Business for arts and culture

Course Programme:

• Module 1
  • Cultural Economics
  • Cultural Sector Overviews: a Taxonomy of Creativity
  • Arts and Business
  • Public Museum and Private Foundations
  • Problem-Solving: Theory and Practice
  • Cultural Economics

    The course aims at providing a basic knowledge of cultural economics and cultural industries. Students are expected to learn how cultural production and consumption are shaped by economic forces and the challenges posed by the organization of the creative processes. A specific focus is dedicated also to the analysis of alternative economic approach, as the ones proposed by orange, soft or circular economy.

  • Cultural Sector Overviews: a Taxonomy of Creativity

    Starting from the UNESCO definition that identifies culture as a "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society or a social group”, students work on real case studies to understand the strict connection between creativity and cultural production. The course also provides a broad overview on the cultural sector, analyzing the possible interaction between craftsmanship and design, fashion, gastronomy, tourism, architecture, dance and urban development, etc.

  • Arts and Business

    The course questions the relation between Arts and Business analyzing the points of contact and the advantages they take from each other. During these classes, students receive an introduction about the art market system and alternative investments, but they will also understand the several type of support (sponsorship, partnership, etc) companies can provide to community thanks to cultural project, with a specific deep on the concept of cultural engagement and social responsibility.

  • Public Museum and Private Foundations

    The course lead students toeards the awareness and understanding of what a museum and what its role in the contemporary society is. To do that, they are guided through an analysis of their history and evolution, focusing the attention on the differences between Private and Public sectors, the attendance and sense of identity (membership versus stewardship), as well as the important weight represented by architecture (content versus container) and the marketing and communications strategies in contemporary years.

  • Problem-Solving: Theory and Practice

    The aim of this course is to explore the features of art system and cultural production, in order to argue about conventional praxes, actions and evaluations, and to elaborate a nonconventional approach based upon credible goals, effective actions, and appropriate indicators. Lateral thinking and design thinking are the tools used to achieve these results.

• Module 2
  • Arts and Culture Project Cycle Management
  • Fundraising and Partnerships
  • Arts and Culture Project Cycle Management

    Project design and management are indispensable tools to design projects that are attractive for support and funding, and that can be successfully implemented. The module aims at allowing students to acquire knowledge and skills to formulate their own creative projects professionally. Through specific workshops and case studies they upgrade competencies in formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

  • Fundraising and Partnerships

    Students acquire analytic competences in order to better comprehend the broader context and the markets in which the cultural organizations operate. A specific focus is dedicated to digital fundraising techniques like crowdfunding and new engagement approaches like crowdsourcing, new participatory techniques and digital campaign in comparison with the classical fundraising and sponsorship approach.

• Module 3
  • Arts and Culture Business Planning
  • Arts and Culture Marketing
  • Arts and Culture Entrepreneurship
  • Arts and Culture Business Planning

    What is a business plan? Why you must have a strategic business plan? How to write a good one? The course aims at explaining what is a business plan, what are the essential parts and, in particular, which are the elements that make a good business plan. The attention is on the concept of economic model and sustainability and the importance of having a clear difference between “what could be” and “what we’d like it to be”.

  • Arts and Culture Marketing

    The world of Art has changed in the last years and marketing has become more and more part of the Arts, from the creation to the communication. The course presents an original approach to the cultural projects considering them as a “product” with different targets (institutions, companies and consumers), in order to design the event and to communicate it in the proper way.

  • Arts and Culture Entrepreneurship

    Participants learn how to build a strategic framework of project management within the artistic and cultural sector. Upon completing the course, they will be able to describe how the use of this framework can increase audience and improve economic viability of initiative and project promoted in those fields.

• Module 4
  • Entrepreneurial Experience
  • Entrepreneurial Experience

    Using the knowledges and competences gathered during the Master course, participants have in this last part of the course the possibility to experiment what they have learned simulating a real work experience. In cooperation with other students or individually they elaborate a business plan or cultural project able to reply to specific needs or to enter market’s niche, developing their own idea in a creative, innovative, and sustainable way.