The new school year begins
In an unusual and evocative setting, the 2023/2024 school year of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli was inaugurated today, Monday 25 September.
As is customary, the last Monday of September sees the resumption of lessons with a ceremony to greet and wish good luck to the students and all the School staff. This year the ceremony took place in the Cathedral of Spilimbergo thanks to the collaboration of Don Giorgio Bortolotto: a place full of history and testimonies of art, which filled the eyes of all those present with beauty, giving the event solemnity which is suitable for every good start.
Stefano Lovison, president of the Consortium for the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, opened the ceremony with encouraging words, welcoming the sixty students who will animate the School’s workshops. In recalling that the School was founded 102 years ago, to offer a secure working future to those who, due to age, looked at the world with uncertainty, President Lovison focused on the current role of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli which, with the passage of time , has been able to raise the quality of training with competence, dedication and capacity for renewal. The Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli is an international center for the art of mosaic and for former students who have become “master mosaic artists” it continues to be the fulcrum of a network of exchanges and relationships for the mosaic sector: a vital and open point of reference, made of people, companies, knowledge, skills, stories and experiences, grown in its educational role and in its ability to respond to the demands of the world of work. This was possible thanks to the commitment of the people who make up the School’s “team”, thanks to the management and support of the regional administration of Friuli Venezia Giulia and the numerous consortium bodies.
The Mayor of Spilimbergo Enrico Sarcinelli could not miss the opening of the school year to welcome the students to the community of Spilimbergo which recognizes the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli as a “home” where it can nourish the soul of beauty.
The director of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, Gian Piero Brovedani, wanted to introduce the students to the people with whom they will interact and compare during the year: the teachers, the administrative and technical staff and the secretariat. He then highlighted how the 2023/2024 teaching program presents some innovations resulting from rationalization, precisely to keep up with current studies in the field of artistic-craft training and with the requests of students who, unlike the past, reveal a greater scholastic preparation often documented by degrees and specializations. To continue to raise the level of quality and skills, the four main techniques of mosaic art will be more focused: Romanesque, Byzantine, modern (indirect technique i.e. that reverse on paper which is peculiar to the School and the Friulian territory) and the contemporary (free technique). Terrazzo lessons will also be strengthened and interdisciplinary projects will be developed following the entire implementation process which starts with the development of an idea and ends with the exhibition of the finished work.
The ceremony concluded with the words of Don Giorgio Bortolotto who recalled how the church is a meeting place and how the Cathedral of Spilimbergo, the result of the will of a count and not of a religious personality, is made of stone and wood, same materials that the students will find in the School, when they have to cut the stones on the block holding a hammer. A school that also shares with the Duomo the fact of being a container of beauty and hence the wish to the students, on their first day of school, that beauty can be “the dynamo” that pushes them to apply themselves with responsibility and passion.
Thus begins the new school year in which the international nature of the School is confirmed with students coming not only from all over Europe, but also from Asia and Australia. Therefore, after the summer break of the Mosaico&Mosaici exhibition, the sounds of the hammers resound again in the corridors and we relive that ferment of industriousness, study and effort, which hides hopes and announces professional successes.
September 25, 2023
