Multiplier Event in Vila do Carvalho - Miguel Moreira Pinto tells us his experience

The program of the Learning Mobility in Portugal has been organized by UBI University to disseminate and learn the CSB curriculum; in open class mode, but with a lecture format. Students and lecturers has been invited to attend and, in some situations, to interact with the colleagues representing the other Universities from Italy (Leader), Albania, Lithuania, North Republic of Macedonia and Croatia.

These open classes have been mainly directed to students of the Master from various University courses.

In parallel, we had the chance to organize another key moment, outside the university, in order to spread what the CSB group has been developed, to listen and learn new concepts through examples and the experience of local professionals. The so-called Multiplier Event was held in a village, Vila do Carvalho, far from the city of Covilhã about 10 km, where the University of Beira Interior is located. A quite peculiar location: a small village where partners would have never gone without the Portuguese colleagues.

Vila do Carvalho has been chosen for two main reasons; the first one is obviously because we received the necessary logistic support and the local authorities demonstrated interest in hosting this event; the second one is because it’s important for us to be in direct contact with the population, talking about this topic in a region that is far from the University community; in this way we listened to real people without prejudice making the CSB Multiplier Event a public meeting.

Local authorities, citizens, teachers, architects, company directors and a team dealing with tourism attended the meeting. Each of them showed their activities and their job, also listening to opinions regarding the management of model they are supposed to use.

An international photography exhibition has been also organized on the topic of traditional business assets. A team of professional photographers from 6 countries and about 20 students of the architecture course participated in the event. The exhibition showed how traditional businesses are still in vogue and have survived the economic crisis.

For me, as a teacher and professional, and for the people who were present, this was an opportunity to discuss teaching methodologies about management of culture and cultural heritage, its importance in the various professions, and to listen and learn from the experience of other non-teaching professionals.

This Cultural Studies in Business experience, in the field of Erasmus Plus, has been very rewarding. We learnt new concept and acquired new knowledge about methodologies and points of view on a subject that concerns all the future professionals".

We also remind that, in occasion of this Multiplier Event and of the full week of Learning Mobility which took to Beira Interior 24 participants from different Countries, it was set also a photo-exhibition dedicated to "Cultural Heritage" and our friend and colleague Prof. Miguel Moreira Pinto strongly believed in the power of photography sensibilizing all the audience on our roots and traditions.