From 18 to 20 March 2026, Naples will host the third edition of the EDI (Education Integration) Global Forum, the leading international forum dedicated to innovation in museum education and the role of cultural institutions in public engagement. The Forum connects global institutions with national and local ones, fostering an exchange of ideas and innovative strategies in cultural education. The conference offers a three-day program of panels, lectures, interactive sessions, collaborative workshops, and exhibitions across the city’s main cultural venues.

The 2026 edition is dedicated to the question: How can we learn to look at images critically in the age of artificial intelligence, “alternative facts”, deep fakes, and general disinformation? In a present dominated by rapid and distracted consumption of images—especially on social media—attention span has progressively diminished, and with it, the critical capacity for them. EDI Global Forum aims to strengthen visual education, critical thinking, and discernment as essential civic skills in the age of images. Bringing together museums, universities, artists, and researchers, the Forum champions the role of culture as a tool for informed citizenship and democratic participation.

Supported by Campania Region and hosted by Fondazione Morra Greco, EDI confirms itself as a global reference platform for dialogue among museum directors, curators, educators, artists, researchers, and cultural professionals.

For this third edition, the Forum welcomes an international network of 94 museums and cultural professionals from 23 countries. Since its inception, EDI has promoted an active network with some of the world’s leading museums—including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Singapore, Tate Gallery, Museu de Arte São Paulo (MASP), Prado, and Centre Pompidou—consolidating Naples as a hub for international discussion on new museum paradigms.

In this context, Naples stands out as a unique testing ground for experimentation and international dialogue, where social cooperation and public education are lived in the streets. With EDI Global Forum, Naples becomes an epicenter for contemporary debates on education, art, and the public function of museums.

The third edition of the EDI Global Forum addresses one of the most urgent issues for cultural institutions: how do we teach people to think beyond images?

The world is undergoing a profound transformation, perhaps the most rapid and important in human history, due to the massive proliferation of digital images and social media. Today, we are immersed in a continuous and fast-flowing stream of visual content that reduces attention spans and makes it harder to concentrate in physical, real-time, for example when we study the meaning while lingering in front of a work of art. Given this reality, museums cannot simply preserve and display artworks; they must help audiences read and understand images critically — understanding their origins, what they convey, and the messages they transmit.

In this context, EDI introduces and promotes the concept of “slow watching”, a practice that cannot remain confined to museums and cultural institutions. In today’s visual landscape, images are shaped and disseminated by a vast constellation of actors. Artists, photographers, filmmakers, designers, and digital influencers are just a fraction of the democratic masses creating content on tech platforms controlled through selectively biased algorithms to reach millions. EDI calls upon these image-makers and tech leaders to recognize their civic role. To create is not only to produce content; it is to shape perception. By embracing slow watching — in the making as much as in the viewing — artists, content creators, influencers, tech companies and consumers can resist the tyranny of immediacy, restore depth to visual experience, and foster communities capable of judicious attention rather than emotional reaction. This shared responsibility extends beyond the walls of institutions. It unfolds across social media feeds, urban screens, and personal devices, wherever images claim our gaze. When creators invite audiences to pause, to question, and to linger over an image, they contribute to a culture of discernment. When viewers accept this invitation, they reclaim their freedom. Slow watching thus becomes a collective ethic:

• a pact between those who make images and those who receive them;
• a common effort to restore sustained attention, meaning, and truth to the visual world.

Museums are meant to be places of diversity, of sensitivity to our relationship with the world, of reflection on beauty and its long history. They are called to be inclusive and responsible spaces of memory and creativity, attentive to environmental sustainability and capable of valorizing diverse perspectives, including those of the differently abled and neurodivergent.

The goal of the three-day event is to create a space for in-depth and thoughtful analysis, exploring how citizens and institutions navigate an increasingly dense ecosystem of images and visual stimuli: AI-driven media manipulation, deepfakes, “alternative facts”, and general disinformation. Through structured debates, discussions, and workshops — functioning much like a think tank — participants engage in essential research, share experiences, and collectively build new knowledge.

Key Areas of Reflection

• Slow Watching: The Critical Reading of Images – Scroll culture vs. slow watching: what role can museums and content creators play in promoting an informed gaze, capable of attention, depth, and critical spirit?
• AI, Art, and Ethics – The relationship between technological innovation and cultural heritage: authentication, conservation, and accountability.
• The Gentle Museum – Inclusion, accessibility, and neurodiversity as models for rethinking educational practices.
• Art, Activism, and the Public Sphere – When the artist becomes a social actor, influencers become public educators, and the museum becomes a platform for civil debate.
• Spazio FOTOcopia – An experimental open-air exhibition exploring the tradition of Neapolitan popular printing as a precursor to democratic visual culture. In dialogue with the concept of slow watching, the project invites the public to slow down their gaze in urban spaces, removing the image from the speed of digital scrolling to restore its time, presence, and depth. Popular printing—a precursor to accessible and widespread visual communication—thus becomes an opportunity to reflect on how we can critically and consciously inhabit images today, even outside of museums.