I spent last weekend out of Rome, in Turin, at a conference on "Storytelling in Museum Contexts" organised by the Regione Piemonte, Scuola Holden in Turin, and the Fondazione Fitzcarraldo, www.fitzcarraldo.it . It was a praiseworthy initiative to open up the interpretation of artifacts and historical spaces. As the Fondazione states:"Story-telling is one of the methods that can be used to involve the most intimate spheres of our affections and sensitivity, and to foster public participation, drawing on the weath of values and evocations conjured up by objects and places".

Most participants were involved in museums, and the range was extensive: From the V and A in London and the Musee de L'Homme in Paris, to those from Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia...The chat - and hospitality - continued outside the conference centre in the amazing Mole Antonelliana, the National Cinema Museum www.museonazionaledelcinema.it inside a vast former synagogue - Turin's spiralling city symbol.

Here are some images from the first exhibits, flickers from early cinema which I snapped with my cellphone.

And this week's incongruous image is this....

an actor with a megaphone in the time-caught fabric of a Savoy Castle...

Her creative storytelling illuminated the history of Castello di Racconigi, one of the favourite residences of the House of Savoy, a medieval building still occupied until 1946. A UNESCO site, it is a place of living history, where "Slow Tea" is served amid the faded grandeur, and the gardens are arenas for summer events. Mirella Macera, who spoke at the Fitzcarraldo conference, has spent 10 years on this project, creating a place of narration: "... a path full of emotions and sensations that go beyond the simple historical and artistic meaning of the place, and that represent the link between live performance and museum exhibition". http://www.ambienteto.arti.beniculturali.it/800x600_ita/frames.htm Much of the interior was taken up with art installations which brought the gardens inside - orange trees, hedges

or juxstaposed 18th century Orientalism with 21st century consumer advertising from the Orient (see the wallpaper to left and right, below)

We moved quietly and slowly through the Upper Rooms, each wearing headsets, listening as the sounds for each room-set spliced a narrative of poetry with images, the sequence evoking the complexities of the "Soledad", a form of soulful longing (you might know it associated with the Cape Verde singer, Cesaria Evora). In one room, an array of 19th century travellers' gear was gathered by words into an artwork of nostalgia for which one did not need to understand Italian.

In another, a crashing sea projected onto windows through which Savoy Kings had once gazed at their gardens.