Course 2024-2025 a.y.

The course, grounded in an interdisciplinary approach to the cultural sphere explores the meanings and implications of managing culture(s).

A core focus will be a reflection on a practical and processual understanding of culture, considered a central elements of the cultural management training.

The course will unfold in three main parts.

- A module will consist in introductory session on the notion of culture through its historical and contextual developments. This part addresses the issue of how to define and interpret culture, to create a common basis for class discussion and understanding.

- A module will be devoted to the exploration of key critical themes in contemporary cultural debate: cultural practices, activism and social issues and processes of mediation in cultural productions and organizations.

- A module will focus on the potential and limits of material and visual artifacts as cultural mediators.

At the end of the course, the student will be able to deal critically with a list of relevant issues related to cultural phenomena and the management of culture:

• Appraising the role of context in defining, conceptualizing and managing culture.
• Understanding the practical and processual nature of cultural sphere, connected to change and transformation.
• Detect the multidimensional nature of culture, cultural productions and exchanges with a specific focus on social and political aspects.
• Familiarize with the crucial issues of the complexity of the evaluation of cultural “qualities” and the time horizons of the evaluation of cultural practices as well as understanding the peculiar nature of cultural policies and cultural institutions, the need for public-private cooperative behaviors.
• Understand the notion of “translation”, “mediations” and “resonance” in order to understand re-enactments that produce cultural diffusion.

• Recognize the context specificity of cultural processes and productions.
• Interpret the implications of cultural changes, being aware of its political and ethical implications.
• Know how to read the multidimensional nature of culture and cultural processes.
• Detect, describe and qualify cultural mediation processes and their implications.
• Build critical, informed and constructive debates.
• Know how to shift frames and adopt vocabularies and discourses in cultural fields.
• Understand how to relate with the cultural field and develop a learning path a future cultural manager.

• Lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Individual works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

Frontal lectures will be coupled with class participation, discussion and debates.

This will allow students to work through complex concepts and operationalize theories as well developing their skills in tackling real issues and situations by applying critically acquired knowledge.

• Guest speakers are selected in order to bring up specific side of the cultural mediation practice, looking at different industrial contexts and different cultural missions.
• Case discussions arepresented in order to bring evidence and give foundations to concept debated as well as to expose students to complex environments, stimulating research questions generation and problematization.
• Individual assignments are used to develop critical thinking and analytical skills through the use of course concepts while also fostering autonomous elaboration of ideas.
• An final examination will test comprehension, understanding and ability to render ideas and concepts absorbed in the class as well in texts, while also accounting for the capacity to express, make connections and elaborate autonomously ideas, insights and practical examples built during the course, class discussions and individual assignement.
• In order to foster dialogue and debates, the class will devote time to moments of interaction and discussions.

Attending students prepare the individual assignement work.

The status of attending student is valid only for the two first exam sessions. After that, all students taking the exam are enrolled as non-attending.

• An individual assignment will test capability to identify innovative or problematic topics connected to cultural issues and to put to work theories and concepts presented in class while also verifying capacity to present autonomous views or interpretations on them. The individual work will further test ability to argue with appropriate language and depth of references.

• A final exam, constituted by a written examination, tests general understanding of course concepts and frameworks while also accounting for the student’s capacity to employ appropriate vocabulary, make connections, manage complexity.

Students will be successful in the course by showing not only sound understanding of the key concepts presented, but also by participating actively in the discussion, interacting with the field practitioners that will be our guests during the course, and contributing to an engaged and harmonious class environment.

Non attending students will be evaluated through a written exam (closed book).The exam will verify the understanding of reading materials. The evaluation of the final written exam will constitute 100% of the final grade.

Reading list will be provided at the beginning of the semester in the detailed syllabus and course material will be made available in the Course Reserve or trough Bocconi Library. 

Teachers’ slides and other relevant material will be uploaded on Bocconi e-learning platform, Blackboard.

Reading list will be provided at the beginning of the semester in the detailed syllabus and course material will be made available in the Course Reserve or trough Bocconi Library.