2nd Student Festival (Online)
Event Organizers
ITI/UNESCO Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts
The ITI/UNESCO Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts advances ITI’s and UNESCO’s goals of sustainable, peaceful and creative development, in a world characterised by a fertile diversity of cultural expressions.
The Network strives towards building a global pla form for higher education institutions to gather, learn from each other, organize exchanges involving scholars, artists and students, and tackle common important academic, artistic and institutional issues. It supports the development of the performing arts in developed and developing countries, with particular emphasis on Africa, helping to improve accessibility to performing arts higher education.
The ITI/UNESCO Network promotes higher education institutions and projects which bring together both theory and practice. It strives to make the importance of education in the performing arts understood and institutionally recognised not only in the academic and artistic
worlds, but also by decision-makers and the general public.
The Luca Ronconi School of Theatre - Piccolo Teatro di Milano
Founded on 14 May 1947 by Giorgio Strehler, Paolo Grassi and Nina Vinchi, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano was the first public Italian repertory theatre to be established and is the most important both in Italy and abroad. The idea of the founders was to create an institution funded by the state and local entities (the Municipality and Province of Milan, as well as the Lombardy region) as a public service which was necessary for the well-being of the citizens. “An Art Theatre for All” was the slogan which accompanied the Piccolo at the time of its foundation, and it is one which today still fully sums up its objectives: to stage quality shows aimed at the widest-ranging of audiences possible. Since 1991, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano has also been a “Theatre of Europe”, a status confirmed by article 47 of Ministerial Decree 322 dated 27 July 2017. Since 1987 it has run a School of Theatre - founded by Strehler, named after Ronconi, and currently directed by Carmelo Rifici - which has seen the graduation of 230 actors.
International Theatre Institute ITI
The International Theatre Institute (ITI) was created on the initiative of the first UNESCO Director General, Sir Julian Huxley, and the playwright and novelist J.B. Priestly, in 1948, just after the Second World War, and at the beginning of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain divided the East and the West. The aim of the founders of ITI was to build an organization that was aligned with UNESCO’s goals on culture, education and the arts, and which would focus its endeavours on improving the status of all members of the performing arts professions. They envisaged an organization that created platforms for international exchange and for engagement in the education of the performing arts, for beginners and professionals alike, as well as using the performing arts for mutual understanding and peace. ITI has now developed into the world’s largest organization for the performing arts, with 85 Centres spread across every continent.
