The value of corporate museums: preserving the creativity and work of the past to increase economic growth
Museums are like the backbone of a community – by keeping its memories, they allow to build its future. Similarly, corporate museums and archives record how vigorously entrepreneurial, creatively intelligent, hard-working and innovative an active, productive and socially inclusive community is. And it’s in this fertile interweaving of memory and innovation that the development potential of the Italian economy is rooted, together with its high-quality manufacturing and high-tech service network, features that are prized on the international markets.
These are the underlying notions informing the Museimpresa (the Italian Association of business archives and corporate museums) assembly, to be held in Milan, at the headquarters of the AEM Foundation, on 24 May. Notions that are further corroborated by the key terms chosen by ICOM (the International Council of Museums, founded in 1946 to support the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage) to emblemise this year’s International Museum Day, held on 18 May: “sustainability and well-being”. In fact, as regards social and environmental sustainability, Italian enterprises have already conquered a privileged position on the global markets, as they turned these values into competitive assets a long time ago, while the Italian propensity for industry – Italy ranks as the second largest manufacturing country in Europe, after Germany – generates employment opportunities, and thus more widespread wealth and well-being.
To better understand all this, let’s have a look at ICOM’s latest definition of what a museum should be, a definition also adopted by Museimpresa: “A museum is a permanent non-profit institution at the service of society, undertaking research, collecting, preserving, interpreting and exhibiting material and immaterial heritage artefacts.” Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, “museums promote diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically and professionally, engaging the community and offering diversified experiences to foster education, enjoyment, reflection and the sharing of knowledge”.
Museums as living sites, then, as tools we can use to gain a deeper understanding of history and the human experience, as means to disseminate knowledge, as open, dialogic and democratic spaces. And corporate museums as places where material cultures acquire value and perspective by freeing historical narration from mere political and military bonds – as the Annales school taught us – to include cultures of work, food and trade, daily life practices, and a “do, do well and do good” attitude, as well as traditional crafts that distinguish the Italian regions and that – also thanks to Museimpresa – are being increasingly shared, enhancing territorial creativity and productivity.
In fact, there currently is a great impetus towards growth, towards writing “a future-oriented story”, which is turning museums and archives into veritable competitive assets, not only for enterprises but also for stakeholders, as by disseminating awareness about past values museums helps us carve a path towards sustainable development.
Creation and innovation, exuding the strength of real “industrial pride”, are the true key features of Italian corporate culture, and as such they represent the memory and narrative of a long, rugged and complex transformative journey of production technologies and products, consumption and traditions. This because enterprises, as communities of people, are key social actors within history, and their distinctive feature lies in a wide strategy combining so-called “polytechnic culture” (a unique blend of humanities and scientific knowledge) with productive processes, communication languages and product marketing, which are also mindful to the relationships existing between manufacturing, services, creativity and scientific research, between technological evolution and the narration built by painters, writers and poets, architects, film directors and photographers, commercial artists and designers. A civilisation steeped in images and words, people and machinery.
What underlies the activity of Museimpresa (founded over 20 years ago by entrepreneurial associations Assolombarda and Confindustria and now boasting more than 130 members and institutional supporters) is, in fact, an entrenched conviction that enterprises are both physical and mental spaces where past and future meet, determining economic and social development.
Indeed, our corporate archives guard and narrate traditional manufacturing wisdom and high-quality services, which are the cornerstones of an extensive economic, social and civic culture: documentation, photographs, films, advertisements, technical drawings, as well as contracts and employment records, which all tell us about the – especially human – dimension of labour, including its different industrial relationships, ties and conflicts, the evolution of bonds between entrepreneurs, managers, technicians and labourers. A social capital that, by defining its history and identity, makes each enterprise unique – the fluid portrayal of an extraordinary side of human life.
Museums are like the backbone of a community – by keeping its memories, they allow to build its future. Similarly, corporate museums and archives record how vigorously entrepreneurial, creatively intelligent, hard-working and innovative an active, productive and socially inclusive community is. And it’s in this fertile interweaving of memory and innovation that the development potential of the Italian economy is rooted, together with its high-quality manufacturing and high-tech service network, features that are prized on the international markets.
These are the underlying notions informing the Museimpresa (the Italian Association of business archives and corporate museums) assembly, to be held in Milan, at the headquarters of the AEM Foundation, on 24 May. Notions that are further corroborated by the key terms chosen by ICOM (the International Council of Museums, founded in 1946 to support the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage) to emblemise this year’s International Museum Day, held on 18 May: “sustainability and well-being”. In fact, as regards social and environmental sustainability, Italian enterprises have already conquered a privileged position on the global markets, as they turned these values into competitive assets a long time ago, while the Italian propensity for industry – Italy ranks as the second largest manufacturing country in Europe, after Germany – generates employment opportunities, and thus more widespread wealth and well-being.
To better understand all this, let’s have a look at ICOM’s latest definition of what a museum should be, a definition also adopted by Museimpresa: “A museum is a permanent non-profit institution at the service of society, undertaking research, collecting, preserving, interpreting and exhibiting material and immaterial heritage artefacts.” Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, “museums promote diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically and professionally, engaging the community and offering diversified experiences to foster education, enjoyment, reflection and the sharing of knowledge”.
Museums as living sites, then, as tools we can use to gain a deeper understanding of history and the human experience, as means to disseminate knowledge, as open, dialogic and democratic spaces. And corporate museums as places where material cultures acquire value and perspective by freeing historical narration from mere political and military bonds – as the Annales school taught us – to include cultures of work, food and trade, daily life practices, and a “do, do well and do good” attitude, as well as traditional crafts that distinguish the Italian regions and that – also thanks to Museimpresa – are being increasingly shared, enhancing territorial creativity and productivity.
In fact, there currently is a great impetus towards growth, towards writing “a future-oriented story”, which is turning museums and archives into veritable competitive assets, not only for enterprises but also for stakeholders, as by disseminating awareness about past values museums helps us carve a path towards sustainable development.
Creation and innovation, exuding the strength of real “industrial pride”, are the true key features of Italian corporate culture, and as such they represent the memory and narrative of a long, rugged and complex transformative journey of production technologies and products, consumption and traditions. This because enterprises, as communities of people, are key social actors within history, and their distinctive feature lies in a wide strategy combining so-called “polytechnic culture” (a unique blend of humanities and scientific knowledge) with productive processes, communication languages and product marketing, which are also mindful to the relationships existing between manufacturing, services, creativity and scientific research, between technological evolution and the narration built by painters, writers and poets, architects, film directors and photographers, commercial artists and designers. A civilisation steeped in images and words, people and machinery.
What underlies the activity of Museimpresa (founded over 20 years ago by entrepreneurial associations Assolombarda and Confindustria and now boasting more than 130 members and institutional supporters) is, in fact, an entrenched conviction that enterprises are both physical and mental spaces where past and future meet, determining economic and social development.
Indeed, our corporate archives guard and narrate traditional manufacturing wisdom and high-quality services, which are the cornerstones of an extensive economic, social and civic culture: documentation, photographs, films, advertisements, technical drawings, as well as contracts and employment records, which all tell us about the – especially human – dimension of labour, including its different industrial relationships, ties and conflicts, the evolution of bonds between entrepreneurs, managers, technicians and labourers. A social capital that, by defining its history and identity, makes each enterprise unique – the fluid portrayal of an extraordinary side of human life.