You can also become a professor with a creative career - the best example is Bruno Franceschini! The passionate theater maker, author and composer has been a professor at Landshut University of Applied Sciences since the winter semester 2023/2024. Together with students from the Faculty of Social Work, he explores the possibilities and potential of "aesthetic practice". A key feature of his artistic projects is the participatory, mediating aspect.
Franceschini combines art and commitment
"I work with actors and musicians, but also with artistic amateurs, with children and young people, with adults, senior citizens and mixed-age groups," says Franceschini. In his work as a theater maker, author and composer, he always focuses on the collective process. It's about creating freedom, developing personality, experiencing cultural participation and growing together as a group.
Aesthetic practice is now an integral part of the toolbox of social work methods. After all, working with artistic media promotes many things: motor, cognitive and communicative skills as well as creative, problem-oriented and critical thinking. "At best, these skills are developed in a playful, easy way," says Franceschini. Theater, music, radio plays, performances in public spaces, audio walks, but also sound installations, short films or apps: the married family man has a lot in store that he would like to explore together with the students.
From artist to professor - an outline
When Franceschini became aware of the professorship at Landshut University of Applied Sciences last year, he immediately applied, driven by his preference for participative projects. Even as a child, Franceschini had a wide range of interests: he played various instruments, including the piano and guitar. In the 1990s, he moved from Italy to Germany to study philosophy and German studies. It was there that his professional artistic career took off. He started out as a musician, singer and songwriter and continued his career as a sound artist and composer for theater music. After a few years of stage experience, he began directing himself. From 2018, he headed the "scenic-musical project work" department as an artistic assistant at the Institute of Music at the University of Kassel.
University President Prof. Fritz Pörnbacher on the new support in the Faculty of Social Work: "I am very pleased that Prof. Franceschini enriches our students with his creative streak and shows them other ways of dealing with problems. He also embodies the fact that a career does not have to be linear in order to be appointed as a professor at our university".
Photo: Landshut University of Applied Sciences
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