Hip Hop Meets the Renaissance

Students will learn multimedia reporting skills and report, write, edit, film, and photograph stories about the Italian Hip Hop and allied culture scenes. Final products will include a presentation website and a final THEATRICAL performance for those students interested in Hip Hop as a vehicle for acting and dancing.

Our study tour will balance intensive multimedia practice in a specialty track of students' choice (e.g., print, broadcast journalism, photography and publication design, videography) with free time to research, perform, and savor this magnet of Renaissance culture. A full descriptive syllabus of the program can be found at the ieimedia website.

Learn the story-telling skills of foreign correspondents. Wander the piazzas, cobblestone streets, boutiques and galleries of a city that has more astonishing architecture and art per square meter than any other in the world.

Hip Hop adds a new vernacular to ieiMedia’s study abroad program. Under the guidance of award-winning journalism and theatre faculty from Winston-Salem State, North Carolina Central, and Florida A&M, students will have a dual opportunity this summer to perform hip hop while studying and producing multimedia stories about it in text, video, photography, broadcast, and sound. The program can be taken for 3 to 6 college credits.

Program Highlights:

*research, interviewing, writing, and performing in an international setting
*morning classes and afternoon field work to produce multimedia content (blogs, audio, slideshows, videography, graphics and live broadcasts) for a dedicated Hip Hop website
*evening labs to hone skills in photography, videography, graphic arts, or feature writing/editing for magazine production or theatrical performance and production.
*exploring the Hip Hop culture in Italy and perform in an original Hip Hop theatrical production
participation in daily classes in “survival” Italian and culture
*exceptional mentoring and time to specialize in print, broadcast, or visual media “tracks.”

Arielle Emmett

Our workweek is packed, but on Saturdays and Sundays, students are free to travel in small or large groups to the charming medieval towns surrounding Florence, among them Siena (which features a medieval horse racing festival in its Piazza del Campo on July 2nd), Pisa, and San Gimignano. Optional trips to Rome, Cinque Terra, Venice, and Urbino are available before and after the study period.

The study tour will balance intensive multimedia practice in a specialty track of your choice (e.g., print, broadcast journalism, photography and publication design, videography) with free time to research, perform, and savor this magnet of Renaissance culture. A full descriptive syllabus of the program can be found here.

Thanks to our generous hosts, ieiMedia students and faculty will stay in fully equipped, modernized apartments with kitchens near shopping and the language school. Our faculty will act as tour guides and mentors in students’ areas of special interest.

Students enrolled in the 2015 program can earn three to six academic credits, depending on the requirements of their college or university. Our final “deliverables” will be a dedicated Italo-Hip Hop website showcasing student multimedia work, plus an original Hip Hop theatrical performance before a live audience. Join us for an extraordinary fusion summer!
Students will have the aid of Italian interpreters to help them complete their journalistic stories. Those with intermediate to advanced knowledge of Italian will be offered special training.

The four weeks of instruction will include approximately 16 hours of “survival Italian” taught at Scuola Toscana, one of the premier language schools in Florence. Learn how to order food and wine in a restaurant, make purchases, get travel directions, and use Italian in personal introductions for conversations and interviews.

English, Italian