Mikhail Piotrovsky on the Cultural Forum, on the problems of culture and its defence, and on working with special visitors

And everything came off and took place. And people are drawn generally to St Petersburg and here, when in St Petersburg, there are things for serious people to do. You come to an attractive place and have things to do when you are there.

And the second part is that there should be interesting things going on there, things that are interesting to participate in. Problem issues for discussions that its interesting to join, where it’s interesting being in contact with that very place and that experience, to participate in discussions that are important to everyone and where it’s interesting for people to meet each other, to talk and really take something away for themselves. And to make the discussions vigorous, interesting and memorable as discussions, to have striking people there. They do not always have to be in high positions, but there should be people who stand out, there should be outstanding professionals.

For examples we had one discussion – a very important one, by the way – in the museums sector, connected with inclusion, working with people who have special needs. That is a very important area. It came out very well at this forum: there were five round tables. One where all the super-professionals from all the greatest museums in the world spoke: the Metropolitan, the Royal Academy and so on.

It was simply a delight to listen and compare the different ways they told about it, those that have only just started and those who have been doing it a long time, those that are like us and those that aren’t, who is able to present it in what way. I mean it was incredibly interesting both in content and in form.

We in out museum sector – I know more about the museum one – had one main slogan: Preservation and Accessibility. With accessibility it was devoted above all to how to make our space accessible for people with special need. Not in the sense of pampering minorities or putting a good path in there, though, but in the sense of how to arrange for these people to have a presence in our artistic space, taking and giving something. Because in actual face, everything that’s being done – and this is being said all over now, by the way, and even surprises some non-museum people – that it’s incredibly enriching for a museum when people come who see poorly or can’t see or hear, and things are done for them so that they understand the museum. You yourself are exceptionally enriched.

Our archaeologists are very fond of working… We have a group called “History at your fingertips”, where vision-impaired children play with, take apart and put together some archaeological objects and make pictures. And our archaeologists then look at the way they make pictures, because that’s how people did it in caves when they couldn’t see anything.

The full Russian text of the interview can be found at https://echo.msk.ru/programs/year2017/2097396-echo/