When cultivating land, there are certain times of the year when the fields change suddenly and drastically: when they are plowed, when they are harvested, when they are sown. One day, a field is green; the next, it is brown. “At CLEACC, we work cultures the same way land is cultivated”, reads the invitation to CLEACC’s 25th anniversary celebration, “with the same perseverance, commitment and dedication”.
The theme of the event draws inspiration from the totalizing acceleration through which a field changes overnight. This rapid transformation mirrors the constant change that shapes our daily lives, an all-encompassing force that CLEACC has been preparing its students to face for the last 25 years.
“Working Cultures”, the title of the event held on March 21st, embodies one of CLEACC’s core teachings: cultural work is everchanging and never complete, as explained by Professor Stefania Borghini, the program’s current director. CLEACC provides the tools to understand and embrace these transformations, by enriching students with the ability to interpret reality, anticipate change, and, most importantly, exist within it. With this metaphor, the celebration begins.
Born in 1999 from the innovative aims of Professors Stefano Baia Curioni, Claudio DeMattè, Paola Dubini and Severino Salvemini, CLEACC is the course for all those people that strongly believe that the separation between the “ones who think” and the “ones who do” should be bridged, for all those people that feel split in the world of knowledge, half numbers, half art. As the Magnificent Rector of Bocconi University, Francesco Billari, explained: “No one should think that a program like CLEACC waters down Bocconi’s name. We believe in the importance of culture; it runs hand in hand with economics.”
During its first 25 years of life, CLEACC proved to be many things, but the one that stands out the most is a community. Not even one of the alumni who were present failed to address the role of CLEACC as an identitarian element; as Professor Simone Autera, CLEACC’s deputy director, said, this program brings together people “who weave relationalities”. The core of CLEACC is the people it comprises: the pioneering Professors who enabled it to exist, the alumni who believed in it first, allowing it to become the program we all know and love today, and the students who will carry on its legacy. All the 6064 people who have passed through CLEACC up to now are essentially different and unique, yet one thing unites them all as a community: their ability to care.
It comes as no surprise that the celebration of the birthday of our beloved program revolved precisely around those people that make it so special. A panel hosted by Professors Simone Autera and Stefania Gerevini, both CLEACC alumni, in which they dialogued with Manuela Casà (LuckyRed), Valerio Ghiringhelli (RCS Media Group), Marco Masoli (Warner Music Group), Ilaria Morganti (Itinerari Paralleli), Marina Mussapi (Moleskine Foundation), Bianca Ramponi (Theatre Curator) and Micaela Rossi (Palazzo Te), was able to show how, no matter which job you end up having in life, your roots will always be CLEACC.
From music to news, from cinema to heritage, each of the alumni shared how CLEACC gave them a particular posture towards the world, that allows them to exist within transformations, while placing the unexpectedness at the core of their lives instead of fearing it, because it’s from the unpredictable that the spark for something new ignites.
The celebration of the CLEACC community continued with eight masterclasses, led by the alumni themselves. While they were all different from one another, these masterclasses all had one element in common: they proved that this program shapes professionals of all kinds, that share the capacity to possess, simultaneously, technical competences on both humanities and economics. This versatility is what allows them to be ready to find solutions to anything that might happen, a vital characteristic in a job that is anything but standardizable, like the cultural one.
“When I was in CLEACC”, remembers Professor Andrea Quartarone, “other Bocconians used to call us ‘cut and sew’ and ‘dancers’. If I have to be fairly honest, they were right. We are dancers, we beautifully dance over the complexities of life, cutting and sewing to get sense out of them. But we can be, we must be, much more. We are innovators and fighters: CLEACC people have always fought for culture, for the arts, for creativity, for a certain idea of the world. So, dance more. Cut more and sew more. Think more. Innovate more. Fight more. Society needs CLEACC today more than ever.”
And so happy birthday CLEACC, a program that gives us more than we could ever give back to it. Here’s to the future, to other 25 years and more: because the work of CLEACC, like the cultures we “work”, is never truly finished.
A southern Italian girl whose favorite book all throughout her childhood was called “I want to be a journalist” (and deep down, it’s still my favorite to this day).
I’m currently in BEMACC because I’m in love with arts, and the fundamental importance of culture has always been fascinating to me.
I will never turn down the opportunity to write about anything that catches my interest, even though I have a sweet spot for anything culture - related.
