On Thursday, 9 July 2015, the graduation ceremony for students in the Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Humanities and the Master's Degree Programme in Arts and Cultural Management took place in the Barcelona campus’s main lecture hall. The keynote address was given by Daniel Giralt-Miracle, an art critic, art historian and holder of the Creu de Sant Jordi.
In his address, “How Can You Live with Change?”, Giralt-Miracle discussed how human beings have been caught up in a process of increasingly frenzied change since time immemorial, as has been noted by great thinkers and artists from Heraclitus to Bob Dylan.
“You have to face the future with the understanding that you are living in a world of flux”, Giralt-Miracle commented. He closed his speech by citing Max Weber and urging the new graduates not to be intimidated by the impossible: “Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.”
Participants in the event included Marta Crispí, the Director of the Master’s Programme, and Teresa Vallès, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Vallès offered her thanks to the academic staff, technical crew and students, and commended the students on the work they had done. She shared her thoughts on the value of studying the humanities: “Studying the humanities means developing professional and critical-thinking skills. Studying the humanities means engaging in service-oriented citizenship. But most of all, studying the humanities means making sense of life.” She concluded by urging the graduates on: “Take us farther. Take us higher.”
After the diplomas were handed out, the student representatives offered a few words of thanks to the UIC Barcelona for a job well done.
