Study programme
Field work trip South Africa
Every academic year the students of the Master in Imagineering leave for a field work trip. This year the students went to South Africa.
Objective of field work trip
From the start of the academic year the students of the Master in Imagineering are busy at their own application company, where they go from desk research (reading strategic plans and studying the industry) to field research. Separately they also go through this process jointly in groups of 5 students each where the focus is the application of theory in a different cultural context. The objective of this operation is on the one hand to give students a (last) chance to go through the process together with fellow students before working on their own master piece and on the other hand to confront students with the subtlety of symbolic value creation. For this field work trip we cooperate with the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences of the University of Pretoria
Field work trip 2008-2009
Motivation for the field work of this academic year was the organisation of the FIFA Soccer World Championship in 2010 in South Africa. The assignment for the students was to develop a concept in context of this world championship to raise the bar for the whole of Africa, a goal which has also been set explicitly by the legacy manager of the FIFA tournament.
Winning concept: United Play
The winning team has developed the concept United Play: FIFA tourists will be invited not only to enjoy the FIFA matches during the World Championship but also to participate in locally organised matches. The concept gives local stakeholders, such as townships, the opportunity to get more involved in the FIFA activities by organising the local matches.
Besides, the local matches can also be arranged by other African countries framed with their music and gastronomy so that the culture of that particular country can also be promoted.
The jury, consisting of professors and students of the University of Pretoria and people of the Dutch Embassy in Pretoria, highly valued the following aspects of the concept:
- It gives Africa the chance to promote themselves not through aid but through trade, so they can be seen as an organizer and initiator instead of the needing party;
- People that have no money to buy tickets to any of the matches can participate in an active and constructive way in this huge event;
- Via sport, relationships can be build that can result in trade in a later stadium;
- This concept can have a disengaging function: people learn to cooperate in the context of a sport event and build up confidence, which can work out in the long run;
- The concept gives the possibility to exploit the worldwide logging in on the FIFA event for Africa to the fullest;
- Furthermore the appealing character of these activities can compensate for potentially negative incidents.
The concept United Play has been developed by Stijn Creemers, Daniel Hendrickx, Sebastian Linke, Raisa Nieminen and Mario Ramirez Reyes.
Concepts:
More information about how this and other concepts came about and the concept itself.
Personal account of study trip
If you want to know how one of the students has experienced the trip, it's preparation and outcome, please read the story by Mario Ramirez Reyes.
