The Assessment of Cultural Experience through the Measurement of Cross-Cutting Skills: The Giffoni Experience Case Study

Introduction

The empirical research highlights how the continuous learning processes, both at individual and collective level, is facilitated by cultural experiences and traced back to four transversal abilities. A multidimensional map for the assessment of redemption effects of learning through experiences, both in terms of traditional cultural forms and edutainment, is designed on four cross-cutting skills, indicator of the self-empowerment process (P.O.L.C. for Kids). The further clustering procedure allow to distinguish among several types of participants, according to their different propensity towards the four cross-cutting skills. The multidimensional map could be used as operative framework to supply management with feedback for the re-planning of the experiential format. Furthermore, the final classification could be also used as a guidelines to organize the activities of the Giffoni Experience and to target them according to the different types of participants.

To date, studies have defined models of individual-collective experience measurement; the present research, however, aims to devise a model that integrates cultural experience assessment, both in an individual-collective learning perspective, to reinforce paradigms focusing on the individual as a source of new knowledge. Learning is increasingly seen as a dialogic, social and cultural process of creation and development of meaning in which the key words are: participation and sharing, fragmentation and reassembly of space, time and ways, as the Giffoni Experience has highlighted. In this perspective, further developments about Giffoni Experience can consider web 2.0 technologies as a tool to improve e-learning and encourage the development of soft skills and also to assess individual and collective performance in the cross-cutting skills area as well as to plan and design Giffoni Experience activities, both real and virtual.

The progressive dematerialization of value assets that characterizes post-modern society and testifies to the post-crisis changes facing the post-industrial economy, has redefined the already complex context of competition and forces us to reconsider the whole system of markets and society. The role of the Economy and therefore, of Marketing, is to identify new models of business that, thanks to their capacity for uniting individuals, businesses and territories, can generate new competitive advantage and encourage sustainable growth.

From this perspective, Knowledge becomes the catalyst of a knowledge economy based on the only resource that does not answer to the principle of scarcity: human potential¹. A change in the paradigm that rests on the concept of innovation in its etymological meaning (Latin: in-illativo and novus, new) of the capacity to change and bring in new elements. Innovation moves away from its cybernetic matrix and becomes instead a knowledge based system, becoming one of the main vectors of change, in an ever more competitive, and for this reason more complex, background. Knowledge, in its wider sense, becomes a factor of creation of individual and collective wealth, confirming the thesis of the “Knowledge economy” (Drucker, 1966).

This paper aims to assess how such knowledge is created, shared and enriched by the development of continuous learning processes and facilitated by cultural experiences to which individuals have access in order to generate wealth both at individual and collective level. The attendance in cultural experience facilitates this life long learning process, supporting the self-empowerment of the individual itself and within the group of peer.

To date, literature studies have defined models of measurement for individual-collective experience. However, the present research aims to devise a model that integrates assessment of cultural experience, both in an individual and collective learning perspective, seen as “learning to improve” (efficiency) and “learning to innovate” (efficacy) (Marino & Mastroberardino, 1993), reinforcing paradigms focusing on the individual as a source of the virtuous cycle knowledge, know-how, self-capabilities for Country System empowerment.