Prato Campus Week 2024, University celebration in the city

Prato Campus Week 2024, University celebration in the city

Prato Campus Week 2024, feast of the University in the city from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April

Event organized by Monash University Prato, Pin University Center City of Prato, University of New Haven Tuscany Campus and Municipality of Prato. With the support and collaboration of Alia Servizi Ambientali Spa, Legambiente Prato, IKP Prato (Amateur Orienteering Team), AICAN Prato (Italian Canadian Canoe Association) and Public Assistance L’Avvenire di Prato.

The conference was attended by Enrico Banchelli, director of PIN, Cathy Crupi, associate director of Monash University in Prato, Matteo Dutto, senior research manager of Monash University European Research Foundation and Kevin Murphy, director of the University of New Haven Prato Campus. Also present was the councilor of the University of the Municipality of Prato. The department finances the initiative.

The city of Prato is one in size and characteristics campus which is configured as a real widespread campus, in which the university buildings present interact organically with the urban and social context. In this edition of Prato Campus Week, the University celebration in Prato, university students living in the campus city of Prato will have the mission of redefining their relationship with the city, in a concrete way, with the discovery of hidden details, with the cleaning of important places and the creation of emotional journeys.

Enrico Banchelli: “This year too, the PCW is an opportunity to put a series of topics of great interest for the city and its territory at the center of university students’ meeting and interaction initiatives. In addition to the sensitivity on the theme of pollution and care of the city, proposed again by Clean Up in partnership with Alia and Legambiente, and the theme of the discovery and valorization of the beauty of the historic center in the orienteering challenge with IK Prato, this year it adds a research path aimed at identifying opportunities and critical issues to improve our city through the vision that the students who frequent it have. Prato is therefore at the center of our initiatives, and the students are the active driving force behind them: with the significant growth in the number of students enrolled at our Campus, which this year exceeds the 1700 registeredit is a wealth of resources and capabilities that we intend to increasingly involve in city life”.

Sophie Monkman and Matteo Dutto: “It is a pleasure for us to present the first results as part of the Prato Campus Week, of the Our City, Our Campus research project. The project marks the beginning of something new: an important evolution of the Prato Campus Week initiative to ensure future generations of students who come to Prato not only continue to have transformative experiences, but contribute to forming the city’s identity . As you know, Prato is renowned for its textile industry but it is also a city where over 2500 students flock to university studies every year. The project is an opportunity for students, academics and researchers from our three universities to interact and collaborate on an initiative that puts students at the centre, it is an investment in the future of our students and their experiences in Prato”.

Kevin Murphy: “Our students are here for short periods, maximum 3 months. During this stay, many of them are busy not only following their courses, but also in various capacities in the area with Italian students doing conversation exchanges, with families, high schools doing workshops and presentations, or volunteering with various types. Indeed one of our main aims has always been to involve students in the local community as much as reasonably possible. This is why we are very happy that Prato Campus Week is once again offering activities this year that can make our students active and visible in the fabric of the city. Urban Orienteering celebrates the city, youth, curiosity, friendship, ‘teamwork’, and love and respect for the city of Prato. The Clean Up aims to take care of the city that hosts us, and we hope to encourage people to contribute to always respecting the environment around us”.

The Our City Our Campus Project – the novelty of the latest editions of PCW

The city of Prato is not always known externally as a university city, despite having three universities that operate permanently in its city center and other universities and training institutions such as Beacon College which interact with the local area every year through short study programmes. In the academic year 2022/2023 beyond 2,500 students enrolled at Monash University, the University of Florence/PIN and New Haven University.

To highlight this characteristic of Prato and to incorporate the students’ requests, Monash University, University of New Haven and PIN held four participatory workshops between October 2023 and February 2024 which successfully involved 120 students from all three universities partner. These early activities highlighted the need to strengthen opportunities for university students to become not only visible in the community, but reachable, present in real social and community contexts, and recognized as a vital and productive part of the city.

On Thursday 18 April at 4pm at the Monash University Prato Center the research team (Costanza Lanzara, Piero Ianniello, David Fanfani, Enrico Fabbri) and some of the students involved in the project will present the first observations and data collected during the four participatory workshops held so far. As we continue to analyze the data collected so far and plan the next steps of the project, this meeting is a unique opportunity to discover how university students interact with the city and how they want to change it. The objective of this meeting is to open a discussion table on how the different city realities can support and encourage their involvement with it, exchanging knowledge and starting to reflect together on the implementation of economic, social and cultural policies that transform Lawn in a university town.

This is the program:

Tuesday 16 April – Discovering the city

The students of the three universities coordinated by the IK Prato association will explore the city discovering details that often go unnoticed.

Wednesday 17 April – CleanUp

The CleanUP, thanks to the support and collaboration of ALIA, Legambiente, AICAN Prato together with the volunteers of the Public Assistance, the students armed with pliers, gloves and garbage bags will collect waste along Bisenzio.

Thursday 18 April – Our City, Our Campus

The first results of the anthropological research “Our City, Our Campus” will be presented, which began in October 2023 and is the result of the collaboration of students and teachers from the three universities. At Monash University in Via Pugliesi 26 – Prato.