Course 2015-2016 a.y.

Course Objectives

The course aims to help shape students into and future mediators for management innovation in the cultural heritage sector, a field that has been somewhat isolated and self-referential for too long and is in great need of stronger inter-sectorial not just interdisciplinary approaches.

The course, therefore, seeks to bring together the students’ diverse backgrounds, often with strengths in economics and business, with a better understanding of the cultural heritage sector in order to make them prime candidates for interdisciplinary cultural leadership roles.

Course Content Summary

The emphasis of the course is on:

There will be a specific focus on the struggle within the cultural heritage sector to find effective ways to measure success, both in terms of achieving desired outcomes but also in terms of improving the performance of heritage management models.

The course will draw on real life case studies from around the world, together with progress made in the development of new approaches and methodologies - often in the context of ICCROM policy work for World Heritage. These will be used to explore some common theoretical frameworks, identify what is happening at real heritage sites, promote a common language and improve practice in the field. The case studies will help explore those management issues raised particularly strongly by multiple ownership, complex governance, conflicting values and the relationship of immoveable cultural heritage to surrounding communities and society as a whole.

Some special lecturers will also contribute to the course, presenting the challenges faced by professionals in the field, while external visits to heritage places, including contact with the organizations and communities involved in their management, will allow a first-hand understanding of how they work behind the scenes.

In order to ensure that students fully understand the course content and can apply it to real world scenarios, there will be a course work component: students, individually and in groups, will have to deliver a project on specific topics introduced during the first weeks of the course, presenting their results publicly to the class. The course work is structured to reinforce the ability of students with diverse backgrounds to understand the broad issues and peculiarities of managing immoveable cultural heritage worldwide, while the exam questions further reinforce these themes focusing in more detail on specific management issues and capacity-building approaches.

Detailed Description of Assessment Methods

For non-attending students:

A written exam (100% of overall course evaluation) on subjects covered in the:

For attending students:

The status of attending student is recognized in the first two calendar exams. The students who attend the course get a final grade which brings together the following results:

Textbooks

Key texts and other suggested bibliography for attending and not attending students will be provided in a Course Readings summary at the beginning of the course. A greater number of key texts will be identified for non-attending students.

Similarly, course presentations offered during classroom sessions and external visits, together with other essential reading indicated during the course, will be uploaded weekly on to the course learning area on the Bocconi portal and will be significant for attending and non-attending students alike.