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Urbino Project Report: The Results
What motivated the students was the fact that their project was indeed based on a real challenge that the city is currently facing – how to overcome the ever-decreasing tourism and position Urbino as a relevant destination. This, added to the fact that the Municipality was truly interested in the outcome as a source of ideas and inspiration, gave this experience a whole new meaning and an unprecedented level of excitement and relevance. Considering the students had previously only worked on fictitious campaigns, playing an active role in their city’s future gave them the “charge” they needed to truly get into the right spirit.
On a related note, and considering the age of the students (late teens) it is very important to note that it is through these experiences that the typical sense of “alienation” and disinterest towards the city/community can be overcome. Our students understood the value of their city and actively processed this value as it translates into the needs of others.
As an added value, it is worth noting that this empowering exercise/project will not only help them appreciate and learn to respect their city but also achieve greater success in their careers – this through a new set of skills they learned including: Elaboration of marketing concepts, active vs. passive thinking, strategic thinking, empathy, evaluation skills, creating effective promotion/advertising, the different meanings of “value”, “needs” vs. “wants”… etc. As far as the resulting products are concerned, each group worked on the development of a questionnaire that was then administered to the interest groups, the citizens of Urbino, business owners, and the professors and administrative personnel of the Urbino “Carlo Bo” University.