As other Dialogue venues, Milan has launched their own online Dialogue offer as a strategy to adapt to the current conditions.
I spoke with Marinella Monachella, blind manager from Milan, to understand more about their digital offers.
Marinella: While the exhibition is temporarily closed, we have designed some workshops for two types of clients: companies and schools. Both products - Business and school - aim to create emotional closeness to continue to improve inclusion and human interactions.
Pepe: Could you tell me about the products for companies?
Marinella: We have designed two: Happy Smart and Smart Communication. Both workshops were designed in a way that retains emotional discomfort, the same effect that you get in the dark. Happy & Smart is a product with a convivial theme that includes a warm-up activity and the creation of a cocktail without sight. Smart Communication is aimed at improving communication skills and interaction within the team. It stimulates discussion among colleagues and to acquire some useful insights for improving communication within the team, through three main dimensions:
1. A new way of interacting - Through provocation, confrontation, and feedback, the team interacts effectively to achieve the goal while considering unexpected factors.
2. Obstacles to overcome - Activities are designed to recreate an absolutely unusual situation, by putting the group members outside their comfort zone, which is basic for learning that lasts over time.
3. Transformation - Participants become the protagonists of a process of change through a reversal of the schemes: what is taken for granted becomes unimaginable.
Pepe: And what about the workshop for schools?
Marinella: Here we have developed two products too: DialogoNet and DialogoNet for universities. In the first workshop, the blind guides virtually reach students in schools or at home to bring them closer to the reality of visual impairment through testimonials, Q&A sessions, introducing some aids for daily independent living and challenging students through interactive activities to look beyond appearances and to finding value in diversity. The workshop format for universities is very similar to the workshop for schools but at a deeper and more structured level. The workshops we think are also an opportunity to introduce the regular tour in the dark or an opportunity to deepen the in-person experience when we return to normal.
If you want to know more or book a Dialogue online workshop in Italian, contact Dialogo Nel Buio via their website