Discovering Greek Culture. In Greece
What happens when a public broadcasting corporation is shut down? How can you attract tourists to a monastery built on a sandstone peak without violating its sacredness? How does the cultural industry react in the wake of a tragic economic crisis? In April 2014, thirty-one students and a dozen faculty members and researchers looked for answers in Greece, during a study tour organized by the Arts, Science and Knowledge research centre (ASK) in collaboration with the Master of Science in Economics and Management in Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment (ACME), in order to explore the impact of disruptive events related to globalization on cultural and artistic practices. The tour (4-17 April) started in Delphi, moved to Thessaloniki and Meteora and ended in Athens.
From January on, faculty and ASK researchers planned dozens of interviews to be held in Greece with academics, artists, journalists, curators, people involved in artistic organizations, the cultural industry and the media. Then, two weeks of meetings and debriefings on a tight schedule followed. Students had the rare chance of being part of an intensive fieldwork, they approached problems from different standpoints and they found out that cultural management is a complex job. Stefano Baia Curioni, ASK vice-president and creator of the study tour, says that "students benefit from being shoulder to shoulder with academics. And when they're exposed to such a difficult environment they realize why having a vision is so important".
Being in Greece, researchers focused on two issues: the response to the global crisis and the relationship with tradition and ancient times. Students were impressed by what they saw. Giorgio Massignani has a vivid recollection of the encounter with former Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation's journalists that keep working without pay: "They tried to sustain themselves with crowdfunding, but they have yet to figure out an alternative business model. We all thought about Italy: what would happen if RAI shut down?". Giuditta Armiraglio praises the authenticity of the whole experience. "It's one thing to read about the economic crisis, quite another to live it. It was shocking. It instilled in us a strong sense of responsibility". It was a moving experience, too. During the final debriefing, which lasted seven hours, some students wept.
Nicola Pecchiari, who teaches accounting for entertainment and has been staying in Greece for eight days, is fully convinced that for students "being part of a two-week study tour is more effective than reading books for six months. We're even thinking about extending this teaching approach. It should become a complementary method to the traditional teaching". That's the reason why people come back: ten or so students that were in Greece had already been part of previous ASK study tours. The program started in 2008 in Mumbai. Since then, it took students around the world: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (2009), Istanbul (2010), Mexico City (2011), Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Brussels and Paris (2012), Chicago, Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans (2013).
"But Greece was different", says Paola Dubini, director of the Bachelor of Economics for the Arts, Culture and Communication. "It was harder to act as a detached researcher. Greece is awfully similar to Italy".