The Kazantzakis Museum at the ICOM-CECA 2024 Conference: "Delicate topics. Challenging Audiences."

The ICOM-CECA 2024 Annual Conference in Athens, which took place from Monday 18 to Friday 22 November at the Benaki Museum/Piraeus 138, was a great success: "Complex issues. Special Audience Groups".

The conference highlighted good practices of museums from around the world through talks, posters, workshops, idea markets and research papers by museum professionals. The conference proceedings discussed issues related to complex issues of accessibility and inclusion of vulnerable and socially excluded groups, such as people with disabilities, Roma, people with memory problems and their carers, through education in museums and culture in general.

The Nikos Kazantzakis Museum participated in the Conference with a poster by the Head of the Department of Educational Activities, Ms. Hara Vavadaki, entitled "Reach where you cannot". Accessibility and awareness-raising actions at the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum".

The poster presented the interventions implemented to increase accessibility for people with disabilities in the Museum's buildings, with emphasis on the Permanent Exhibition. These interventions include ramps, a lift, a 3D tactile model of the Museum's buildings, a lift, toilets for the disabled and a tactile route specially designed for people with visual disabilities with its audio guide.

Furthermore, the various activities for the inclusion of people with disabilities implemented at the Museum were presented, such as the guide for groups and individual visitors with disabilities, the autonomous audio tour of the tactile route, the interactive tour for special education schools, the educational programme for children on the autism spectrum with their families and the Educational Museum Kit for Nikos Kazantzakis, which is partially accessible for children with visual disabilities.

Finally, the educational programme "Reach where you cannot" was presented, which is designed to raise awareness of the Museum's visitors about visual disabilities. Participants learn the techniques of accompanying a visually impaired person and discover in an experiential way how a blind person visits the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum. The programme is aimed at school groups, adult groups and families and is the Museum's most popular educational programme since 2022 with the participation of 2507 students, 40 adults and 16 families.

The aim of the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum is to implement more interventions and actions to increase accessibility for people with disabilities and to effectively include and raise awareness among its visitors.