Vittoria Castagna Award

This award is aimed at trainees who wish to work in the field of cultural production, with a particular focus on marketing and communication aspects.
Over the years, culture has played an increasingly central role in the positioning and communication strategies of companies and institutions, and this professional is the one who is able to grasp the needs of companies and translate them into cultural communication projects that allow the growth of the arts sector, support new productions and give new life to cultural production.

The marketing and communication manager in the cultural sector is a professional with a wide range of competences and skills, able to combine artistic and humanistic knowledge with technical, managerial and relational skills, able to interact with the communication team as well as with the production team, and able to deal with different professional figures or business and institutional realities.

The cultural marketing and communication manager knows how to interact both internally within the cultural organisation and externally with partners and stakeholders, using the appropriate register for each context. He/she knows how to draft presentation documents and proposals in the right language for each interlocutor, conveying potentials and opportunities, of which the interlocutor can grasp the strategic and communicative value.

The marketing and communication manager in the cultural sector has traditional and innovative communication and marketing skills, as well as knowledge of funding opportunities for cultural activities (tenders, fundraising, etc.) and human resources coordination and management skills.

Candidates will be asked to submit an idea for a communication project aimed at developing relationships and projects with the corporate world in order to ensure the sustainability of the Cortona On The Move Festival over time.

In particular, we are looking for a project that offers companies the unique opportunity to tell unpublished stories that communicate their values and socially relevant activities through a visual language, taking advantage of the Festival’s consolidated network of national and international partnerships that can guarantee the collaboration of the best professionals in the field. The final result of the project could be the production of exhibitions, installations, photo books and communication campaigns. The exhibition of the project will take place within the framework of Cortona On The Move and will be disseminated through the activated media and communication channels.

The proposed project idea must be accompanied by a study of the context in which it is conceived, the tools needed to carry it out, the investment required for its realisation and a description of the expected results.
The project must be submitted in accordance with the procedures described in the relevant section of this call for proposals.

The winning candidate will receive

• A cash prize of €5,000
• The possibility of being hosted during the opening days of the Festival, from 11 to 14 July 2024, with the possibility of being included in the Cortona On The Move team for a curricular internship (starting in November 2024), in the case of candidates in training, to develop and implement the project idea. For candidates who have already completed their studies, an internship will be considered (relocation to Cortona is not required).

The prize money is intended to contribute to the conception and possible realisation of the project by working with the Cortona team, including 

• Working with the festival management to implement the project idea and assisting the festival communication management in developing the communication plan to support the project;
• Working closely with the Festival Partner Manager to get to know the organisation’s partners, including cultural institutions, sponsors and funders, and the relationships established with them.

At the end of the shadowing period, if any, the project should be considered to have been started and/or completed.

Applicants for the award should meet the following requirements:

• Current or completed education in the field of cultural heritage, economics, communications, social sciences, management, engineering or equivalent work experience in the cultural sector.
• Knowledge of the local, national and international cultural scene
• Organisational and time management skills
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Knowledge of communication tools.

How to submit your project:

Applicants should send by 2nd June 2024 to  premiovittoriacastagna@cortonaonthemove.com with the subject line ‘Prize Application’:  

• a letter of presentation
• an updated curriculum vitae
• an idea for a communication project aimed at developing business relationships and projects, including
  

1. 1. A short description of the project (2000 characters)
   2. A description of activities, objectives, timeframe, communication plan and associated resources
   3. A project budget

In order to guide applicants in the development of their proposal, the partnership opportunities offered by the Festival are outlined below. In general, the partnership consists of three aspects

• The production of original and unpublished content.
• The selection of socially relevant content.
• The distribution of the content through national and international publishers and through the Festival’s communication channels.

The shortlisted candidates will be invited for an individual interview with the jury selected by the ONTHEMOVE Cultural Association Board.

The winner will be announced during the opening days of the 14th edition of Cortona On The Move. The selected project may be developed within the framework of the Festival and will remain the property of the Festival.

ONTHEMOVE would like to thank its dear friend Franco Bernelli Zazzera for making the prize available to the winner.

Educational partners
The jury for the selection of the projects will be made up of the board of directors of the cultural association ONTHEMOVE, experts in the field of cultural design and management and in the field of marketing and communication for culture, some of whom will be representatives of the educational institutions where the call for projects will be disseminated, namely:

ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI DI BRESCIA SANTAGIULIA – Camilla Gualina – Coordinator of the Schools of Art Didactics for Museums and Communication and Exploitation of Artistic Heritage

FONDAZIONE FITZCARRALDO – Fondazione Fitzcarraldo Skills Development Project Manager, Cultural Manager and Communication Strategist

UNIVERSITA’ BOCCONI – Guido Guerzoni – Associate Professor of Museum Management at the Università Bocconi and CEO formules

Franklin University Switzerland – Giulia Miniero – Associate Professor of Marketing, Chair of the Business and Economics division

POLITECNICO DI MILANO School of Management – Eleonora Carloni Assistant Professor of Management Engineering @Politecnico di Milano

24ORE Business School – Valentina Toscano – Content Manager Art & Culture

Future Concept Lab – Francesco Morace, sociologist, essayist, co-founder of Future Concept Lab, international research and consultancy institute. Trend expert in social and market research

Future Concept Lab – Linda Gobbi, sociologist, co-founder of Future Concept Lab, International Research and Consulting Institute. Specialises in research methodology, socio-cultural analysis models and consumer segmentation.

Vittoria Castagna has been a human and professional point of reference for the ONTHEMOVE Cultural Association for many years, contributing in a unique way to the growth of the working team with which she was involved, as well as to the development of Cortona On The Move, assisting the festival management in the management of partners and in the development of communication strategies.

At the school of Vittoria Castagna.

Vittoria Castagna’s story is a succession of doors opening up to the universe of knowledge. An expert in business communication, she has constantly enriched her education with determination and enthusiasm, always one step ahead of the here and now that her professional expertise requires. First she graduated from the classical high school in Lecco, her home town, then she obtained a degree in Political Science and a diploma from the Academy of Communication in Milan.

Since graduating, Milan has been her adopted city, where she has worked in the field of communication and PR, between her presence in important agencies that she has managed and as a freelancer. The activity of PR, in its acronym that stands for Public Relations, contains an essential driving force that Vittoria has nurtured in her work and in her life: the privileging of relationships. Certainly between the company and the target audience, but above all human relationships, which determine, in a cascade, the fundamental relationship between the various disciplines of knowledge: from the humanities to the sciences, from the arts to culture, without neglecting anthropology, ethnography and the study and discovery of worlds near and far, even so far away as Vittoria, with infectious enthusiasm, followed the Rosetta space mission, which in 2014 sent back to Earth hundreds of images of the comet targeted by the probe sent by the European Space Agency. Yes, to observe and study earthly things as well as the stars: the fascination of the unknown, which stimulates one to adopt new lenses to widen one’s gaze and increase one’s knowledge.

This is the constant lesson that Vittoria has passed on over the years. Passion and feeling, intuition and rigour, analysis and synthesis, immersion and ascent, these are all aspects that have characterised every cultural or communication project that Vittoria has developed for its clients.
Vittoria has left its mark on Cortona on the Move, contributing to the festival programme, exhibitions and special events. We would like to recall two of them, exemplary and extraordinary. The first took place during the two years of the pandemic. We are talking about the Covid-19 Visual Project. A Time of Distance, for which photographers from all over the world were invited to document this unique period in history. Today this project is reflected in a book published by SKIRA, conceived and produced by Cortona on The Move in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo. The result, on which the entire Festival team worked under the curatorship of Arianna Rinaldo, has also been encapsulated in a multidisciplinary online platform, covid19visualproject.org.
The second was the coordination of the project requested by Cortona on The Move from the Royal Commission for AIULa. The Royal Commission of Saudi Arabia had identified the International Festival of Visual Arts of Cortona as the cultural operator of reference for the zero edition of an artistic and cultural event dedicated to photography. AIULa is an area of about 20 square kilometres, a historical oasis of art and creativity, an open-air museum, as shown by the project “The Journey Through Time”, which Cortona on The Move has extended to “Through Images”, thanks to the photographic language incorporated. The report of this first experience also offered an open view of the many perspectives defined by culture, art and visual expression: understanding through knowledge that transcends time and place.

The Vittoria Castagna Prize 2024, promoted and supported by Cortona on the Move in its second edition, has the same objective: to make the desire to understand, to learn, to highlight the value of culture and to place it at the heart of the education of the prizewinners, year after year. Culture beats time, it is always new. This is what Vittoria Castagna taught us, and what she pursued in her intense professional, family and friendship life. And we will carry it forward in the prize dedicated to her, for a corporate communication in line with the history of Cortona on The Move.
In this way, Vittoria Castagna will be a “teacher” and inspiration for young people who want to work in the field of marketing and communication for cultural production. During the internship, the winner* will be able to work in specific areas of communication, such as

• Corporate PR: concerning the institutional image of a company, its reputation and authority;
• international affair: for activities aimed at international institutions and/or subjects;
• public affair: towards local and national public institutions or bodies;
• crisis management: when both corporate and systemic crises occur;
• Marketing PR: an element of the marketing mix which, in synergy with the other communication levers, helps to stimulate market interest in a new product, contributes to the positioning of a brand and supports co-marketing activities;
• Internal relations: activities aimed at employees and collaborators to increase motivation and commitment.

The same areas can be used as reference areas for the projects to be submitted to the call.
Vittoria Castagna has been through them all and has learnt a lot, with empathy, competence and consistency.