Epigrafia e storytelling: il caso dei Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia

This paper aims to examine the educational programmes directed to the dissemination of epigraphic finds which have been developed in the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia - MCRE (Emilia, Northern Italy), with a particular focus on the last 5 years. Founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, the MCRE is a civic museum network, whose mission from the beginning has been not only to preserve artifacts, but also (and maybe above all) to be a bridge to connect people with their heritage. Epigraphic finds are fundamental sources for social history: as exceptional treasure-troves of narratives of the ancient world, they are the perfect protagonists for a communication strategy that focuses on the people of whom the archaeological finds are material memory. The communication and museum educators staff made extensive use of storytelling in designing the projects reported here, in the belief that through storytelling it is possible to provide museum visitors with the necessary contextual information to decode the epigraphic message.