The transdisciplinary Advanced Training course, organized by the University of Florence and the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, was presented, with the first 20 students from the fields of science and medicine, philosophy and art history, as well as computer science and engineering. Together, they will develop ideas and projects thanks to a horizontal, community-based training process, free from rigid mental frameworks.
The new Advanced Training course ‘Navigating the Future’ was presented in the Aula Magna of the University of Florence.
It is a transdisciplinary program designed to create the professional figure of the Future Planner, essentially a conceptual mediator capable, through aptitude, motivation, and thanks to a transversal, flexible, free, and open vision, of developing emerging solutions in uncertain or crisis scenarios.
The event began with a video message from the Rector of the University of Florence, Alessandra Petrucci, and an in-person greeting from the City of Florence's Councillor for Education and Professional Training, Benedetta Albanese.
During the roundtable discussion, Andy Bianchedi, President of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, and Roberta Lanfredini, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Unifi and scientific director of the project, participated.
The session, moderated by journalist Matteo Minà, concluded with a speech by Alessandro Sordi, founder and CEO of the startup accelerator Nana Bianca, on the power of continuous knowledge and the challenges of the artificial intelligence era.
This highly innovative training course, organized by the University of Florence in collaboration with the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation and Dynamo Camp, will run from October to December 2024 over five weekends.
It was preceded by a call for applications last summer to select 20 participants from various disciplines, including undergraduates, master's students, PhD candidates, and researchers from the University of Florence, who will take part in the first edition.
The initial session of ‘Navigating the Future’ will take place in Florence, while the following ones will be held at the Dynamo Camp Foundation headquarters in San Marcello Piteglio (Pistoia).
At the end of the entirely free course, where participants will be divided into four groups, the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation will award a prize of 50,000 euros to the group that stands out for originality and the applicability of a project (written, graphic, or audio-visual) that serves as an activator of free thoughts and divergent representations, based on the evaluation of the Project Committee.
Moreover, the FHMR will assess the feasibility and alignment of the winning project with the call's objectives, and may explore opportunities for integrating the students into companies connected to the Drifter family office or other leading organizations.
Marco Pierini, Roberta Lanfredini (Professor at the University of Florence and Project Coordinator), Andy Bianchedi (President of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation), Benedetta Albanese (Councillor for Education and Professional Training, City of Florence), Alessandro Sordi (CEO of Nana Bianca)
The first 20 Future Planners, who will be able to integrate into productive, educational, social, and research fields, meet the requirement of gender equality and maximum disciplinary diversity.
They include geologists, neuroscientists, engineers, philosophers, as well as art historians, psychologists, designers, computer scientists, and doctors.
The criteria used by the Project Committee for selection included open-mindedness, initiative, empathy, vitality, and sociability.
The choice of the University of Florence for the launch of 'Navigating the Future' aligns with the university's centenary celebration. It also continues the Renaissance history and the vocation of a city that has distinguished itself through creative projection into future scenarios.
The new project draws inspiration from that tradition, updating and adapting it to the extreme complexity of the current historical moment.
The new Advanced Training course has several innovative aspects. First and foremost is the open and unstructured nature of the teaching, as suggested by the metaphor of navigation.
Additionally, 'Navigating the Future' is pioneering in its multidisciplinary approach, bringing together Future Planners from very different fields, and in its establishment of a peer-learning model.
In fact, the first group of students, once they complete the course, will have the task of training and guiding the next group.
This creates, in a relay-like process, a non-hierarchical, horizontal form of education, meant to be collective and community-based rather than individual.
The instructors for 'Navigating the Future' come from very diverse fields: a Sanskrit scholar and expert in the history of Eastern religions, a linguist, and an economist, with the essential contribution of two philosopher facilitators who will work to blend and foster dialogue among the different disciplinary perspectives.
The lessons, conducted in Italian, will revolve around several key concepts, which serve as the compasses for free thinking: Affirm-Deny, Say, Remember-Forget, and Imagine.
The fundamental purpose of the course is to learn how to learn.
The first step toward achieving this goal will be to deconstruct common beliefs, obligatory mental pathways, clichés, and linguistic and mental stereotypes.
This will be accomplished through the use of techniques for conceptual variation (thinking differently), perceptual and imaginative techniques (seeing differently and imagining alternative scenarios), and finally, practical techniques (acting differently).
‘The objective of this synergy,’ explains Rector Alessandra Petrucci, ‘is the formation of the Future Planner role, a manager capable of identifying and enhancing talents—resources expressed in specialized skills as well as in transversal capabilities that generate energy and positive effects.
In this regard, the mission of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, which promotes advanced training and supports excellence initiatives, aligns with the university's mission of educating young people and enhancing their potential.’
‘With the figure of the conceptual mediator, we are embracing the plasticity, speed, and uncertainty that characterize our scenario, while also supporting a form of natural intelligence that will undoubtedly become indispensable in the future,’ states Roberta Lanfredini, Scientific Coordinator of the 'Navigating the Future' project.
‘As in all periods of radical crisis, there is an urgent need for equally radically free thinking that develops new paradigms and meaningful scenarios.
Thinking freely requires training to think and imagine differently, freeing oneself from habituation and submission to pre-existing thoughts.
'The course,’ continues Lanfredini, ‘does not represent a completed process, but an open one.
'It’s incredible how the response from the students has been one of total commitment, despite a considerable amount of uncertainty.
Young people are tired of being told that there is no future for them and want to engage actively. The project offers this opportunity.’
‘I have always been fascinated by talent—in sports, in the arts, and in business. Supporting young talent, a cornerstone of the mission of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, has represented and continues to represent the guiding star of my desire to be a modern philanthropist, in step with the evolution of the complex universe we live in, where our duties as guides must be reaffirmed and respected with determination, consistency, and passion.'
'Ensuring real opportunities for those who deserve it is the new mantra,’ explains Andy Bianchedi, President of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation.
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