive museum, educational equity, ZIP analysis, leverage point
