For many, the age of 62 marks the end of their career but for John Ambrogio retirement age was the beginning of a new journey that led him to bag a Master’s degree at 68 years.
He is not the only one who will be benefitting from his studies. Mr Ambrogio has drawn up a blueprint based on international standards of how to document an event and archive it within a central repository.
“Throughout my 50-year career, I realised that, while paperwork was decreasing and digital data was increasing, efforts of documentation and archiving for prosperity were declining.
“Malta has records dating from the time of the Knights but what records will people have of today’s events in 500 years?” he asked.
Mr Ambrogio embarked on his studies through the Endeavour Scheme, a scholarship that is part-financed by the EU and is designed to help people with their lifelong learning efforts.
What records will people have of today’s events in 500 years?
Throughout his career, mainly focused on accounting and management within IT companies, Mr Ambrogio realised he had other skills, such as digital imaging and presentation capabilities, he could not put into practice at work. When he left the “four-walled career life” eight years ago, he could focus all his energy on such skills and eventually received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Digital Arts degree cum laude.
“Apart from it never being too late, continuing your studies after retirement age is not as challenging as some believe because my career actually provided me with the basics for my studies,” he remarked.
He noted that, while in the business world digital records were mainly of a financial nature, recording artistic work, including performing arts and music, was a bit more challenging not only because it was of an intangible nature but also because Maltese artists did it mainly on a part-time basis.
From his research, Mr Ambrogio found that as many as 260 hours of effort were behind the annual one-hour performance by University performing arts students.
The documentation did not revolve only around the academic part but also what the artists drew inspiration from and their anthropological background.
Documenting only the final performance would not be of much use to future researchers, who would be mainly interested in how artists produced the final act.
Through his case study, he showcased how to laboriously document a performance while keeping in conformity with international standards. This means that the documentation could be archived within a national repository and shared internationally.
Mr Ambrogio’s research work was partially funded by the Endeavour Scholarship Scheme (Malta), for which scholarships are part-financed by the EU - European Social Fund - Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2014-2020.
A spokeswoman for the Parliamentary Secretariat for European Funds noted that, apart from supporting tertiary education, the €11,235,000 scheme, which was extended to 2023, guaranteed that the Maltese labour market was in a better position to compete at an international level.
By the end of last August, 627 participants had signed a scholarship grant, amounting to €6 million, of which 94% were courses at level seven and 6% at level eight. Some 47% of the awardees were women.