Thinking at the Museum: the story of Rosita | Stories of youth and culture

by Federico Giannini, Ilaria Baratta , published on 24/06/2013
Categories: Miscellaneous / Disclaimer
Today we tell the story of Rosita Cacciali, director of the Il Mondo Piccolo Museum in Roccabianca, who tells us about life at the museum.
Today’s protagonist of Stories of Youth and Culture is Rosita Cacciali, she is from Roccabianca (in the province of Parma), and she calls herself “the soul” of “Il Mondo Piccolo” Museum, a museum dedicated to the Parma plain between the 19th and 20th centuries, also seen through the eyes of two local personalities, Giovannino Guareschi and Giovanni Feraboli. Rosita tells us about her work as “director, operator and head of education” in a small context that, although amidst various difficulties, is proceeding with its head held high!

The Little World Museum was inaugurated on May 1, 2008, and shortly afterwards my wonderful experience began. I am from Roccabianca, the town where the museum is located, a graduate in Conservation of Cultural Heritage, a tour guide, I work for a cultural association and was asked to take care at a very early stage of the mere opening of the museum: I formed a group of people, young students, volunteers, staff of my association who would make themselves available to supervise the museum during the opening hours.I worked with this group of people so that they would be able to welcome visitors, answer their questions pertaining to the museum and the area, and slowly the love for this museum grew as well as the desire to make it more and more vital.

After 5 years I am the soul of the museum: I am the museum operator, the director, the head of education: in such a small museum, owned by a municipal administration (of a small municipality of 3000 inhabitants) the roles within a museum are not well defined, or rather contractually I am defined as the contact person of the association for the municipal administration, which means that I do not have the salary that a director has but in fact I have the same duties, but more importantly also the same satisfaction, especially when you consider that when I was handed the keys to the museum this was a container that I slowly filled with educational projects for schools, with events, with the design of gadgets for the book shop until I got great recognition from the Parma museum system that chose our museum as the leader of the museum and school in dialogue project for two years now.

Certainly at a time like this it becomes difficult to work in a small museum that relies on municipal budgets, the economic resources are less and less, I do not have an office inside the museum, as I imagined in my university days my home, my car have become my offices, everything I see, every person I meet are a stimulus to create something that leaves a trace in the museum, of this I want to talk to you because it is the most beautiful and stimulating part, compared to the however not negligible part of the organization of cleaning or staff who take turns on opening days.

When an idea arises that could potentially improve the museum, the most complicated work begins: how to put the idea into practice using resources that are always very few: the confrontation with the municipal official, the person who actually has the money I will need, begins; I confess that I am once again very lucky: the person I have to deal with feels the same love for the museum as I do so he never puts up much resistance and does his utmost to find the necessary funds, often you have to sharpen your wits, improvise to do things you didn’t even know you were capable of doing, brush up on old notions but also old acquaintances or friendships that lead you on the right path to retrieve the right object or phone number that manage to solve the moment of impasse you were in

Working in a museum like the Museum of the Small World means putting yourself completely on the line, it does not mean having a role within the museum but mingling with and in the museum as my little girl says when they ask her what her mommy does for a living and she says, My mommy THINKS about the museum!


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