TheDrakroom, Firenze

[Fulga]

Hi,

I believe some of you are looking for photography courses and here is some feed-back about a school in Florence, Italy.

The syllabus is OK: it includes both darkroom techniques and digital (only 2 weeks for the latter though);the teachers are also good and you may learn a great deal if you don't mind being intimidated, yelled at, or humiliated (that is the school director's approach to teaching).

Talking about your rights as a student though, they are null.
You are made to sign an agreement after you have paid every single penny to the school; the agreement says that you are responsible for the darkroom(everybody has the key to it) and thus if something happens, be it the students' fault or not, they have to pay for it; the school has no obligation to you whatsoever once you have paid.

I was asked in a peremptory voice to pay for some damage without a preliminary inquiry simply because the couple who runs the school (the school director and his wife, the administrator) had no time for explanations.
When I asked the administrator not to yell at me(i naturally asked for details regarding the damage and she raised her voice) ,she said that she could yell as much as she wanted since that was her house! she meant the darkroom for which i had paid.
They did not even call me when the damage happened, (some machine for cutting paper was opened and the paper thus exposed to light) but after 2 days, so I have no idea if the damage really happened.

After this incident, I did some research on the private schools in Florence and realized that they are all unprofessional, although one might be lucky to meet some good teachers.