Bologna
is “Creative City of Music” by UNESCO, first in Italy and second to Seville in
Europe, and for this reason, in international context, the Conservatory of
Bologna benefits from a unique privilege. Indeed, the city boasts a rich
musical tradition in continuous evolution and a serious commitment to promoting
music also as a means of economic development and social and cultural
inclusion.
The
Conservatory lives in this reality with other institutions in a relationship of
fruitful cooperation, participating in international projects, and
collaborating actively with local authorities, in particular with the
Municipality of Bologna.
The
Creative Cities Network, supported by UNESCO, of which the Municipality of
Bologna is an integral part and of which even the Conservatory has enjoyed for
the implementation and promotion of several projects, aims to create a bond to
cities able to support and to make cultural creativity an essential element for
their economic development, in order to promote the cultural industry.
Since
1991 the Municipality of Bologna is also a member of EUROCITIES and through
this network the Cities can share their own experiences and support one
another, giving value to their skills and
increasing the presence of their cultural products on national and
international markets.
Under
this network, the Municipality is currently activating cultural exchanges with
Lyon and Toulouse, whose twinning was subscribed on 23rd November
1981 and confirmed on 13th March 1984 and it has already produced
excellent results in the realisation of “Suona Francese” and “Suona Italiano”
projects, to which fulfilment students and professors of the Conservatory have
taken an active part.
In addition, joint programmes have been and are being carried out in the
field of electronic music, composition and jazz schools, which are particularly
active with the twin cities of the Municipality and which have found correspondence
with the objectives and programmes of the institution in Bologna.
In particular, the electronic music school of the Conservatory is
starting the second year of the International Master in Creative Soundtrack
Studies (InMICSS); the programme is
part of the Cooperation on innovation and exchange of optimal practices
for the implementation of the “Joint European Programme for Music Creation for
Audiovisual Media”. The EACEA Agency, in the context of the ERASMUS+
Programme, welcomed favourably the project presented in Spring 2014 promoted by
the strategic partnership between the ‘G. B. Martini’ Conservatory in Bologna,
the National Superior Conservatory of Music and Dance in Lyon (project leader),
the KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts Hogent in Ghent and the University
of Montreal with the support and benefit of professional partners such as the
Cineteca Foundation of Bologna, the Film Fest Gent, the Institut Lumière.
It was an important result which has projected - and will project - even
more the Conservatory of Bologna at the heart of the international scene.
Moreover, the professional partners represent the link and contact between the
academic world of music and cinema and the professional world, and offer a
valuable opportunity to students who
will be attending the programme.http://www.inmics.org/
The implementation of the European area in the near future of the
Conservatory aims to achieve several objectives that can be summarised as
follows:
Participation in European projects such as the Erasmus+ Programme has
given a strong impetus to the Institution's
internationalisation action in teaching through exchanges of teachers,
administrative staff and obviously students, supported by bilateral agreements.
Currently there are 56 bilateral agreements, which have been signed favouring a
geographical distribution as complete as possible but with particular attention
to the partner universities’ academic courses. Even in the future,
collaborative relationships will be established in relation to the different
courses in order to guarantee students and staff the chance to take advantage
of the same plurality of the offer present within the Conservatory of Bologna,
where all areas, from ancient music to new musical languages and technologies
such as electronic music, applied music and jazz music, find space.
Objective of the near future is increasing the number of cooperation and
improving the quality of the existing ones, but above all promoting the
activities that can guarantee interdisciplinarity of projects in order to face
and study different aspects of music and more. Complex and articulated projects
involve compositional and performative area, namely the creativity of younger
generations. To this end, the cooperation between partners is more productive
if it takes advantage of the use of specific skills which are not present
within our Conservatory, in particular of Performing arts such as dance and
acting, providing added value to the educational offer of the Institute.
Objective: organisation and implementation of international cooperation
For a long time the ‘G.B. Martini’ Conservatory of Bologna has set up an
International Relations Office to which the implementation of projects, in
which the Institute decide to participate after the approval from the Academic
Council, is entrusted.
In particular,
the International Relations Office deals with:
Flanked with it, there are also the
Production Office, for the most complex projects, and the Press Office, which deals
with promotion and dissemination.
The work of the International Relations
Office is also intertwined with the Conservatory’s Administrative Office, which handles the
financial aspects of the various projects.
Finally, there has been launched a close cooperation
with the cultural area of the Municipality of Bologna and particularly with the
International Relations, Cooperation and Projects Office, which, among other
functions, provides specialist support and guarantees further internal and
external visibility of the managed projects.
For several years now, the Student Office
has also been working at the Conservatory to provide useful information to
exchange students, in particular on:
In this area, agreements with Bologna local
theatre and the most important music associations have been initiated. The
service provides information on musical seasons, deals with facilitation and discounts
for entering shows and concerts of the theatre and the concert associations of
Bologna. The Student Office head handles the necessary and specific
organisation for the complete use of the service, exclusively reserved to the
Conservatory’s students and teachers.
In conclusion, the continuity to be
guaranteed to the Master International
Creative Soundtrack Studies (InMICSS) and the possibility of activating
other forms of partnership with other institutions is one of the actions to be
supported in order to achieve the objectives of the Institution's institutional
strategy. In support of the action, the Conservatory has activated the
enrolment in the European Association of Music Conservatories, an organisation
which offers new opportunity for exchange and debate on specific areas in which
the Conservatory is investing: ancient music, electronic music and new
technologies, research and third cycle.
The Erasmus+ Programme stands at the heart of the Institution’s internationalisation action which considers participation in the Programme a valuable tool to achieve important qualitative and quantitative targets, which can be summarised as follows:
