It was with this question that the conference Cultura dove sei? began yesterday at the Pirelli Foundation, a conference to reflect on the places in which culture is found and where it is produced, disseminated and enjoyed.
In recent years, many influences has redefined the strategies underlying the production and fruition of culture, including the evolution of information technology and the consequent change in the way in which we consume culture.
During the first part of the conference, industry experts presented a number of best practices that, both in Italy and abroad, have contributed to updating the models and techniques used in culture management.
The second part was then dedicated to a roundtable discussion among representatives from some of the most important cultural organisations in northern Milan involved in the Art Around project.

Promoted by the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation, Art Around is an extensive project of art and culture in northern Milan in which eight young artists are working to create eight site-specific art installations. There is also to be a series of seminars and other meetings, and the project will come to a close with a public installation by the Swiss artist Beat Streuli, a prominent figure in contemporary art.

This is the mission of Intrapresae Collezione Guggenheim, a prestigious international cultural project in which the Pirelli Group is also involved and which seeks to promote the educational potential of art so as to inspire corporate culture towards change in order to face global challenges.

This year, Intrapresae’s spring meeting featured the full involvement of the Pirelli Group, which, on 6 May, welcomed the companies involved in the project and gave them the opportunity to visit the Bicocca Hangar and the exhibits there, as well as the Pirelli Foundation, Castello degli Arcimboldi, and the cooling tower within Pirelli’s Headquarters. These symbols of Pirelli’s history and the organisation’s culture and identity represent a heritage that has been made available to Intrapresae for the art projects promoted by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Corporate historical archives preserve traces of a nation’s industrial past and precious information to help us write history in the manner in which we experienced it.

This is why the students from the Corporate History department of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore chose to spend an entire afternoon at the Pirelli Foundation and to listen to those who dedicate their time and energy every day to protecting this vital documentation as they spoke of what it means to manage an organisation’s archives. The history of the Pirelli historical archives, how it became what it is today, and what it contains were a few of the topics discussed.

The students were given the opportunity to actually touch the documents and other materials that they so often read about in their textbooks: minutes of company board meetings, financial statements, technical product documentation, house organs, and employee registers. These documents are crucial to reconstructing history and are rich with valuable information regarding the social and human aspects of a company and its financial, technical and scientific development.

The employee register was of particular interest to the students in that it offered traces of life at the factory more than 100 years ago – the young age of the people hired, their responsibilities, the reasons they left the company, and any disciplinary action required.

A great many questions were asked, particularly about the job of an archivist, dealing with the organisation, and managing such an immense wealth of documentation as that of the Pirelli group.

To understand and be a part of such dynamic contexts as a business and to be able to grasp the underlying spirit and values, so as to transmit them to the outside world through an effective communication strategy. These are the main goals of the media relations programme organised by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, which felt it was important to have course participants visit the Pirelli Foundation, the best place to learn to understand the soul of a large multinational organisation.
 

One hundred forty years of history told through advertising sketches, photos, documentaries and film and a concrete demonstration of what it means for a company to invest in corporate culture and of what skills are needed in order to preserve the traces of its past. But above all, confirmation of how the success and competitiveness of a company depend on its ability to keep its founding values alive, the values of innovation, research, sustainability, speed, a focus on the customer, transparency, responsibility, and excellence.

During the visit, students were also able to enjoy the last day of the photo exhibit About a Tyre, organised in collaboration with the students of Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan. A true demonstration of what corporate culture means to Pirelli, a company that has always been committed to the development of young talent.

Thursday, 14 April.

In his role as president of the Pirelli Foundation, the chairman of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera, met the students of the Scuola di Alta Formazione al Management (SAFM) and of the Collège des Ingénieurs, telling them about his experiences as an entrepreneur and manager. The event, which was chaired by Riccardo Garrone and held at the Museo dell’Automobile in Turin, saw the participation of John Elkan, vice chairman of the Agnelli Foundation, together with the Pirelli Foundation and the Fondazione Edoardo Garrone, which are the main promoters of the SAFM. The Scuola di Alta Formazione al Management was set up in 2009 on the joint initiative of the Pirelli Foundation, the Fondazione Edoardo Garrone, and the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation, in collaboration with the Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris.

Together with the Italian students on the current master course at the SAFM, there were students of various European nationalities taking part in the Collège des Ingénieurs MBA programme, who are currently engaged in learning through action at partner companies in Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland.

This is the title of the photography exhibition that was inaugurated on Monday, April 11th, at the Pirelli Foundation. The project, resulting from the collaboration between the Foundation and NABA (the New Milan Academy of Fine Arts), involved 11 students from various Academy courses (Painting and Visual Arts, Media Design and Multimedia Arts, Communication Design, and Fashion Design, among others). The students were asked to interpret concepts such as innovation, research, sustainability, excellence and change, and observed the values of the Pirelli industrial philosophy from new points of view, expressing them in completely unique ways and translating them through the language of photography.

The result is six sails, 15 prints and a 3-dimensional reproduction of the shots taken by the young photographers displayed in the About a Tyre exhibition.
Marco Tronchetti Provera, Chairman of Pirelli, and Denis Curti, Director of Master Photography and Visual Design at NABA-FORMA and curator of the exhibition, were present at the opening.

Photo by Niccolò Rastrelli

About a Tyre
April 12 to 29, 2011
Monday to Friday
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Marco Tronchetti Provera, chairman of Pirelli & C., and Gianni Cervetti, president of the ISEC (Istituto per la Storie dell’Età Contemporanea) Foundation, signed a three-year partnership agreement today, in the offices of the Pirelli Foundation, with the goal of developing and consolidating exchange and other relations in the area of corporate culture. Pirelli has thus become a corporate partner of the ISEC Foundation, with which, over the course of the three years, the company will be organising and developing joint initiatives through the Pirelli Foundation.

Among the projects already planned there is a series of book presentations on the topic “the value of work” (“Il valore del lavoro”), which is to be organised in conjunction with the 10th edition of the Confindustria Week of Corporate Culture (in November 2011), as well as a project to further develop the Pirelli technical and scientific library by cataloguing it within the Italian library system, the organisation of conferences and seminars on development of the heritage in historical libraries, the organisation of an exhibit in collaboration with the IUAV University in Venice (Design Museology Research Unit) entitled “Pagine di industria. Graphic design, fotografia e cultura nelle riviste di impresa” (Pages from industry. Graphic design, photography and culture in corporate magazines), and the organisation of an exhibit entitled “Dalla città delle fabbriche alla fabbrica delle idee” (From the city of factories to the factory of ideas).

Through this partnership with the ISEC, Pirelli hopes to once again strengthen the group’s relations with cultural organisations in the Milan area, so as to promote and develop a cultural heritage for the common good and that can contribute to the economic and social development of the nation.

The future of Italy will be discussed by Domenico De Masi, scientific director of S3.Studium, and Antonio Calabrò, director of Pirelli Corporate Culture.

S3. Studium, Scuola di Specializzazione in Scienze Organizzative, was set up in 1985 with a mission to promote new connections between businesses, universities, culture, and politics.

Tomorrow, 7 April, the Pirelli Foundation welcomes Stefano Palumbo, head of research for S3. Studium, who will be presenting the results of DELPHI 2011 – Il futuro dell’Italia, a study on the future of society, culture, the economy and enterprise in Italy over the next three years.

Domenico De Masi, science directori for S3.Studium, and Antonio Calabrò, directori of corporate culture for Pirelli, will also be speaking.

S3.Studium is a school of specialisation in organisational sciences established in 1985 for the purpose of promoting new ties between enterprise, education, culture and politics.

Pirelli’s long tradition of advertising; the elements that make up the company’s identity; the most famous, most controversial ad campaigns; the company’s great cultural and historical heritage, as well as its corporate culture and many of the initiatives designed to promote it.

These were the topics covered at the Pirelli Foundation on Wednesday, 16 March, with 25 MBA students from Arizona State University, in Italy to meet with the companies and other organizations that best exemplify creativity and innovation in their respective fields.

At the end of this European tour, the students will need to prepare a business management project inspired by the various best cases analyzed as a required part of their prestigious MBA degree programme.

At the end of the Pirelli visit, the students had the opportunity to visit the Foundation’s historical archives, the Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, and the 46-meter cooling tower at the Pirelli headquarters. In fact, it was this cooling tower that had a particular impact due to its historical importance and the way in which it represents harmony between new and old.