Editoriali
Mind the Gap
The cultural sector needs managers. There is no other reason why the cultural sector is not the great thing of this era. The entire sector has changed since Europe acknowledged culture as one of the most interesting future industries. Analyses, data, business plans, financial statements, sustainability concerns: culture is no longer what we were used to thinking. Managing tools are more and more sophisticated, urban planning tools could provide real-time data about city fruition. Museum services, such as audioguides can interact with visitors based on their position within the exhibition area. The undeniable growth in terms of economic planning abilities that the cultural sector has experienced in the last ten or fifteen years, should have produced a comparable growth in incomes related to cultural activities.
Reinventing the wheel: why museums should learn more about their visitors
Have you ever wondered why everybody underlines the relevance of private information and privacy policies? One of the most astonishing answers could be that personal information is important to those who want to sell you a product or a service. Maybe simple. Still, it is everything but simple for museums, apparently. In Italy, there is very poor knowledge about museum visitors, and there is still less knowledge about cultural consumption. In our country, there are always too many reasons that could be suitable to justify a specific condition, and this case is no exception. This lack of knowledge could be the effect of the lack of funding, or, the consequence of the lack of adequate software, or even the organizational structure of the most important Italian museums, where private companies manage all those services where visitors’ data could be collected (such as ticketing) and this condition could cause issues related to the privacy of visitors or give to those operators a commercial advantage. Actually, none of those reasons is decisive: lots of museums have spent, in recent years, significative economic resources to realize research about their visitors; no special software is required to collect basic information about visitors and their cultural tastes and consumption; the realization of a common database could avoid any commercial advantage, and the data-anonymization process could come in handy to protect visitors’ privacy. Since the lockdown Italy strongly prompted the digital development of public services: we’re running digitization projects in almost all the most important spheres of our lives, such as health with the realization of the Electronic Health Record, a database with all our health data, or digital identity, with the so-called SPID (Public System of Digital Identity), which already provides citizens with numerous e-government services. So why we do not have an Electronic Cultural Record? Perhaps it is not such a priority for our museums or policy makers, but it could be a strong tool for both public and private players. Analysing Cultural Consumption Data, private enterprises could produce a more attractive cultural supply, addressing specific products and services to the right audience, and this could increase the overall volume of cultural consumption. Tanks to the potential growth of private revenues, public institutions and other organizations could focus on those “taste-niches” that cannot reach a proper market dimension. Furthermore, cultural organizations could reach the right audiences, strengthening engagement and improving sense of belonging. There are several ways to realize such a system: one of the most intuitive is a specific tax-deduction policy for all the personal expenses related to cultural and creative themes that are paid by a specific debit-card. This kind of system could enable the realization of a specific AI developments, thanks to which, when a person comes to visit a specific museum, the AI could suggest specific guided-visits based on his or her past purchases. It is sad to find that traditional cultural systems are abdicating to the digital supplies all the potentiality of data: in our everyday lives we’re surrounded by services displaying us how likely it is we could appreciate a book, a restaurant, a tv-series or a tv-movie. It could be useful for us to understand how likely it is we could count of such a service also in our physical experiences: going to the cinema, exploring a city, evaluating theatre or music events, or choosing an art – exhibition or a museum. It’s quite simple to understand. Still, it is everything but simple for cultural systems, apparently.
How sublime theory could teach us when an urban renewal project could really work
In 2005, in “A discussion between two architects”, Gharib Abbas and Bahram Shirdel, defined the expression “post-contemporary”, as a “forward-looking aesthetic philosophy distinguished by a re-constructive, global, human ethos which posits that the aesthetic experience is universal to humanity and that this experience can inspire understanding and transformation”. Although a comprehensive definition of post-contemporary society is yet to come, in this still preliminary framework, culture plays an almost ubiquitous and multi-faceted role: from economics to sociology, from arts to mathematics, robotics, and engineering. Narrowing the reflection on the relationship between culture and territory, in a certain sense, culture, today, seems to play the role that was played by nature in past aesthetic and philosophical theories. Like nature, whose capability to conquer rubble and ruins was interpreted as a vital and re-shaping force, culture is asked to intervene in our post-contemporary human-built-landscape in order to re-shape and re-vitalize the rubble and the ruins of our modern and post-modern eras. From Bilbao then on, culture has been chosen as one of the key drivers of the urban renewal phenomenon. There are many reasons that could illustrate why culture is so important for this kind of project: to somebody culture plays a greenwashing role in real estate, useful to communicate such investments as attempts for social development, while others underline the importance of culture as an essential social glue enabling the overall development of a peripheral area, and avoiding the specter of gentrification processes. Regardless of this kind of evaluation, there is, maybe, an even more important question to which analysts try to answer: why do cultural-lead urban renewal projects sometimes greatly succeed while on other occasions they’re just a flop?
Culture and War: more than an aristocratic pastime
In this number of Tafter Journal, we will not cover war reflections neither we will talk about the claimed relevance of culture within the overall geopolitical equilibrium. We’re rather covering reflections and stories about two of the main derivative topics that war probably will generate, and that will dominate the EU public debate after War will come to an end, and they both relate to culture in a straight or broad sense. On one hand, Casula and Cosci investigate “the logic and dynamics of the cultural work” stressing how, “In artistic worlds, more than in other fields, educational and occupational choices are often seen as following the presence of exceptional individual talent, conceived as a natural gift. This notion tends to cover the structural nature of gender inequalities in music and to present women’s marginalization within jazz worlds as a personal matter related to sexual differences, rather than a social issue to be redressed.” On the other hand, the essay of Buoncompagni is addressed understanding the contemporary international framework of “digital identity”, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable sectors of the global population, and, above all, refugees. Both of the articles reveal insights that we should all take into account, especially in the next 6-12 months: as the reading of Casula and Cosci suggests, the first element we should consider when we look at the near future is that culture has real impacts when we talk about of “practiced culture”. Everyday culture has on our lives an impact that is far stronger than institutional or red-carpet culture. Thus, when we the war will be finally finished, EU is expected to address the communitarian investment efforts to the realization of multiple everyday culture actions, despite the realization of flagship interventions. This means that, banally, the EU should invest in the creation of new and several cultural and creative industries, with or without profit purposes, enabling natural and endemic cultural growth processes. Furthermore, the reflections of Buoncompagni remind us that we should keep in mind how the most important purpose of “refugee or migrant” population management, is to realize for those people a social inclusion program. European Union, nowadays, has the opportunity to demonstrate, to its citizens as well as to the other countries, a European Model of migrants management: a model that encourages the creation of a relationship between migrants and citizens, based on the awareness that both, migrants and inhabitants, need a profound connection, the firsts for survival reasons, the latter for social development needs. In this sense, the current number of Tafter Journal tells us three different stories: the trends about “degendered” development practices within the jazz world, the need for a more profound cultural awareness in the usage of digital identity tools in order to avoid the threats deriving from incorrect usage of the same technologies we’ve built in order to protect the most fragile persons within our global society; and the need to understand how cultural research, and cultural practice, should be no longer conceived as an exercise in style. Culture is not an aristocratic pastime anymore. Culture is an industry, and in the meanwhile, it is a powerful asset with which we could and maybe should improve our conditions, empowering our identities and strengthening our capabilities. Museums and institutional culture have a key role, in times of peace. Everyday non-institutional culture comes in handy when actual problems need to be addressed.
Culture is coming, maybe.
It’s clear that in the next years, our society will experience a great technological shift: there is plenty of great-new-things next door, and most of them are based upon one word: “content”. It is the case of the metaverse or the case of the NFT evolution, but it is also the case of the IoT protocol or the home automation: as a society, today we are called to produce and consume an amount of content never seen before in our human history. Content, however, is not culture. Content is content, as well as information, are information. Is for this reason that reducing the gap between content and culture should be one of our most important concerns. It is a huge challenge, that deserves to be more acknowledged because the difference between “content” and “culture” hides profound cultural idiosyncrasies and generational gaps. Looking at the inner structure of our society, it clearly emerges that those institutions which should be train citizens in developing awareness about the “vision of the world” carried on by new technologies are the institutions that most of all should be trained about it. Educational systems, as well as cultural institutions, look at the digital transformation mostly as a “communication display”: they’re more involved in understanding how to promote their events using TikTok than understanding which kind of knowledge should be developed in order to foster independent thinking amongst new generations. It’s not a “fault” since these kinds of institutions are structurally unprepared for this. We should simply face the facts: most Italian institutional museums do not provide visitors with an informatic ticketing system or do not use CRM to register information about their visitors in order to interact with them. So, on one hand, we live in a world grown with paper and pen, and on the other hand, we have generations growing with metaverses and blockchain.
Enabling Culture in enabling development
This number of Tafter Journal reflects on “music”, and “music industry” as two distinct but, after all, clearly connected phenomena, by highlighting the mutual relationship between “contemporary cultural content” and “contemporary cultural industry”. Since human beings became citizens of a world bigger than them, they understood the need for production and distribution systems in order to reach any kind of goods and services. Culture makes no exception. In this sense, when we look at cultural production, both in the sense of professional production of contents and in the meaning of active consumption of culture, we should fix our attention to the fact that culture need industrial means to survive. This kind of relationship is even clearer in music production, where the organizational aspects are part of the of the production itself. This kind of relationship should be clear when we look at music market data. Focusing on a small-sized country such as Italy is, it is possible to understand it in an easier way: when we discover that, among the 20 Italian regions, two of them, and namely, Lombardy and Lazio, host the 40% of music distribution companies, the 40% of music management companies, the 37% of record labels, the 31% of music events and concert organization agencies, and, the 41% of audience expenditures, we’re not describing only the geographic distribution of music production, we’re defining where, and how, our cultural contents are developed and disseminated. We can detect the effects of this kind of geographical distribution, or, this sort of this “cultural mechanics” in both the article of this number. Clementina Casula, in her article, focuses on how artistic and cultural production are key aspects in processes of enhancement of a more inclusive and egalitarian social fabric, by discussing the results of an “empirical qualitative research on two Italian female brass bands, emerging in quite different territorial and organizational contexts, but both contributing to challenging those gender biases, prescriptions and practices still hampering women’s full participation both to music worlds and social life in general”. On the other hand, the article of Limongelli, that we’ve chosen to re-publish in this issue, reflects on the strong relationship between the rise of innovative start-ups in the music industry and the number of artists involved in the creation of cultural content addressed to niche audiences. Together, the articles could define a “connection” that should interest many territorial administrators: while most of the music consumption (not including concerts or events) is managed through online platforms, music production still remains an enabling “engine” for territorial development. This implies further several reflections in the strategic development of our cities: digital marketplaces can be today intended as one of the main distribution channels of music content, and, today, there are more and more young artists starting their careers by simply uploading their works on a social network. By promoting not only cultural active consumption, but also cultural production, territorial administrators could lead our city in reaching both, the social desired effects that culture produces, and the economic development of a “little music industry”, which could help territorial emerging artists in carrying on their passions without the need to “leave” for the “big city”. By interpreting our territories as “spots” of bigger networks, our cultural production (music production in this case, but also artistic production could be shaped in this way), could show interesting features also for the development of a production system better fitting also for the exportation of cultural goods and services. The web taught us the potentialities of networks. We just need to understand that networks work also in the “real world”.
The medium does not equal the message
While Europe is involved in facing the social and economic difficulties heightened by the pandemic, there are several innovations that are ready to be implemented and to be part of our daily lives. Among them, public debate pays great attention to the enormous possibility that 5G could represent for our development. It’s out of doubt that 5G, and the subsequent development of IoT technologies, could be one of the “next great things” of the very next years. As well as it is out of doubt that this technology could sensibly transform many patterns in cultural production and consumption. Nevertheless, there is a huge risk that the cultural and creative sector could misunderstand the real potential enabled by this kind of technology: a major understanding of non-technological needs. The very real potentiality is not only in the development of new and powerful technological platforms. Neither it is only in the creation of new social platforms. It is in the possibility to connect human beings with “cultural products and services”, it is the possibility to give human beings a more profound understanding of the place where they live and to engage with their own territories. On the other hand, new tech-introduction could give new perspectives about how people react to specific cultural stimuli, prompting us in a data-driven interpretation of reality. In this framework, however, the threat is that cultural and creative professional, organization, and public administrations could be only attracted by the Wow effect that often this kind of technologies produce, and, thus, interpreting it as a sort of a contemporary Wunderkammer developed in a global scale. The possibilities of this new kind of technology are far greater than this: but to reach the real potentiality, we need to develop knowledge and competencies that could enable us in structuring a new system of thought. A system of thought that uses tech to reach humanity, to understand cultural needs in an effective way, in order to understand how to better engage with cultural targets. A system of thought where tech is just a production factor into the wider cultural and creative value chain. After all, as most of the people who love culture know, the famous McLuhan phrase claims that The medium is the message”, and not that the medium equals it.
Reality calls to a new interpretation of culture
In Italy, one of the most widespread interpretations of the cultural role in our lives and societies, affecting also the interpretation of cultural heritage and production, tends to create a visible division between the role of public bodies and private entities. Indeed, this kind of interpretation, still relevant in various contexts, today appears quite anachronistic, weakly reflecting the real state of the art. Largely diffused in the second half of the 20th century, this kind of interpretation claims for a strong differentiation between an ascetic-like approach to cultural heritage, mostly led by public entities in the name of the “public good” nature of culture, and the opportunistic, marginalist, profit-based private approach, in which private entities are represented as a sort of commodification agents, whose interest in culture is only led by profits and egoistic interests. Despite the public debate draws this kind of interpretation with more euphemistic words, undoubtedly this kind of approach still remains in the background of the cultural debates: on one hand, there are plenty of laws and rules focused on limiting the role of private agents in cultural fields; on the other hand, there are even more examples of public interventions calling private agents to an only fundraising role within the cultural context. In response to this kind of approach, together with the non-always-brilliant results in terms of cultural heritage management that are visible in our country when we go far from the Superstars (Colosseum, and so on), it is growing a more and more widespread public dissatisfaction, mostly in younger generations of professionals which would like to work within the cultural heritage sector. Paradoxically, this kind of tiredness could help growing another extreme approach to Cultural Heritage, in response to the conservative attitude that, in fact, governs our cultural heritage management.
Versus the superstars
In discussing the general influence of economic progress on value, Alfred Marshall wrote: The relative fall in the incomes to be earned by moderate ability… is accentuated by the rise in those that are obtained by many men of extraordinary ability. There never was a time at which moderately good oil paintings sold more cheaply than now, and… at which first-rate paintings sold so dearly. A business man of average ability and average good fortune gets now a lower rate of profits… than at any previous time, while the operations, in which a man exceptionally favoured by genius and good luck can take part, are so extensive as to enable him to amass a large fortune with a rapidity hitherto unknown. The causes of this change are two; firstly, the general growth of wealth, and secondly, the development of new facilities for communication by which men, who have once attained a commanding position, are enabled to apply their constructive or speculative genius to undertakings vaster, and extending over a wider area, than ever before. It is the first cause… that enables some barristers to command very high fees, for a rich client whose reputation, or fortune, or both, are at stake will scarcely count any price too high to secure the services of the best man he can get: and it is this again that enables jockeys and painters and musicians of exceptional ability to get very high prices… But so long as the number of persons who can be reached by a human voice is strictly limited, it is not very likely that any singer will make an advance on the £10.000 said to have been earned in a season by Mrs. Billington at the beginning of the last century, nearly as great as that which the business leaders of the present generation have made on those of the last.
The emerging industries in our complex scenario
In 2019, the European Panorama for Cluster published the report “Emerging Industries: Driving strength in 10 cross-sectoral industries”. Even though the social and economic conjuncture changed rapidly for the Covid-19 pandemic, this report highlights some structural features of our economic scenario that could be useful to discuss. As stated by the title, the report focuses on emerging industries and, more in detail, it aims at expressing the relevance that 10 “new industries” play for our entire economic system. The reason why these clusters are so interesting for the European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change is that the companies active in these sectors show, among others, two main characteristics: first, a business model that could generate significative results in terms of gross added value and, second, they’re working on products and services that could lead to a cross-sectoral innovation among different industries. The clusters included within the macro-area of the “emerging industries” are 10, and among them, there are at least three clusters that interest us closely: the digital, the experiential, and the creative industries.
How the art market should look like?
COVID-19 affected numerous dimensions of our lives, and, among them, it affected the cultural and art market too. In every place of our planet brilliant minds are considering the proper reactions to the pandemic-crisis under every aspect of our economic and social systems. Although, we also need to reflect on the cultural market, including the art market, and the way we attend events, or we visit monuments, and we appreciate artworks and exhibitions. COVID-19 generated and still generates both direct and indirect impact on these markets, but it has also underlined some “market fragilities” that we should acknowledge: the opaqueness, for example, is a structural characteristic of the art market, fully analyzed by many authors, as well as the difficulties of cultural market in adopting the innovations coming from the technology sector are fully acknowledged. COVID-19, it is worth noting, imposed in this sense a new pace: galleries, museums, and even hyper-institutionalized organizations adopted new ways to communicate with their audience and to disseminate their contents. We should treasure this new approach and maintain this attitude even when the alarm will be switched off. This number of Tafter Journal investigates how the cultural and, more precisely, the art market could be after the pandemic. The contribution of Colangelo deepens the results of a new wage of “must-be-online” among cultural players, by interviewing the CEO of Kunstamatrix, a company who provide users with 3d online exhibition spaces, and that knew an important growth during the lockdown period, being used by different kind of organizations, such as museums, galleries, and even art fairs. The art fairs market is the very focus of the article written by Medaglini, looking at a new possible pricing model for this market. The number of new art fairs grew consistently during the last decade, and now the market is living a new phase of its life-cycle and it is still looking for market equilibrium, with the competition generating both a critical mass related positive effect and a negative effect, related to the competition exacerbation.
Does storytelling kill stories?
Just a few years ago, the word storytelling in the Italian cultural world was barely acknowledged. In recent times, however, this term knew an unquestionable success, soon becoming a “must do” for every practitioner or academic researcher in cultural related disciplines and organizations.This kind of approach has been kind misunderstood by many Italian […]
Tech-derived knowledge could help our cities
Obviously, this is not a new idea. Since years, We daily hear about new technologies could help us in creating a better environment, through the analysis of data that users generate. Big data, small data, data harvesting, data mining are concepts that are widely acknowledged, today. Still, there are not sufficient implementations to surely affirm that the usage of the knowledge that this huge amount of data provide, is truly helpful in designing new urban policies or other interventions at the city level. More in detail, we could affirm that, today, in Italy, there is a significative lack of connection between the R&D improvements of these years and the Public Administration or the governance of big enterprises. In other terms, while on one hand there are several tech-innovations created by start-ups run by young entrepreneurs, on the other hand we have not enough implementations within the urban context. Though, without implementations, research is a sort of an artwork. So, after the art for the art’s sake, we created research for research’s sake.
Fragmented We Stand
Rephrasing the famous quote can sketches the picture in which Western world has found itself recently, especially Europe and the Americas. Since the end of 2016, a wave of political and social fragmentation has been sweeping at least two of the most important continents in the world, giving way to a culture of populist nationalism. Often people are not aware of the multiple interconnections affecting their lives, impacting on our own happiness and wellbeing. Nor we realise the “butterfly effect” each of these interconnections has on the other around the world. In their restricted landscapes of the last three years, are the people of these continents happier, freer, richer than they used to be? Do they, do we, have a deep understanding of what make us happy or are we functionally illiterate even about it? Few, basic items contributing to our happiness and well-being are: freedom and respect of other people’s freedom, work, healthcare, the outcomes of good politics and the effects of stable and growing economics, the possibility of living in a friendly environment, both on a psychological point of view and where the effects of the climate change are limited. Social and societal interactions, safe and affordable mobility, broad and uncensured communication. To which, finally, it can be added what anyone considers to be good. In an individualistic culture as the Western one has transformed, declaring that anyone can decide what it is good for him/herself can be considered really the base of the fragmentation we are observing recently, the right anyone claims to have not to homologate or not to be submitted to the law and common rules: “one is one” is the claim that anticipate “first my people”. What kind of culture is generated by all this?
Culture is Complex, and we must have strategies.
There is no doubt that cultural development requires a strategic approach. Worldwide, urban areas are experiencing a process significantly different from the merely expansive path that public administration and private investors have longly prompted over the XX century. Nowadays, growth is not only an economic concern: it is, indeed, the result of different innovation processes related to various aspect of the democratic and the economic life of our Countries. These processes prompt for a new urban planning philosophy where a team of experts should coordinate different topics. Urban planners should take into account cultural, economic, infrastructural, social, and technological instances. Today, the goal in urban and regional planning is to achieve a better quality of life. Such an objective calls us (public administrations, private investors, and experts) in defining growth patterns able at improving the economic conditions of citizens while improving social liveability, social cohesion, and cultural consciousness. With the rise of Cultural and Creative Industries, the cultural sector acquired a central role within the urban planning activities.
The dark sides of culture
Barbara Kruger, in one of her famous artworks affirms: When I hear the word culture, I take out my checkbook. This provocation well evokes a wide range of associations related to culture: theatres, music performances, artworks, and so on. Another well-known quote says: “Whenever I hear of culture, I release the safety on my Browning”. This quote, misattributed to various Nazi leaders, is included in a Hanns Johst play “Schlageter”. Following recent interpretations, with this statement, the author well describes a common feelng related to what “Kultur” (the word used in the original play) represented during the ’20s and the ‘30s in Germany. In German, in fact, the word Kultur refers to what we could define as “high culture” in contemporary interpretation. This kind of culture was a privilege of the coeval elites. Kultur was often “a way of legitimizing the preferences of one group, and delegitimizing the preferences of another”. On closer inspection, these quotes have much in common: in both cases the word “culture” induces a reaction, and in both cases the “reaction” is in some way “violent”. The difference between the two interpretations is just in the weapon that Kruger (checkbook) or Josht (Browning) use.
When quality measures the distance between valorization and commodification
There is a shared vision which wants that every kind of good and service can be transformed in a product. It doesn’t matter what kind of good or service is. This perspective is not so bad as it could sound to many, and above all, looking at our daily lives, it is not so far from the reality. We use and consume every kind of good and service, whether it is a cultural good, a relational good or an industrial good. Though, when we talk about cultural goods, the setting-up of a value-chain or a value-system, obviously scares humanists. Indeed, there is a point that we need to fix and to underline: there is a huge difference between valorization and commodification, and the measure of this difference is named quality. Quality of the processes trough which we transform cultural or non-cultural assets in cultural products. Skilled human resources, clever investments and proper management principles lead to a high-quality deliverable that, despite its market-driven approach, could improve knowledge, culture and social value more than a pure-cultural-driven approach. It is the same difference that measures the distance between “territorial development” and “territorial marketing”. Having a look at both the definitions remove any doubt about it. While “Territorial marketing can be defined as a process whereby local activities are related as closely as possible to the demands of targeted customers” the “Territorial development designates development that is endogenous and spatially integrated, leverages the contribution of actors operating at multiple scales and brings incremental value to national development efforts”. However, looking at the cultural sector, despite the glaring differences between these definitions, the output of these approaches could appear very similar. Both the approaches, indeed, produce cultural services, cultural goods and touristic goods that third-sector organizations, enterprises and Public Administrations offer on the market. So, what kind of variable should we use to interpret a cultural or touristic good as the result of a marketing approach or, on the contrary, of a territorial development approach? Once again, quality could be the answer.
Cultural Heritage between administrative organization and non-for-profit initiative
Italian Cultural Heritage is worldwide acknowledged. Artworks, Archaeological Sites, Museums and even whole cities are by now part of the collective imaginary. In spite of this, there are several criticalities characterizing Italian Cultural Heritage. Most of them are the results of an anachronistic interpretation of the role that Cultural Heritage could play in our daily lives. Following this interpretation, Cultural Heritage should not be associated with (direct or indirect) private intervention because private intervention is only targeted to a “profit” and the “profit” is a great enemy for the public interest. Regardless of how unreasonable it may sound, this has been, for long, the unexpressed belief of many Italian Cultural Operators and decision makers. This interpretation led several consequences that could be summarized in an almost completely public management of Cultural Heritage, performed regardless to the results of the activity run by the public administration. Fortunately, in recent years the “cultural establishment” acknowledged the need for a change that was widespread invoked by cultural practitioner and civil society. Obviously, this “switch” is also the result of the substantial evolution that has characterized the Cultural Heritage Management globally as well as the transition from an industrial-led economy to a knowledge-led economy. The main effects of this change are in everyone’s eyes: never in history as today, museums are, in many countries, the living center of the society. Cultural Heritage and Activities are at the very heart of urban development and, most of all, it has been finally acknowledged that Cultural Heritage and Activities could be one of the key economic sectors for the development of entire regions or countries.
Tourism as a driver of cultural vibrancy in lesser known destinations: a link yet to be explored?
In recent years, culture and creativity have captured the attention of city-focused policymakers, managers, and academics due to their (still much argued) capacity to contribute to local economic prosperity. “Cultural vibrancy” (or “cultural vitality”, here used as synonyms) is a term that we often come across when looking at the abundant literature on the topic. The reason why scholars and practitioners care about such vibrancy is clear: if culture embraces the distinctive traits that characterise a society (UNESCO, 2001) and can take either tangible or intangible forms (Throsby, 2001), cultural vitality is an all-encompassing term that tries to capture the ways through which culture and creativity are actually expressed, every day and everywhere. More concretely, I would argue that cultural vibrancy relates to all those activities through which culture is actually “animated”, “promoted” and “participated”, and its cultural, economic and social value therefore enhanced. Urban cultural tourism is probably one of the most likely outcomes of cultural vibrancy.
Is culture “the new black” or the “last ideology”?
Europe is, nowadays a little weird concept, that assumes, day after day, everchanging Non-Euclidean shapes: Brexit, NGOs, boundaries and immigration are at the top of the Agendas of a Union that would have preferred pursuing objectives such as the “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”. In this widespread confusion it seems that Culture should be the new philosopher’s stone or, adopting a more common language it seems that Culture should be the new black. There are no serious public interventions that do not underline, at least once, the role of culture for the development of a town, of a country or of the European Union in its whole. Indeed, according to our policymakers, culture is: a) The key for a new “multicultural” Europe; b) An important economic sector that could prompt the development of backbones territories; c) The next new-thing of financial market and, finally, d) The real answer to both the immigration challenge and the brain drain phenomenon. There are no doubts that culture could play an important role in all these processes but a more realistic framework is needed.
Tafter Journal Number 100
In recent years the world has totally changed. Many are still the persons who disbelieved the power of culture as a strategic tool for the development of entire economies and territories. Many understood it. Many have made of their lives, an instrument to change their territories through culture and the production of culture. Every day we go on it is increasingly clear how cultural economy is a more mature market. Now everyone asks that new and specialized skills are needed: being able to design cultural projects is no longer enough, now those who have the task of providing services in this cluster must be able to finance projects or make them sustainable in the short-term period. This is the proof that shows how we are experiencing a great change in the market. This type of change occurs when a sector moves from an emerging phase to a consolidation phase. In these 100 numbers, Tafter Journal has been involved in the representation of a world that changes timelessly, and this number will not be an exception. The functions required by culture are, to date, extremely varied: now culture is related, among other things, to social cohesion, entrepreneurial mentoring, innovation, cultural heritage and trust building activities. Day by day, recognizing the importance of the value of culture, culture is necessary to solve any kind of social challenge. Furthermore, there are groups and activities that need the set of skills that culture can provide, even if they are not exactly definable as part of the cultural and creative industries. I’m talking about the experience industry, and more specifically, I’m talking about tourism, and the way in which cultural and tourist phenomena share efforts to consolidate an image of territorial branding (which has direct implications on the economic, social and urban complex). I’m talking about technology and the way new disruptive innovations could change our lives and, above all, the ways we think, we design, we project a territorial cultural offer. These evidences call us for change: we need culture, it is true, but we need energy, committed professionals and academics who want to share their experiences and studies in order to foster debate and provide readers with practical tools and knowledge. But above all we need a political class capable of intercepting emergencies and knowing how to interpret change strongly.
Non-hype instruments for territorial development
As occurs in almost every branch of human activity, our sector is often influenced by trends that condition the work of academicians and practitioners. Today as yesterday, we assist to the explosion of tools whose impact could affect both the cultural and economic development of territories. Yesterday it was the case of festivals, today is what occurs with Blockchain and smart contracts. Nevertheless, following these fashions we leave behind tools or assets that could be very helpful in the construction of a territorial policy for a culture-based development. This number of Tafter Journal is dedicated to two instruments, highly differentiated, that nowadays are not as cool as big-data or the AI applications, but that could concretely concur to the diversification of territorial cultural offer contributing, at the same time, to the specialization of cultural and economic production of a region or a city. Who’s involved in day-by-day working on territory knows that are plenty of resources (as much as obstacles and difficulties) that need to be managed: historic buildings, contemporary production, cultural associations, natural heritage and so on. Properly, our role is indeed to underline further opportunities that could extend that set of assets, and show how these new (or old) tools work or they could do.
Does arts and culture have value? And which is it?
Should art be considered as a luxury and should artworks be considered as luxury goods? And, at the other end of the spectrum, should popular culture be understood as a scarce – and, therefore, costly – good? In general, we shy away from using the terms “goods and services” when applied to the arts and culture. Nevertheless, today, we might want to reconsider this perception: is it not only an expression of the ill-conceived idea that art and culture have a stand-alone signification in society and that they have a value that, per se, justifies their existence and recognition? Before the Romantic revolution no one would have dared not consider the artworks as goods and the work of artists as services. Rather, artists were considered as professionals who carried out a very specific task the result of which was given recognition – or not – by society thus directly establishing its value. Furthermore, many of the masterpieces that have survived until today are the result of, also, a taste for betting on this or that artist’s work. This down-to-earth notion has, in the last two centuries, been disrupted in favor of an approach by which artists and their work is understood as, primarily, the expression of their creative power and the fruit of a tormented existential process with a value of its own, irrespective of its recognition and acknowledgement by society.
Users or Audience?
It’s sure. No doubt about it: this is the user’s era. This is what we daily learn when we try to understand how We’re trying to build our future. This is true when we talk about soft-industries, such as software industry or audiovisual industries (just think at the House of Cards’ case history), but it’s also true when we look at object-centered industries. This number of Tafter Journal presents two specific declination of the complex relationship between user and provider in two different sectors. On one side this number presents the research proposed by Sağlar, Garip & Garip that shows the results of a wider research project about Flexible User Centered Design Model for Social Housing Units, illustrating the development methodology through which the interior design could create customized housing units. This model could represent a valid solution to a wide social need, inasmuch, as affirmed by authors, “although there is a great variety in social pattern in big cities […] the response of architecture is extremely standard”. On the other side the article written by Gobbi and D’Ambrosi analyzes the Web communication strategies used by corporate museums, proposing a 5-scale evaluation for seven of the most important design corporate museums in Italy, such as Alessi, Bitossi, Kartell, Molteni, Mumac (Cimbali), Poltrona Frau and Rancilio. The results of the analysis are not so positive: authors show how design corporate museums are not as active as they should be, or at least, as active as we should expect they are. Going beyond the single researches, the proposed results underline an important issue for Cultural and Creative Industries: in fact, this two articles allow us to glimpse the differences in the value chains when the beneficiary of the production process is represented by a user or, on the contrary, is represented by the so-called “audience”. Even though the two articles analyze the same manufacturing sector (interior design), in one case we have users of the objects that this sector produces, while in the other we have an audience that experience a cultural product.
Audience development or audience empowerment? Let’s be contemporary.
As the President of the European Commission, Mr. Juncker stated in his State of the Union speech of Sept. 13th, Cultural Heritage is one of the pillars on which the new European House must develop. The opening of the House of European History in Brussels last May and the launch of the European Year of Cultural Heritage next year are the signs of how much Europe has started considering the values Cultural Heritage can vehiculate. Of course, in order to make Cultural sites, parks and museums – not to say of cultural landscapes and performing arts – keystones of the citizens empowerment, people working in the sector and all the institutions involved have to stand up and ask for more and continuous attention and investments and if our political institutions are not able to provide us with a strategical plan and a middle-long term vision of what can be done in the field, it is our duty to work for submit it to them and make it become a committing document. If that could be done at European level, the better. But to achieve this goal, that might bear an increase to the one percent of the EU budget for Culture, we must overcome some of the cliché we are not able to get rid of yet. Meaning that we must start, once and for all, to look around and outside the local or national borders, to make comparisons not in a copy/paste way among the different models of management, organization, participation and use of our Cultural goods; that we must start from a given threshold and avoid talking and looking always to the past. If museums must be considered “liquid” they must be contemporary in the way they communicate, in the way they approach their public, in the way they build they cultural offer. Some figures i.e. accessibility (cognitive and physical), experience-storytelling, multidisciplinary, audience development must be given for stated. We must start building on that to promote empowerment of the visitors through Culture.
Changes are afoot
Changes are afoot politically: rising tides of nationalism and populism, stunning election results, and loads of analysis to decipher when and how these movements came to be. Months after the Brexit vote, Britain now considers the specific and practical realities of exiting the EU, as well as the governmental and economic effects. Likewise, in the United States, the Trump administration faces the practical challenges of governing a complex nation, a stark departure from the fluidity of making campaign promises. Trump’s administration—as well as many other conservative politicians over the past three decades—has publicly discussed the complete elimination of U.S. federal agencies that support arts and culture: the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Although U.S. federal support for the arts is quite small in comparison to many other Western countries, and although the combined budgets for these agencies is insignificant in relation to total U.S. spending, these threats are often successful in rallying support from conservatives who value limited government.
Ecclesiastical Tourism and the Paradox of Happiness
At the first glance the following two contributions look rather diverse – hardly related. Alfonso Casalini writes on the role of catholic and religious cultural heritage and the need for the implementation of modern management tools, especially in the organization of ecclesiastical museums. Timo Airaksinen writes on “Desire and the Socratic Paradox of Happiness” – a philosophic paper as its title clearly indicates. It is triggered by the observation that a lucky person will prefer his good circumstances regardless of the fact that he is and remains unhappy – which is in contrast, but not necessarily in contradiction, of Socrates’ dictum that a virtuous person is always happy, regardless of his circumstances. Are desire and desiring the keys to unlock this paradox? Airaksinen’s desire theory of happiness says that you are gratified and happy when you are able to satisfy your desires. As a consequence, he concludes, “life’s conditions are crucial to the quality and value of happiness.” Alfonso Casalini would argue that, for many people, religion and ecclesiastical culture are essential dimensions of their life’s conditions. He points out that there are between 300 and 330 million religious tourists, yearly, who generate an estimated turnover of 18 billion dollars worldwide. Do these numbers reflect a desire? Casalini’s assumption is that the “Religious Cultural Institutions” of the Catholic Church are called upon to contribute to satisfy these desires – and his claim is that this has to be done in an efficient way. A precondition is the application of modern management technics. He focuses on ecclesiastical museums to illustrate the problem and demonstrate the need for reforms: “a more economic (but not necessarily monetary) approach is needed.” There are still too many of these “ante-management” museums which “are devoid of website, do not have a social network activity and do not have revenues (or do not indicate them).”
What will remain of the Days ?
Free entrance to museums on the first Sundays of each month seems to have been a great success till its launch in July 2014. It has seen the average increase of visitors throughout Italy of some 260thousand units per month in 2016. More or less as half the yearly visitors in region Marche museums for the same year, following the data of the Mibact or as if the same number of population of the Greater Milan area visited museums or archaeological sites and parks during the twelve free Sundays. Surely it looks like a great success. Overall, it demonstrates that museums arise interest and curiosity in a large number of population. But these numbers don’t tell us anything about the people they represent or about the related “visitors’ journey”. What is the level of loyalty to these events? Are the same people traveling throughout the country planning a free visit to the Italian museums or is mainly a locally-based phenomenon? Can the visitors be profiled at least on the basis of the traditional demoscopic categories? Above all, these numbers don’t say anything about the kind of experience the visitors live and what remains of it, to both actors involved: visitors and museums. It should be time for the national cultural policies to clarify the meaning of success pursued, since the investment required for running the Sundays free entrances or similar openings (i.e. last March 8th ) on national or local level is significant for the public administrations and since lately it has been replicated in other sectors of the cultural production. In facts, the trade-off of this kind of operations is highly worthy if they can help defining further cultural strategies in audience development and in cultural production, and if they can collect valuable feedbacks and data on which cultural institutions can improve their cultural offer and develop new creativity.
A call for a European Model of Culture
Recent events, such as the election of the provocateur Mr. Trump as President of United States, the increasing migrations phenomena or the rise of new forms of terrorism, ask for a concrete answer from Europe in one of most important characteristics of our political history: the role and the implementation of the so-called Welfare State. When we talk about Welfare State we describe a set of policies, services and other actions that the public bodies of a Country set up in order to improve the life conditions of its own citizenship. Among the benefits that European Countries most frequently provide to citizens, Culture represents a peculiar object, not only for its structural characteristics (intangible assets and so on) but also for the different ways that governments are interpreting this important resource for human and social development. The implementation of the welfare state often includes also culture and cultural policies, but in most of cases, there is no a common interpretation of how (and which) culture should be provided: this is, to our point of view, one of the central key tasks for the European Agenda. Briefly, from one hand we have the most important traditions about cultural heritage but, on the other hand, Europe forgets that culture is, first of all, a contemporary matter of concern. Since ’50s Europe left to the U.S. the role cultural leader and from then, U.S. showed to the world the ideology of the western, developed countries. We divided the world in rich and poor countries, and our culture was the medium through which we stated that yes, we were in the right place of the world.
The role of Cultural Management and its social and narrative relevance
In his last book La phrase urbaine, the French philosopher and author Jean Christophe Bailly wrote that the city is like a sentence whose meaning we can understand only if we know its grammar. The city is not only a web of functions and services, but also a narrative fabric that needs to be read and told, explained and shared. Every city has its own urban grammar, requiring a common alphabet in order to generate webs of narratives, of humanity, and of cultural action and citizenship. Today more than any other time in the past there is a need to be civis, and sense is created from partaking what it means to inhabit, work and be a citizen, from the shared meaning of education, civil law and civil rights, dreams and needs, values and of doing and being as culture. Culture is the primary building block of meaning man has ever found, and we must start from culture to help citizens find their own sense, as individuals and as a collectivity. Generally things are no different today than 70 years ago, during the age of totalitarian regimes, or 50 years ago, during the age of counterculture. What is different is the relationship with authority. Today one can no longer trickle something down from above and impose it as a truth for it to be welcomed. Present-day authority is no longer recognized as such – it requires consensus for what it does and not simply for what it is. A city’s grammar cannot be generated from the top-down, from the administration or from private institutions, whether they are businesses, universities or research centers. The role of politics is to create time, location and information opportunities so that the city’s residents can build together their vocabulary, and along with it their own narratives, from the bottom-up.
Transforming Historical Cities in Smart Cities by Using Geospatial Technologies
The term geospatial in the Anglo-Saxon world – but also in the scientific and technical Italian elite – is slowly replacing the word Gis, acronym of Geographic Information System. Geospatial is interpreted as a synonym of geographical notions, in a system that can include more than two dimensions, normally represented by the latitude and the longitude, introducing geographical information in a landmark that could be developed in three, or, by now, also in four dimensions. The simplest examples are the google maps, which in the classical plane dimension of the chart sheet have put together the three-dimensional place with a fourth dimension time-slider. The impact of geospatial technology in our daily life has become rather relevant, showing itself as a global reference overview in our environment. The impact of all the innovations that form the Geospatial technology is increasing in our lives. It reached such a relevance to become a key point in our environment. This is particularly recognizable in urban envirornment, as it allow us in using Location Based Sevices technologies, which are able to transform every georeferenced object in a smart object, inserting it in a network of objects through position relationship among which the objects in the network transmit data and information each other. The common use of these networks of objects in our urban environment, could represent the structural network of the Smart Cities. When we use mobile devices in our trips, or when we share our feelings or other personal information on Social Network such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, we communicate also our geografical position (if we allowed it in our privacy agreement). Many of the services offered by search engines, using our position, are able in showing us restaurants, hotels, shops, banks, drugstores and everything we need, even classifying the showed results on the basis of the appreciation of other users. Thus, it is clear that geospatial technology is already present in the very core of our lives.
Culture is Changing…Oops: already done!
Since the 90’s, the world looks astonished at the power of culture as a strategical tool for the development of entire economies and territories. However, in last years, culture, and better said, cultural economics in Italy (but not only in Italy) is really changed. It’s clearly visible: look at the symposium, look in the universities. The great giants of this discipline are fading away, great entrepreneurial groups are changing their focus. Even the group I represent changed its primary market from a consulting to an advisory business model, in order to match the new set of needs that this market is now showing. Nowadays, cultural economics is a more mature market and there is a need for new and specialized skills: be able in designing cultural projects is no longer enough, now, who’s in charge in providing services in this cluster have to be able in funding projects too, or made them sustainable in the short period. This is the evidence that shows how We’re experiencing a great switch of the market. This kind of changes happens when a sector shifts from an emerging stage to a consolidating phase.
Arts Equity
Diversity in the arts has been a topic of much discussion for many years and the discussion continues to become more profound, more nuanced, and more important. As Nina Simone stated, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” The population of the United States, and many countries, has never been more diverse in terms of ethnicity which is typically the type of diversity that is implied in these discussions, although there are many types of diversity worthy of attention and action. In contrast, the history of western art has been dominated by rich white men for centuries, and this is seen in the canon: faces in galleries of European paintings through the Twentieth century are plump and white with rosy cheeks? classic plays, operas and ballets are based on stories of welltodo and royalty, presumably white. It’s no surprise, then, when recent studies show that today’s arts audiences are not diversifying at the same rate as the general public. This is a serious problem for arts organizations. The classic canon, portraying wealthy white people, is becoming less and less relevant to an increasing percentage of the population. When programming isn’t relevant, audiences shrink. When audiences shrink, not only does revenue decrease and threaten sustainability, but many organizations’ missions, which are centered on interaction with community and audience, are also threatened. The issue is compounded by the fact that the leadership of arts organizationstypically, staff and board members is not representatively diverse in terms of ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status. Community voices are, therefore, less likely to be accurately represented in strategic planning and governance decisions that determine programming. In this scenario, the programming does not adapt with changing needs of the organization’s constituency and loses relevance.
Culture and Citizenship
Most Italian cities, both big cities and small cities, are experiencing a sort of identity crisis, which is the result of different but convergent factors. The failure of the urbanistic vision as a virtuous urban development model. The unresolved relationship between historic city centre and the peripheries. The bureaucratic resistance to the implementation of mid and long-term strategic plans. The tendency in concentrating the cultural production only into the main cultural production centres. The distance between the University and the places where the urban change process take shape. The lack of intercultural and intergenerational integration processes. The underestimation of the change potential expressed by culture and cultural and creative activities. These are all issues that affect the real development of a culture-oriented society. Furthermore, there is also another point to underline: the rise of an interpretation of cultural and creative phenomenon as a specific tool of the tourism economy: during last decades, this vision shaped both public and private intervention in culture, realizing processes into a “touristic attractors” perspective. Because of the scarce resources, the touristic addressed interventions the implementation of mid and long term strategies mainly addressed to a change and to a cultural-driven urban renewal.
Poets: Born or Made? About the utility to preserve some doubts
Does the prenatal exposure to arts generates love and attitude for the arts? Individuals, that since the very childhood are used to be in harmony with nature, are more incline to become more interested in the environment topics? People living in a sacred context will become religious? Proximity with sciences will generate curiosity […]
Culture and life
Is not possible to start a discussion about culture without mentioning what in these days is scaring Europe: the IS terrorist attack in the heart of Paris is nothing but a menace to all of us. But there is also another reflection that we, as researchers and practitioners of culture, must underline in this act, and is that the choice of the sites point the attention on the very heart of our lifestyle: culture. Since its beginnings IS has attacked with peculiar attention cultural sites: firstly site under the protection of the UNESCO, and then irreverent voices of European Culture (Charlie Hebdo). Now the attack has been addressed versus a theatre, a stadium and versus people who was spending their time in cafès. This should make us consider once more the importance of culture in our lives. The nature of the attack followed the evolution of what has been for centuries intended with the word Culture: first the heritage, then the literature and freedom of expression and ultimately (this is our hope) the music and the sports. I’m not a conflict expert, but to every observer should be clear that IS is fighting its war mainly on two dimensions: the fear and the symbol. Destroying cultural heritage sites has been for century one of the main abused symbols of war, but stadiums, theatres and boulevards are something new. In my opinion it is not only a security level topic, there is something more. There is the importance of our immaterial infrastructure, the knowledge on which we base our lifestyle. Everyone would be pleased to do anything in order to avoid any other attacks.
Culture and the Red Queen
Just at this moment, somehow or other, Alice and the red Queen began to run. They were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying ‘Faster! Faster!’ but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had not breath left to say so. The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. “I wonder if all the things move along with us?” thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, “Faster! Don’t try to talk!” And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. Alice looked round her in great surprise. – Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was! – Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it? – Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing. – A slow sort of country! said the Queen. Now, Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
Nudging, Gamification and Paternalism
Paternalism assumes an authority that tries to influence the behavior of people under its guidance in order to improve the wellbeing of the latter. This can be implemented by more or less strict regulations limiting the set of alternatives to choose from and thus reducing the freedom of choice. Alternatively, “libertarian paternalism” does not constrain the freedom of choice but takes advantage of the imperfections in decision-making abilities to push people to make choices that are good for themselves. This kind of pushing people is called “nudging” and a means of pushing people this way is called a “nudge.” Those who get nudged are sometimes called “nudgees,” and “nudgers” are those who “nudge.” When it comes to paternalism then the nudger is an authority, the State, the parents, etc. While, in principle, paternalism proper is coercive, nudging leaves the nudgee’s set of alternatives unchanged. Thus, nudging is a means to achieve the authority’s ends without, in principle, restricting the freedom of choice of decision makers, but make the decision makers decide what the authority is in fact aiming for. Paternalism based on nudging is also referred to as “soft paternalism.” Whitman and Rizzo (2007) elaborate on the warning of a “slippery slope” that leads from soft paternalism to “hard paternalism,” a non-libertarian paternalism implying regulations, legal constraints, and a reduction of freedom of choice, and thus represents a threat to their libertarian worldview. They write “soft paternalism – even if initially modest and non-intrusive – has the potential to pave the way for harder paternalism, including some policies of which the new paternalists themselves would disapprove. We conclude that policymaking based on new paternalist reasoning ought to be considered with much greater trepidation than its advocates suggest” (Whitman and Rizzo 2007: 413).
Dear Readers, Colleagues and Friends,
From this number, Tafter Journal will enter in a new courage dimension. Even though, for strategic reasons, Monti&Taft will no longer be at the head of the journal, I will continue with pleasure and commitment in sustaining the evaluation activities of scientific contents of our present and future authors… Who will pick up the torch is Alfonso Casalini, an acute and headstrong researcher who collaborates from several years with Monti&Taft. Casalini will be in the saddle guaranteeing the continuity of the imprinting and of the inner objectives of Tafter Journal, but he will achieve this result by extending in a more international and a wider perspective the research activity. The future of our sector is in the hands of those women and men who are capable to look beyond the differences among academic disciplines. People who want to create an added value by founding their researches on the concrete needs of our society. Tafter Journal will continue in focusing on topics related to cultural and territorial development. In addition to the best practices, there will be paid more attention to concrete projects, in order to evaluate the activities of those organizations that have no choice but the innovation to overcome the difficulties and to create a reliable, scalable, and sustainable project over time.
Human interaction: the next digital revolution
In the digital age, why should we care about human interaction? The answer is neither simple nor obvious. The rise of new technologies has generated a flourishing debate about the pros and cons of a wide usage of the Internet, transforming the Web in the angels and demons’ epic battle of the 21st century. Today’s relevant role played by the Internet contributes to consider it a fundamental infrastructure of the economy, in the same way as water, electricity and mobility. The recent decision of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve strict new rules to govern broadband internet like a public utility, leaves a mark in the fight for the protection of net neutrality – i.e. the concept that all information and services should have equal access to the Internet. The huge amount of information that circulates across the online world has several implications in terms of economic activities, social challenges and cultural opportunities. Such a wide range of applications makes it difficult to identify a reliable measure of the size of the Internet economy.
Creative challenges
It may sound obvious: in order for creative products to conquer markets we need creativity; business creativity. In the last decade debates and books about creativity were multiplied, in the attempt at answering to crucial questions ranging from the definition of creativity to the identification of creative activities, from the measurement of the impact of creativity upon local economies to the needed design of public action in support of creative artists and organisations. In such a way, although a varied and lively discussion is always healthy, ‘creativity’ was added to ‘art’ and ‘culture’ as iconic labels generously including an extremely wide and heterogeneous realm of objects, actions and exchanges. Neither right nor wrong, it seems to be the clear symptom of an urgency reflecting the attention (and the obsession) for taxonomies and hierarchies needed in the serial economy. The arts and culture, and quite recently creativity, have been absorbed in a simple and rigid view whose map is a grid of models.
The role of culture in society
In an age of insecurity and inequality, the capacity of culture to generate positive impacts seems to be a certainty. Over the past years, an increasing number of studies have analysed the cultural and creative industries’ realm with the aim to demonstrate that cultural projects are good investments not only in terms of social benefits but also in terms of economic and financial returns. Given the relevance of culture to people and places, an interesting report – released in July 2014 – presents an original perspective about the measurable economic effects of sport and culture on local economies. This study carried out a systematic review of over 550 policy evaluations of major sporting and cultural events and facilities, from the UK and other OECD countries. Promoted by the “What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth (WWG), which is a collaboration between the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Centre for Cities and Arup, the study intends to help politicians and institutions “to have more informed debates and to improve policy making”.
Managing change and intimacy in the present
Heraclitus is often cited as the source of the quote, “The only constant in life is change.” This seems to ring true now, more than ever, as advances in technology rapidly change our cultures: the ways we communicate and express ourselves, the availability of information and resources, and even how we spend our time each day. Of course, change is not new and we are not the first to experience it. As Michele Trimarchi illustrates in “Staging the Change?” our ancestors’ lives were radically altered with technological advances in farming, machinery and communications systems. How people react to and manage these changes can define their identity, both in the present and their place in history, over time. Artists and arts consumers run the gamut in their response to change: many chase the avant-garde while others, like J.S. Bach, pursue perfection of one form long after their contemporaries have moved on to newer modes.
European Capitals of Culture: structures and infrastructures
Culture and territory. A pair with an ancient but actual flair. A binomial that a growing number of public managers choose as the asset to economic development and to increase the quality of life, like in Qatar, where culture has peeped out with a certain delay on the desks of the European Union. At first excluded from EU subjects and focuses, culture has been recognized only at the beginning of the 90s as a subsidiary competence, while on the contrary, it would have been the essence of the integration in the European project. As Jean Monnet, one of the fathers and founders of Europe stated, “If Europe has to be rebuilt, maybe we should start from culture”. The absence of a real and shared cultural project should have been inserted in the process of economic integration to reinforce the EU directives. From a different perspective, it is to say that the absence of an economic structure, deprived of its cultural infrastructure, is visible in the diffused phenomena of dissatisfaction towards the European institutions, in the many misunderstandings and in the race amongst member states.
Do the arts dream of society? The secret war of languages
Whenever I think, speak or write about the arts the crucial knot of my analysis is knowledge. Of course emotion is important, as well as some intellectual pride, but knowledge gives the flavour to the whole system. It is well rooted in the dramatic urgency that leads single creative artists to craft their works: if they were able to display their sentiments and views in an ordinary way – through plain spoken language, for example – they would not need any kind of expressive substitution, and their discourse should not need to rely upon powerful semantic channels able to convey it to its potential (even not desired) recipients. Knowledge is also important in the growth of creative tendencies, artistic and cultural groups, and all the social clusters advocating the rise and the consolidation of views, styles, techniques and all the methodological tools that can define creative waves. This normally occurs as a response to an insufficient conventional knowledge, in any case to push the threshold of language ahead. Whether it is only innovation (along the path) or revolution (against the path itself) its language wants to show, not without some surprise or even some repugnance, that the world needs new words, new concepts, possibly new truths.
Hidden identities of urban space – Le identità nascoste dello spazio urbano
Urban space, understood both as a physical place and as an intangible entity, represents the contemporary background par excellence, the preferred habitat of the species homo sapiens sapiens, the reference context of numerous studies and analyses on post-modern societies. The result of successive changes in the natural environment, large and small man-made agglomerations have been, and continue to be, object of multiple transformations that contribute to radically change the appearance and social dynamics of entire housing groups. If the original nucleus of what are now the great world metropolises, have seen their borders expand exponentially over time, to become variously assembled portions of territory that host millions of inhabitants from all over the world, rural contexts and minor centres – once the beating heart of a local economy – have become an endangered protected species, threatened in equal measure by abandonment, an ageing population and migratory phenomena involving them, with increasing intensity, younger and educated generations.
Eventful Cities: the relationship between city development and cultural events
In recent years slogans such as ‘festival city’ or ‘city of festivals’ have become common elements of the brand image of many cities. But why have events become so popular? What are the benefits of being ‘eventful’? What is the relationship between city development and cultural events? How do cities create, shape, manage and market events, and how can those events in turn shape the city, its spaces and its image? The creation and promotion of events such as festivals, shows, exhibitions, fairs and championships, have become a critical component of urban development strategy across the globe. No city believes it is too small or too complex to enter the market of planning and producing events, which have become central to processes of urban development and revitalisation, as cultural production becomes a major element of the urban economy. By adding an intangible component to the physical culture of the city, events provide a scenario in which human contacts are possible, however superficial, and there is the promise of communitas through the shared experience of ‘being there’.
Curiosity and contemplation: a geography of culture
Culture is certainly rooted in specific sites. Such a simple feature has been used, often overused or even abused in the attempt at drawing borderlines or highlighting local pride, emphasizing a sense of belonging based upon the refusal of strangers and – symmetrically – the exploitation of foreigners. Despite its evident failure territorial marketing, more a label than a tool, is still adopted as a sort of Troy horse aimed at attracting blockbuster visitors rather than curious and non-prejudicial travellers. A geography of culture can be drafted. Its ancestor is the inevitably euro-centric view that convinced Napoleon to bring an army of archaeologists in Egypt: the aim was the enormous collection of ancient manufacts to be hosted in the new cultural hub, Paris. In such a way the newly born institution of nation state could show a powerful endorsement; while kings were there by grace of God and will of the nation, the bourgeois democracies devoted at keeping the manufacturing economy alive could only rely upon the past, even a stolen past. The golden age needed the sacred authority of grandfathers.
Culture and development at a crossroads
The two articles featured in this issue of Tafter Journal by Mazuba Kapambwe and Johannis Tsoumas may inspire some further reflections on the difficult, ‘liquid’ relation between place, ideology and politics, which is so present in almost any debate on the role and use of culture in development. Both papers tell us something of the ways in which culture can serve local development. However, the later is basically about what can go wrong – unimaginative planning abiding hidden interests and business tactics, though the ‘missed opportunity’ from the Athens case is only an arguably minor example of a wider system failure which screams for change and inclusion in decision-making. The former discloses the emergence of a new paradigm, a ray of hope from the plentiful sorrow that plagues the developing world: in the breech of the global cultural economy, social innovation and protagonism has flourished from technology and has reached even the more backwards – but still connected – places.
What an effort “to enter out”! Closures and resistances in the cultural sector
“It might be easy for you, but you cannot imagine how difficult is for us to enter outside”. Few years ago, walking in the yards of Santa Maria Della Pietà, psychiatric hospital already closed, Thomas Lovanio, Franco Basaglia’s colleague, got these words from one of the guest of the hospital. He was referring to the difficulty of coming back into the city, a city that years ago had jailed and forgotten him. But now, just because someone have decided to close the psychiatric hospitals, this city has to absorb him again. The articles in this issue reminded me those words. How difficult is for our artistic and cultural system to shape open and innovative relations with the environment and the urban space, and to generate an innovative and transparent management. These difficulties are surely a limit to innovation and an obstacle to the cultural growth of our country. Urban studies have long observed that the most innovative systems are those capable of hybridizing different worlds.
The challenging walk to digitization
The massive use of digital tools and technological devices requests a serious reflection upon the role played by culture in our society. Obviously, the black and white scheme does not work any more in a context where the long-established opposition between the comfort of the well-known processes and the uncertainty of the future scenarios has been knocked down by the notion of complexity. The so-called “digital revolution” represents a multi faceted phenomenon that has enemies and supporters who fight a daily battle over culture’s value. The former is used to predict the end of traditional newspapers, books, movies, music and so on, describing a desolate landscape of ignorance with no space for cultural and creative products and practitioners. The latter imagines the coming of the golden age of cultural contents which finally will be open and accessible to all for free. In between these two extremes, a wide range of intermediate points of view make possible those small and big changes that – considered as a whole – contribute to the contemporary structure of our analogical and virtual communities.
The value of culture. Neverending debates need views and tools
Within the rich and complex vocabulary of culture the word value is certainly overused. It is always associated with culture, however we prefer to define it (which is already a challenging task). Even those who hate culture, since they fear it, say that it has no value. Even when conventional metaphors are adopted, describing the cultural galaxy with examples from the food system (it feeds, it must be preserved, it decays, it may lead to greedy action, etc.), the perception of its value is crucial. If we just observe the meaning that the debate gives to the concept of value as applied to culture we may find a few interesting views, often conventionally shared and accepted, able to reveal the eternal struggle between opposite factions: those who believe that culture is a ritual and hermetic realm where only the initiated have the right to speak (and to act), versus those who consider culture as normal as any other product, being therefore subject to simple economic norms and mechanisms. Exploring this controversial map, where culture is pulled and stretched to endorse much wider and visceral views, we discover that culture appears powerful in providing individuals (and sometimes communities) with some ethical strength.
Does Culture Need New Audiences? Absolutely Yes!
In a time of austerity, audience development represents a fundamental aspect which should be taken into account. In the traditional business sectors, the demand side has always played a key role in order to predict and satisfy a huge range of needs – sometimes real, but more often market-oriented. On the contrary, in the Italian cultural realm we are witnessing a growing gap between the supply of products and services and the demand side. An excessive self-referential cultural system, together with a low attention to cultural audience’s requests and desirers, are at the same time cause and effect of a static perception of cultural phenomena. As Lyn Gardner noted in a recent Guardian blog, cultural organisations are afraid of asking people what they really want, transforming the relationship with the audience into a boring marriage of convenience. In this respect, if cultural institutions will continue perceiving themselves as locked places specifically dedicated to the upper classes of society, they will be doomed to forget their primary functions such as education and research.
Future Culture: Back To Normality
Many things are occurring, quite often in the shadow, out of the places and groups where conventions are crafted and consolidated. The only possible reaction to changes and threats is action, not certainly discussion. Action requires thought and interpretation. But simply waiting for someone else’s action is wrong. Things will be never again as they used to be. A galaxy is in danger if it rejects evolution. Do we want to simply survive? It is time to examine the state of health of what we define culture, a complex set of objects, places, experiences and intuitions whose expansion and variety reject the conventional framework and require new views, effective tools, consistent approaches and versatile action. As in a war report, we can draft a list of the losses. Culture used to be based upon simple, powerful concepts and beliefs that are fading away. Culture, as we know it, was invented within the manufacturing economy: the enjoyment of the arts, an exercise old as humanity, has been standardised as the object of social and economic exchange. It has been special, almost ineffable, physically isolated and accessible only to the initiated. Now the pillars of that wisdom become progressively weaker.
The rise of the unconventional approaches
The complexity of the contemporary world, combined with the social needs of increasing portions of population, puts on the table new issues to address. In a context characterised by high degrees of competitiveness and few stocks of monetary and natural resources, enterprises and cultural organisations, in particular, have to face a growing number of challenges in order to survive. The global society’s state of art points out a huge variety of common weaknesses and structural threats that makes hard to imagine a better future. The current scenario speaks about museums at risk – considering, for example, the case of Detroit Institute of Arts which is very close to sell off its artworks to pay for a city’s general debt -; culture budget cuts from local authorities, which means that arts companies could lose their funding completely; downsizing plans, as it is happening to Bloomberg where the brand of cultural journalism is being shut down or to Australia’s major classical music magazine that may close; crisis in the humanities and social sciences, seen as “luxuries” or “a waste of time” and beaten by scientific faculties.
Culture and sustainability, this is the challenge – Cultura e sostenibilità, questa è la sfida
L’anno 2013 sta volgendo al termine e sull’ambito culturale nel nostro malandato paese si registrano segnali contraddittori e una discreta confusione, mentre altrove si lavora su ampi e assai impegnativi orizzonti e scenari. Gli articoli proposti in questo numero, e di cui si dirà più avanti, suscitano infatti un’istintiva riflessione sugli strumenti di analisi di cui (non) si dota il nostro legislatore e, di contro, evocano allo spirito l’encomiabile impegno di ricerca e metodologico che un organismo internazionale come l’Unesco sta portando avanti in questo periodo sul tema della relazione tra cultura e sviluppo sostenibile. The year 2013 is coming to an end and there are contradictory signs and a fair amount of confusion in our poor country, while elsewhere we are working on large and very demanding horizons and scenarios. The articles proposed in this issue, which will be discussed later, provoke an instinctive reflection on the tools of analysis that (does not) is provided by our legislator and, on the other hand, they evoke in spirit the commendable commitment to research and methodology that an international organization such as Unesco is carrying out in this period on the subject of the relationship between culture and sustainable development. Therefore the deadline on which Unesco is working, concerns the revision/update of the “Millennium Development Goals” which will take place in the course of 2015 and in which an attempt is being made to include one in which the role of culture is explicitly declared as an essential element of sustainable development. This is the context of the meeting animated by the Director General of Unesco, Irina Bokov, the work of the Hangzhou Conference and the large and very interesting space that is given to studies on the Unesco website, research and organizations that are developing methodologies of analysis and empirical research for the assessment of the impact of cultural supply chains in the dynamics of development.
Exploring the world between nostalgia and desire
In such a rapidly changing world certainties are strongly needed, and communities share a painful nostalgia for an idyllic past. While powerful people try to stop time a growing tribe of innovators and non-prejudicial individuals build a sort of network able to generate new views and to face new horizons. When the world fears change it means that its backbone is frail, and it cannot rely upon any consolidated principles or beliefs, therefore it can only protect the traditional ones. In the meantime new people accept the challenge and craft a new mankind. They only travel and explore, exchange intuitions and inspirations, ride donkeys, bring light luggage and read the stars to get oriented. Among the many outcomes of such an intensive and complex period we find the evolution of describing the world with maps where many various sites, routes and atmospheres were analysed and painted; and the evolution of books, in some decades transformed from manually written sheets to printed volumes. When they were developed not everybody felt at ease with these mysterious and unexpected objects.
Who is responsible for the success of the arts and culture sectors?
The arts are an essential part of life. This is a statement that can be evidenced in many ways, such as the important role the arts play in documenting history, helping people cope with difficult times, celebrating joyous occasions, expressing cultural or individual identity, and the arts are a key economic engine – employing hundreds of thousands and generating billions in revenues. In economic struggles of recent years, however, arts and culture activities have often suffered or been eliminated entirely. Some view the arts as a non-essential luxury that shouldn’t be afforded in hard times. I, like many readers of the Tafter Journal, will disagree with this sentiment. And I wonder, how can we make sure this attitude does not prevail? Who, ultimately, is responsible for the success of the arts and culture sectors? An informal poll of my colleagues produced answers such as: artists; arts and culture organizations; local, regional, or national governments; and even “people that care”.
The importance of being innovative
The 21st century will be remembered as the century of creativity and innovation: from performing arts to manufacturing, from education to trade finance, all economic sectors – both conventional and unconventional – need to be creative and innovative in order to succeed in the current global market. Often considered synonymous, the terms creativity and innovation are actually two very different concepts. Creativity is indeed a phenomenon of hybrid nature, which consists of the generation starting from scratch of products, processes or pathways related to intuitive mechanisms not easily replicated by mere imitation; innovation is instead a incremental phenomenon, which contributes decisively to the increase in the quality and value of a certain productive activity pursuing a path already taken and adding to the technical and economic profiles. Not taking such a semantic difference into account, it is possible to identify the capability of developing new ideas in order to fill social gaps as the common shared value of creativity and innovation.
Performative museums and new indexing, here you are culture 2.0, folks! – Musei performativi e nuove indicizzazioni, questa è cultura 2.0
Contemporary life is experiencing a deeper diffusion of the web and new digital technologies. These tools are gradually going to integrate and redefine a wide range of human experiences and the same cultural sector can be said to be invested by their dissemination, which has repeatedly made the test bench for the testing of different applications. In this context, there are many sides in which new digital technologies can operate: from widening access to information and artistic and cultural content to learning, from providing new tools to develop their creativity to building innovative and engaging fruition experiences. The use and documentation aimed at research and knowledge are two fields of great interest for the experimentation of new digital paradigms and the application of the latest technological tools. The potential to improve the user experience on both sides is remarkable. The articles by Vanessa Michielon and Andrea Cuna propose a reading of these two horizons, bringing to light emerging trends and real needs.
City and “cultural capital” – Città e “capitale culturale”
In the search for greater and better well-being for a society, an objective that economic science explicitly sets itself, while proposing recipes of varying success, an important role for culture emerges today. The idea emerges that, in the commitment to find other parameters to accompany the traditional gross domestic product (GDP) to measure not only material well-being but also intangible, one can usefully include the reference to “cultural capital”. This concept was introduced in the economic literature by David Throsby in 2001 to highlight how culture plays an important role for a qualitative superior socio-economic development of a territory, a big area, a circumscribed or urban center. In cultural capital coexist the tangible dimension of culture, consisting of works of art, artistic artefacts, museums, monuments and buildings of artistic and architectural value, for which the asset value is quite evident, and the intangible one deriving from the set of ideas of attitudes, symbols, beliefs, habits and customs, common or shared values and traditions of a society or group belonging to it.
Does culture deserve public funds? – La cultura merita i fondi pubblici?
The relationship between cultural activities and public funds is subject to an endless torment. As always, the hosts settle on opposite sides and to frighten the opponents adopt doomsday arguments. The most used adjective is ‘right’, which should find little citizenship in a system permeated by expressive freedom, project intuition, relational richness. Until the spectrum of Benedetto Croce continues to hover over Italian cultural things (and perhaps also European) we end up turning a technical question into an ethical dilemma. Exploring the varied case studies of cultural projects carried out with a variable combination of own and derived revenues, mostly from public sources, we begin to see the coordinates of paths not necessarily linear, and often fragile in the logical plant. The overabundance of public funds at all levels of government (starting from that of the European Union and ending on the municipal) has been over the years counterbalanced by the byzantine obsession to issue erga omnes banns, in order to dodge the charge of intelligence with the enemy. The effect has been to superimpose and contrast the map of formalities to the map of concrete actions, letting aseptic protocols and opaque negotiations coexist peacefully, doors full of stamps with the star and clogged corridors of winking relationships and agreeing agreements.
The dialogue that can save us – Il dialogo che ci può salvare
The involvement of citizens in the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage and the creation and management of a tourist offer adapted to the needs of an evolved demand, and an increasingly competitive market: these are topics on which attention has frequently been paid, as a combined element of the same strategic option, aimed at developing in our country forms of sustainable, widespread and lasting economic growth. To develop a strategy, however, you need to know the elements and dynamics at play and know how to see in perspective. To know we must study and to see in perspective we must be able to raise our gaze beyond our limited horizon. Of both these approaches are orphaned our institutions that govern the whole country, as well as those responsible for the government of culture and the tourist industry, but, since hope is the last to die, it is not said that sooner or later someone cannot realize that you can intervene, positively and effectively, in this regard.
The Cultural Dimension of Sustainability
It is time to find new ways of injecting culture into business strategy. Economic downturn is quickly spreading across the big Western democracies because of an interconnected and global production system, causing a negative impact in terms of growth, employment and social cohesion. The recent financial crisis also brings to light the structural limits of a development model based on the anachronistic equation between richness and well-being. In the contemporary economic system, companies have to face a huge variety of challenges: competitiveness, innovation, sustainable development, and social and environmental responsibilities in order to survive in a global market. According to the so-called “happiness paradox” and paraphrasing a famous expression, the right answer to the recent economic and financial crisis cannot be “production for production’s sake.” In a world overstocked with goods, we need to reverse our lens and start exploring and explaining the power of culture to business.
Why should we care about the arts?
Many things are disappearing from the political agenda: the emerging economic paradigm is totally ignored, as if nothing had happened in the most recent years showing the final breath of manufacturing capitalism; the new social complexities are feared, as if we could set the world’s clock back to the colonial age; the environment is considered only when it smells of business; the redistribution of roles and power in a society whose leading value is knowledge is viewed as a threat for the consolidated boxes in which individuals and groups are comfortable although mummified. In such a reluctancy against changes the arts and culture have been totally eliminated from any discussion, and almost no program takes them seriously. Many professionals still enjoy complaining about our permanent emergency: according to their oleographic view we are under siege by a horde of barbarians and nobody provides culture with adequate funds. The arts and culture still appear in the news and in the debate only when some masterpiece is overpaid in auctions, or some disaster occur. The discussion is still drawn with ethical colours, painting culture as a religion rather than a pleasure.
The reason why we want to deal with culture – Perchè vogliamo occuparci di cultura
The reason why we want to deal with culture The aim of epos is to give back to the cultural sector its ability to understand before others the changes taking place and to intercept well in advance the new trends that cross the economic systems, political and social, because the intuition of how culture can become innervated in the everyday cognitive tissue is already beyond the current vision. The contributions collected in this special issue of Tafter Journal don’t represent an unsuccessful attempt to replicate the content of the numerous studies and reports that have already illustrated in an excellent and in-depth the features and key components of the system cultural Italian. The articles presented are not intended to return a measure of the impact of the cultural sector on the national fabric, nor to provide a new taxonomy of cultural goods and activities, but to activate – through an intergenerational dialogue – a critical process leading towards a progressive improvement of the forms of governance and management of cultural heritage and activities, above all circumscribing questions and revealing possible answers.
Evolution or pathology of the species? Evoluzione o patologia della specie?
Can the etymology of the word “cretin” help us to propose some reflections on what is published in this issue of the Magazine, which deals with the theme of “creative” professions in Europe and the settlement of immigrants in the area of the Italian capital? Starting from an obsolete primary source, such as the Devoto-Oli vocabulary, we learn that the meaning is: “stupid, idiot” – Which is an index of stupidity (momentary or habitual). The same source defines cretinism as a deficiency of mental and physical development due to insufficient thyroid function. Finally, the thyroid gland is an endocrine gland, whose function consists in the production of iodate substances, which have stimulating effect on the whole body, influencing growth, metabolism, neuromuscular activity, the circulatory system. The parallel that we want to evoke in this way is that of an organization (in this case political and social) like the European one as a whole and, in particular the Italian one, which must pay maximum attention to the functioning of its “endocrine gland” whose essential chemical element, iodine, can be represented by the creativity and contribution of migrant populations.Partendo da una fonte primaria ormai desueta, quale il vocabolario Devoto-Oli, impariamo che il significato è quello di: “stupido, imbecille” – Che è indice di stupidità (momentanea o abituale). La stessa fonte definisce il cretinismo come una deficienza di sviluppo mentale e fisico per insufficienza della funzione tiroidea. La tiroide, infine, è una ghiandola endocrina, la cui funzione consiste nella produzione di sostanze iodate, che hanno efficacia stimolatrice su tutto l’organismo, influenzando l’accrescimento, il metabolismo, l’attività neuromuscolare, l’apparato circolatorio. Il parallelo che si vuole in questo modo evocare è quello di un corpo (in questo caso politico e sociale) come quello europeo nel suo complesso e, in particolare quello italiano, che deve porre la massima attenzione al funzionamento della propria “ghiandola endocrina”, il cui elemento chimico essenziale (iodio) può essere rappresentato dalla creatività e dall’apporto delle popolazioni migranti.
Diversity and critical sense – Diversità e senso critico
Diversity, including cultural diversity, is intrinsic to human beings. It’s not to be confused, however, with the need for belonging, which can become identity and which is declined in different ways – national, tribal, religious, sports, etc. -, and which, in turn, must not be confused with nationality or citizenship, that is belonging to a territorial entity, the modern State for example, which confers on a person the status of a citizen, with rights and duties. Diversity has always existed; as has always existed, in eternal dichotomy with it, the need for belonging. Probably, the most “modern” example in our western world of the resolution of this dichotomy is the roman world: perhaps there isn’t example of greater tolerance for diversity in all its forms despite the recognition of belonging to a collective entity. The necessity felt today, strongly, to theorize on cultural diversity and on the need for public policies to recognize or integrate it, could almost sometimes seem like a theoretical exercise in style.
Quale olio per la cultura?
A causa della crisi economica che serra non solo l’Italia ma anche molti dei paesi europei e non, e che ha portato e porterà a ridurre drasticamente le risorse destinate al sistema culturale è necessario, oggi più che mai, acuire l’ingegno e cercare di far fruttare al meglio ciò che si ha a disposizione. Per questo motivo è di fondamentale importanza adottare e saper utilizzare strumenti e strategie efficienti ed efficaci per favorire un profondo sviluppo economico, sociale e culturale dei territori e patrimoni italiani. Un elemento che, se non impedisce, sicuramente ostacola questo obiettivo è il ruolo spesso troppo superficiale degli economisti, tenuti lontano da una italianissima diffidenza dei conservatori e dirigenti della cultura nei confronti degli strumenti e delle metodologie proprie dei processi economico-aziendali.
Emerging Culture: Weak Labels vs. Strong Views
For many years culture has been too slow: static, self-celebrating, devoted to a club of presumed cultivated individuals; the convention used to consider culture as the source of spiritual value, therefore objective and eternal. Slow culture cannot evolve. Recently what we define culture has become too fast: spectacular, superficial, devoted to mass-tourists prepared to buy nights in hotels and meals in restaurants. Fast culture cares about income. In both cases labels count quite a lot; it is a matter of communication, either selective as before or ecumenical as after. Culture has been no more than a list of objects and facts, whose inclusion in the magic set strongly depended upon the ritual presence of such i-tems into museums, theatres and sites: the container gave power to the contents. This ended up to freeze culture as a homogeneous system, and to drain the audience into a cloned mass. Mummified culture was useful for its disneysation too, aiming its comfortable homogeneity at the attraction of a wider audience and at making some money.
KIZUNA, uniting people
Il Centro di ricerca Fo.Cu.S , Sapienza, Università di Roma ha organizzato il convegno “Ri-costruzioni” con l’obiettivo di evidenziare come gran parte del patrimonio storico italiano (in particolare quello dei piccoli centri storici) sia aggredito, ormai da anni, da eventi calamitosi che portano alla sua distruzione fisica e al connesso spaesamento delle comunità. Questo numero speciale di Tafter Journal raccoglie i paper presentati in occasione del convegno, che ha inteso affrontare l’argomento ad ampio spettro, sia dal punto di vista dei diversi tipi di disastri che provocano distruzioni e trasformazioni del territorio, quasi sempre irreversibili, sia dal punto di vista delle comunità coinvolte. La partecipazione di studiosi ed esperti di livello internazionale è finalizzata a guardare da angolazioni diverse, connesse alla specificità dei paesi, lo stesso problema: il disastro territoriale, la perdita della casa, lo spaesamento nei territori distrutti e la difficoltà di ricostruzione fisica e sociale, la scala territorialmente appropriata della ricostruzione.
The Sacred and the Vulgar
Last month Richard Florida released a new edition of his famously controversial book, “The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited”. Now that the business world is interested in creativity, the new edition could, potentially, outsell the first edition many times over. The recent popularity of creativity may come as a relief to some. Those that have been tirelessly advocating for the arts’ place in education can now more easily connect arts education to preparedness for entering the workforce. Cultural economists also benefit as more cities want metrics to prove the cultural vibrancy of their community. This edition of the Journal includes an article by Valentina Montalto, in which she describes new efforts to quantify the impact of creative industries and, importantly, the effects of policy; and an article by Julia Ferreira de Abreu, in which she describes steps an institution can take to become an integrated member of its community.
A cultural elsewhere
Many things are occurring in the cultural system. While scholars try to understand the features of the emerging paradigm, in the real world things simply happen: maybe the problems are quite the same as before, but the needs are certainly evolving. Culture is becoming central in the approach of so many individuals and groups and we can observe that, despite the frequent complaints generated by a fearful and static view, there is a shared perception of the unique and multi-dimensional impact of culture upon welfare and happiness. Rather than emphasizing the symbolic value of phenomena, the prevailing value is their actual ability to face and possibly solve problems. The articles on place branding by Ares Kalandides, and on crowdfunding by Chiara Spinelli address specific issues connected by a common orientation: a new conception of time and space needed to craft the emerging identity of contemporary society.
Godere e diffondere conoscenza e amore per il patrimonio culturale
Evocando un sagace slogan di qualche tempo fa del sempre benemerito FAI (Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano), che recitava più o meno così: “conservi ciò che ami, ami ciò che conosci”, si può dire che conoscenza, ri-conoscenza e affetto verso le proprie memorie sono alla base della catena del valore, che porta a conservare e tutelare beni spesso oggettivamente “inutili”, se visti con l’ottica dei frenetici ritmi e degli spietati canoni di un’esistenza come la nostra, votata al consumismo più esasperato. Un telefonino o un elettrodomestico rotto, oggi, non si ripara, si butta … (e se ne compra un altro!). Come si può essere legati, in famiglia, ad un oggetto di nessun valore, ma che è appartenuto ed è stato usato da un parente la cui memoria è cara, o autorevolmente riconosciuta, o riferibile a contesti storici che hanno contraddistinto epoche più o meno recenti, così si dovrebbe fare per il nostro patrimonio storico-culturale, avendone in primo luogo contezza dell’esistenza e, in secondo luogo, sapendogli attribuire valore.
Il mondo secondo Gauss: geo-localizzazione e riferimenti del territorio
Due temi, connessi alle infrastrutture sensoriali delle città, ci riconducono alla considerazione dell’importanza dei riferimenti su cui poggiano le rappresentazioni della realtà in cui viviamo. In una smart city, entità ancora non ben definita, ma fortemente percepita, voluta, promossa e analizzata negli ambienti della neo-geography, ma anche in via di commercializzazione da parte di alcune realtà industriali, si integra l’espressione artistica “migrante”, derivata dai flussi degli artisti d’Oltre-Europa, spesso difficilmente geo-localizzati e dispersi in spazi cittadini non consoni alle loro attività. Si rappresenta l’aspetto “polifonico” delle città utilizzando tecnologie geografiche per raffigurare particolari aspetti dell’umanità in sistemi di mappe pluridimensionali condivise, come ad esempio le Maps of Babel, che mirano a individuare schemi e modelli di comportamento alla scala urbana delle diverse etnìe che la abitano.
Sistemi generatori e organizzatori di cultura
Quali sono i sistemi generatori e organizzatori di cultura: questa è la domanda alla base dei due contributi, l’uno di Valeria Dell’Aquila, l’altro di Fabiana Lanfranconi, che suscitano riflessioni e spunti diversi ma interessanti. Il primo dei due contributi assume una prospettiva spesso trascurata, analizzando la spinta propulsiva “dal basso” o, se si preferisce, spontanea, in termini di iniziative ed eventi culturali. Il pretesto per approfondire il tema è la città di Torino e le sue politiche culturali degli ultimi anni che ne hanno cambiato pelle, favorendone la trasformazione da città industriale a luogo delle culture. Il secondo ha in comune con il primo il problema della governance culturale, sebbene con una prospettiva in questo caso pienamente istituzionale, inserendosi in un dibattito, oramai ricco e articolato, sul modello delle Fondazioni di Partecipazione come possibile sintesi tra settore pubblico e privato nel campo della gestione museale.
Non è un museo per tutti
La definizione ICOM di museo, elaborata durante l’Assemblea Generale di Seul, ormai risalente al 2004, fa emergere chiaramente le due funzioni primarie dell’istituzione: quella di conservare manufatti, oggetti, opere e quella di trasmettere cultura e diletto. Dalla definizione emerge anche la stretta connessione del museo con il tessuto sociale, trattandosi di un’istituzione al servizio della società e del suo sviluppo. Proprio da tale scopo essenziale consegue il grande problema dell’istituzione museale: le grandi trasformazioni economiche e valoriali che caratterizzano gli ultimi anni impongono al museo di definire la propria identità, non più come fluttuante e autoreferenziale, ma come qualcosa che “si fa carne” e diventa brand. Seppure molti ancora mostrino delle forti resistenze al riconoscimento dell’opportunità di un connubio tra management e cultura, in una relazione di continuo interscambio di elementi positivi tra questi due mondi apparentemente lontani, la questione della brand personality vanta già esempi di successo di pubblico formidabili, dimostrando come il museo possa comunicare perfettamente e in modo immediato la propria identità fatta di passato, presente e proiezione futura.
Orientamenti
Quando si parla di cultura si finisce per mettere a fuoco il concetto di identità. Sono proprio le cose (beni, attività, idee) senza identità o con elementi parziali e insufficienti a farci escludere che si tratti di cultura. Stiamo maneggiando un concetto complesso, evolutivo, che la paura e l’ignoranza legano soltanto al passato, come se l’identità dovesse essere protetta; al contrario, è la mancanza di prospettiva che taglia le ali all’identità, qualunque essa sia. Ora, anche senza addentrarci troppo nei delicati meandri del tema, si può capire quanto esso sia meritevole di attenzione se si prova a fare un elenco: la convenzione culturale vigente abbraccia cose esistenti e magari anche molto anziane, ma difficilmente si potrebbe negare la caratura culturale di “2001 Odissea nello spazio” o di “Blade Runner”, così come della world music o di altri prodotti culturali nati in laboratorio e non riferiti al passato.
What’s the “city” in the design and implementation of the European Capital of Culture? An open issue
The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) is a long-standing programme that invites visibility for a cultural mega-event that aims to highlight the richness and diversity of European cultures and the features they share, and also to promote greater mutual knowledge and understanding among Europe’s citizens. The set of papers in this special issue of Tafter Journal intends to highlight the relevance of different interpretations of space for cultural policy-making and urban policy design more broadly, as well as their economic, social and cultural implications. The call for papers critically focused the analysis and interpretation on the urban dimension included in the ECoC programme proposed by cities, as well as in the implemented projects.
La rivoluzione copernicana che aspettiamo da tempo
Mi fa piacere constatare che esistono giovani ricercatori che lavorano quotidianamente senza avere paura degli errori o dei limiti in cui necessariamente può incorrere chi si applica a tale attività e che questa costatazione mi ha generato una speranza. La speranza che, come è accaduto del tutto inaspettatamente nel Nord Africa quest’anno, anche da noi possa prima o poi avvenire una nuova rivoluzione copernicana, una “primavera della cultura”, in cui venga invertita la prospettiva dominante e la cultura venga finalmente riconosciuta come carburante e motore essenziale della nostra economia del futuro. Su questo fronte c’è ancora tutto fare. Basta analizzare il Piano Nazionale di Riforma (PNR), documento programmatico che è parte integrante del Documento di Economia e Finanza (DEF) nazionale, redatto secondo i format richiesti dall’Unione Europea, per rendersi conto di come l’ambito della cultura sia del tutto assente dall’orizzonte dei nostri governanti, secondo la prospettiva appena evocata. Io credo, invece, che, se si vogliono effettivamente raggiungere gli obiettivi indicati in tali documenti, sia necessario un rinnovamento sostanziale, condiviso da parte dei cittadini, che è in primo luogo una consapevolezza di ordine culturale delle sfide imposte dall’economia mondiale e nazionale.
L’Italia non è solo un “disastro”…
Recentemente sono stata a Lecce, per lavoro. Non vi ero mai stata prima. Alloggiata in un albergo “fuori le mura” sono arrivata in tarda notte. La mattina dopo mi sono avviata, a piedi, in centro. Dappprima mi è parso di trovarmi in una qualsiasi città moderna del meridione d’Italia ma poi, varcate le mura nei pressi del Castello Carlo V, con mio grande stupore, mi è parso di entrare nella scenografia di uno spettacolo teatrale o operistico. Quasi come in un sogno o in un film, la città si trasformava davanti a me: bellissima e pulita, la luce di prima mattina metteva in valore un patrimonio architettonico eccezionale. Con ancora piú stupore ho vissuto la città anche di pomeriggio e di notte: gente ovunque, movimento, traffico, locali affollatissimi… Ho capito di non essere in una città-museo ma in una città viva, in pieno fermento, nella quale i leccesi – ma non solo – si sono riappropriati appieno dello spazio pubblico cittadino: non solo di quello intra ma anche di quello extra muros dove palazzi, edifici, parchi, giardini, viali sono vissuti, frequentati e, addirittura, gestiti dalla cittadinanza.
Dove va la cultura? Un sestante per il futuro
Stiamo seppellendo un mondo che ci sembrava perfetto ed era soltanto anabolizzato. La cosa dura ormai da un poco, ma soltanto negli ultimi mesi è diventata talmente forte e intensa da non poter fare più finta di niente. E non diciamo, per favore, che a morire è la cultura: il terrore dei barbari, veri o presunti, è soltanto l’ennesimo alibi per tentare di far durare un paradigma che in fondo sembrava protettivo e comodo. Al contrario, la cultura è l’unica che sopravviverà, dopo essersi salvata da un sistema lungo più di due secoli che ha cercato in tutti i modi di appropriarsene dileggiandola e drammatizzandola. Generazioni brutali in fabbrica e in ufficio, facili all’adulterio e a molte altre nefandezze ma affascinate dalla possibilità di singhiozzare all’opera, di svenire nei musei, di commuoversi in un sito archeologico.
Se ha funzionato nel Bronx…
Quello che serve complessivamente al nostro Paese è senz’altro l’individuazione delle priorità delle politiche culturali su scala nazionale e la loro indispensabile modulazione particolare su scala regionale e locale, mantenendo, però il minimo comun denominatore della “rinascita” identitaria, sociale e, quindi, anche economica, come nel Bronx. Il benessere in cui siamo (fortunatamente) avviluppati e dall’altra parte il degrado del livello medio del dibattito politico a cui siamo costretti ad assistere da troppi anni hanno provocato un mix micidiale di indifferenza, individualismo e scetticismo sul fatto che qualcosa possa cambiare, ma qualche piccolo segnale di speranza di rinnovamento c’è e le testimonianze proposte nei contributi di Paolo Bertani e Marco Serino aiutano ad alimentarla.
Convention, atomi e bit
La recente riunione annuale della World Heritage Convention ha portato venticinque nuove nomination per i Siti Mondiali Unesco, ma anche molte polemiche, come quella della Tailandia che ha minacciato di denunciare la Convention poiché un suo sito, il Temple of Preah Vihear, non ha ancora ricevuto l’ambito riconoscimento. Avere un sito iscritto nella lista del Patrimonio Mondiale non comporta vantaggi economici ma è comunque un fatto di prestigio che molte istituzioni vogliono conquistare, cimentandosi per raggiungere l’ammissione che richiede il rispetto di una serie di complesse norme. L’Unesco ha anche una lista del Patrimonio a Rischio nella quale, l’essere inseriti, è considerato un discredito per l’istituzione o il Paese responsabile.
Ecosistemi culturali emergenti
Che la realtà stia cambiando pochi hanno il coraggio di negarlo. Siamo dentro un mutamento epocale: parte dalla fine conclamata del paradigma economico e sociale che ci ha confortati per oltre due secoli, passa attraverso nuove consapevolezze e responsabilità, approda su una griglia forse non del tutto inedita ma certamente solida, costruita su relazioni, qualità, molteplicità. Non mancano i nostalgici di un ordine che era certo, appagante e carico di promesse etiche, grazie al quale la borghesia si è autodefinita illuminata anche quando cominciava a non capire granché dell’evoluzione della propria specie. E poi, a ben guardare, i nostalgici più accaniti sono coloro che giocano in difesa di posizioni protette e garantite: i professionisti del settore culturale. Con buona pace di tutti, il mondo percorre una strada nuova e la direzione è indicata da prodotti creativi, beni di conoscenza, valori culturali; ma non possiamo appigliarci alle cose già successe.
I beni culturali immateriali. Ipotesi e prospettive di gestione
È curioso come nel Codice Urbani non ci sia alcun riferimento ai beni “immateriali”, se non in termini generici. Ne discende un’assenza sul piano normativo, colmata unicamente dalla Dichiarazione Unesco del 2003. Eppure il ruolo dei beni etnoantropologici nella cultura di un popolo è notevolissimo e pone, oggi più che mai, il grande problema della loro tutela e conservazione. Bisogna, e al più presto, elaborare delle strategie interpretative dei cambiamenti e riformulare, in una società come la nostra che è quella del multiculturalismo e di sempre più rapidi processi di ibridazione culturale, una sorta di medium dove collocare una lettura scientificamente corretta del patrimonio culturale immateriale che non significa patrimonio legato genericamente e superficialmente al passato, ma patrimonio vivo in ognuno di noi e radice profonda che alimenta il nostro presente.
Esercizi di democrazia tra partecipazione e creatività
L’articolo di Laura Cataldi ed Enrico Gargiulo ci porta dentro i cosiddetti “processi partecipativi”, con lo svelarne alcuni aspetti più problematici sui quali spesso si “scorre”, consapevolmente, per non inficiare la presunta portata politica di alcune operazioni, o inconsapevolmente, perché, in modo banale per inerzia o per troppo enfasi “democratica”, non si pone mente alle difficoltà e ai limiti che tali processi incontrano per una loro piena esplicazione. Dal canto suo, Valentina Montalto scrive di “creatività”. E’ un termine su cui occorre riflettere; la creatività nella cultura, le città creative, tutto poggia spesso su mode, anche se nuclei di attività veramente significativi e innovativi si stanno sviluppando, nel tentativo di superare le barriere delle piatte omologazioni. Si può essere creativi non solo negli ambiti della “cultura” (intesa, spesso, come qualcosa di immateriale immerso in un’aurea superiore) ma anche al tavolo di un Piano di Zona, toccando con mano i problemi quotidiani della gente e provando a dare risposte “originali”.
L’arte, il luogo e la sua assenza
Ai primi di gennaio ha chiuso a Stoccolma, al Moderna Museet, la Moderna Exhibition 2010, una mostra che ogni 4 anni fa il punto su cosa sia l’arte contemporanea svedese. Chi, come me, abbia visitato la mostra ha potuto seguire il pensiero dei curatori Fredrik Liew e Gertrud Sandqvist nel dare una risposta alle domande sul tipo di vita che oggi contrassegna il Paese, su come questa vita si rifletta nell’arte e su quale ruolo vi svolga l’artista contemporaneo. Le domande sono di per sé interessanti, e le opere dei 54 artisti selezionati sulla scena svedese erano lì a fornire la propria personale risposta. Ma molto più interessante è stato per me, che svedese non sono e che in Svezia ero casualmente e per la prima volta per un invito a intervenire a una conferenza sulla gestione sostenibile dei siti Patrimonio dell’Umanità dell’Unesco, leggere la sintesi posta all’ingresso della mostra,che nulla conteneva di specifico sulla Svezia. Aveva invece a che fare con lo straordinario modo in cui la produzione artistica contemporanea si intreccia con la vita di un luogo, un modo al tempo stesso inafferrabile e precisissimo. L’arte contemporanea di un luogo è, infatti, sia quella prodotta dagli artisti che in quel luogo vivono, ma che sono nati o cresciuti in qualunque altra parte del mondo, così come è arte contemporanea di quel luogo l’opera degli artisti che lì sono nati e che poi sono diventati cittadini del mondo. Oppure è opportuno fare una scelta tra una delle due visioni?
Innovazione e nostalgia
Nei momenti di crisi, l’avvocato barese di fiction, Guido Guerrieri riempie di pugni il suo sacco da boxe oppure gironzola in bicicletta per la sua città – una città che negli ultimi decenni si è trasformata e dove, oggi, coesistono quartieri residenziali, malfamati o marginali e quartieri che brulicano di locali dove bere e mangiare, leggere, ascoltare musica o fare due chiacchiere con un padrone, a volte stravagante, che ha importato usi dall’estero. L’articolo di Giambalvo e Lucido sulla recente trasformazione urbana di Palermo mi ha fatto pensare a Guerrieri, alla sua Bari; ma anche ad altre città, come Barcellona, da dove scrivo. Città in cui si sono attuati progetti di recupero patrimoniale dei centri storici per lottare contro il loro spopolamento, di risanamento di quartieri per contrastarne l’insalubrità o evitarvi la cristallizzazione di criminalità.
Cultura come strumento per una vita migliore
Se pensate di essere soddisfatti e realizzati dallo standard di vita consumistico proposto dai modelli di sviluppo vigenti, con tutto ciò che ne consegue in termini di costi sociali e ambientali, e pensate che le risposte ai problemi eventualmente rilevati siano identificabili in dottrine e formule eminentemente economico-finanziarie, non leggete questo numero della rivista, perché la prospettiva analizzata e le iniziative di cui si dà conto vanno nella direzione opposta. Gli articoli di Chiara Galloni e Filippo Fabbrica, infatti, assai diversi per stile e soggetto, manifestano una coerenza singolare con la mia personale visione del significato essenziale del lavoro e dell’attività in ambito culturale, come strumenti per costruire una vita migliore. Vita migliore significa, infatti, un mondo in cui siano ristabilite relazioni umane e sociali improntate al rispetto reciproco e delle regole indispensabili del vivere comune, in cui la velocità non sia sinonimo di superficialità, in cui la crescita economica non sia realizzata a scapito delle risorse naturali non rinnovabili.
Possiamo ancora permetterci di non ascoltare?
Abbiamo scelto di chiudere l’anno pubblicando due articoli che delineano, dal nostro punto di vista, un passaggio cardine per la comprensione delle modalità attraverso cui gli attuali strumenti operativi possono essere messi a disposizione del Terzo Settore, del non profit e del sociale. Ci teniamo a distinguere tali ambiti con grande attenzione, perché molti, anche tra gli operatori del comparto, tendono ad accomunarli e renderli sinonimi, quando in realtà non lo sono. Il percorso di lettura che vorremmo tracciare è quello dello sviluppo del Terzo Settore come mezzo per promuovere nella comunità locale, la “cultura del dare, come valore sociale esteso”. Lettura che noi riteniamo fondamentale e non più procrastinabile a causa dell’accentuarsi delle dinamiche di differenziazione della società, dinamiche che rendono necessario ripensare lo sviluppo dello Stato Sociale promuovendo la partecipazione e l’assunzione di responsabilità di una parte consistente della comunità.
Il gioco (analogico e digitale) della cultura
E’ tempo di leggerezza, finalmente. Un po’ di anni fa l’aveva presagito Italo Calvino, che proprio con la leggerezza intendeva aprire i suoi memos for the next millennium, le Norton Lectures impedite da una morte dispettosa. Ma nessuno ci aveva fatto davvero caso, almeno da noi, abituati a sopravvivere in un paese bizantino nelle forme, greve nei meccanismi, torvo nelle relazioni, privo di senso autocritico. (Questo lo pensava Flaiano, quando amaramente diceva: la situazione è grave ma non è seria). Che c’entra la cultura con la leggerezza? con il gioco? con la novità? Ancora qualche giorno fa un importante quotidiano italiano manifestava una feroce nostalgia per il passato, unica possibile culla della cultura. Senza radici, non c’è identità. A furia di pensarlo, e di proteggerci dietro questo dogma indimostrato ma comodo e rassicurante, abbiamo reso il paese come un gigantesco frigorifero senza cucina, un luogo nel quale si conserva tutto ma non ci si riesce a nutrire.
Patrimonio, tecnologie sociali e sfide della cultura della partecipazione
Gli utenti di tecnologie sociali come Twitter, Facebook e Flickr sono in costante aumento. Nuove forme di intendere e comunicare il significato e il valore delle nostre esperienze e delle nostre memorie si accompagnano alle interazioni quotidiane di milioni di persone. É la nascita di un nuovo senso di patrimonio: “non ufficiale”, idealmente “democratico” e fortemente legato alle culture di partecipazione promosse dalle tecnologie sociali.
La cultura del dato geografico per la salvaguardia del territorio
Negli ultimi anni la domanda dei consumatori per informazioni legate al dato geografico, geospatial, è salita alle stelle, basti pensare ad esempio ai sistemi di posizionamento GPS e alla loro integrazione con le mappe digitali che hanno portato alla ribalta dispositivi di navigazione portatili usati quotidianamente da milioni di persone. Le amministrazioni pubbliche e gli stessi politici fanno sempre più uso delle informazioni geospatial per produrre mappe delle pianure alluvionali, condurre i censimenti, mappare i pignoramenti o rispondere alle richieste per i rischi naturali come terremoti, incendi e alluvioni. Ai responsabili delle decisioni, questo tipo di dato può essere di grande aiuto per chiarire i problemi complessi che possono coinvolgere amministrazioni locali e centrali sulla gestione del territorio.
Senza riforma della pubblica amministrazione anche la partecipazione naufraga
Cresce la percezione dei limiti nell’uso delle risorse esauribili e la voglia di capire dove e come si prendono le decisioni che riguardano il nostro futuro. Un bisogno che spesso s’infrange nella giungla della pubblica amministrazione italiana. Non sempre, infatti, è agevole capire dove e come si decidono le trasformazioni delle città, del territorio e dell’ambiente in cui viviamo.
Cultura e sviluppo, provare per credere
Da tempo si assiste nel nostro Paese all’uso e (all’abuso) dell’accostamento del termine cultura a quello di sviluppo e non coerenti appaiono spesso le linee di intervento nazionale e locale che dovrebbero tradurre in politiche attive e virtuose tale binomio. E’ così che in tempi di crisi (che c’è per davvero) si ripropone il balletto, quello di cifre e polemiche sui tagli fatti con la scure per risparmiare ove possibile sulla spesa pubblica, colpendo, ovviamente, in primo luogo la cultura, intesa come costo piuttosto che come risorsa, senza produrre, però, un serio e documentato dibattito sui differenti e ampi valori economici che gli investimenti in cultura possono produrre.
Le potenzialità dei nuovi pubblici e delle tecnologie in campo culturale
I più attenti osservatori del settore culturale ci invitano da tempo a non sottovalutare le tendenze della società contemporanea destinate a produrre effetti evidenti e non facilmente prevedibili sia sulla produzione che sulla fruizione culturale. Mantenendo l’attenzione focalizzata sulle dinamiche relative alla fruizione, è indubbio che le nuove modalità di interazione offerte dalle tecnologie, la democratizzazione della conoscenza e l’avvento di nuove fasce di pubblico, sono trend che già permeano ed influenzano il panorama attuale.
Nuovi spazi per la cultura, nuovi protagonisti della cultura
Partendo da differenti prospettive di analisi, i contributi di Bruno Zambardino e Barbara Camocini propongono interessanti spunti di riflessioni sulla questione dell’adeguamento, o se si preferisce dell’innovazione, degli spazi contemporanei a servizio della cultura. I punti di vista degli autori, così come i temi sviluppati, sono naturalmente molto diversi tra loro, ma entrambi forniscono un prezioso contributo su questo tema.
Dal mondo delle icone al mondo della conoscenza
A che serve la cultura? La questione non è da poco, e se c’è un momento in cui è opportuno porla è proprio questo scomposto e bizzarro presente. Siamo cresciuti sotto il riparo di una cultura che – nella vulgata – fa del bene all’umanità, e adesso la ritroviamo claudicante, meticcia, contraddittoria. Ma non vale la pena spendere energie all’inseguimento dei laudatores temporis acti. Non c’è mai stata una società così tanto alfabetizzata come la nostra. Piuttosto, prendiamo atto che il ruolo della cultura cambia radicalmente, e che molti dei punti fermi del passato anche recente vanno quanto meno verificati, se non direttamente revocati in dubbio.
La vera emergenza è la fine della cultura della prevenzione
A che punto stiamo, davvero, con la protezione e l’utilizzo sociale del patrimonio culturale e dei parchi italiani? Questa la domanda sostanziale che sottintende i contributi di Marco Eramo e di Federica Gandolfi pubblicati in questo numero di Tafter Journal. Una domanda assolutamente pertinente in un paese abituato a declamare buoni propositi, a partire dalla Carta Costituzionale, e a negarli clamorosamente. Terremoti, frane, inondazioni, disastri ambientali, ci ricordano ciclicamente il “costo” umano ed economico delle nostre distrazioni e l’abbandono della cultura della “prevenzione” e della “manutenzione” a partire dal patrimonio pubblico e dal territorio.
Marchi culturali e territoriali
Concetti legati alla creazione, accumulazione e scambio di conoscenza sono diventati tipici dei filoni di ricerca atti ad indagare i fenomeni emergenti su scala territoriale. Sebbene sembrino essere ad una prima occhiata concetti antitetici, il territorio – essenza fisica, presente, tangibile – e la conoscenza, immateriale, dai contorni sfumati e priva di caratteristiche fisiche, assumono un senso proprio quando sono contestualizzati all’interno di un luogo, di un’area territoriale in cui si produce la scintilla della creatività.
Il nuovo Tafter Journal
Tafter Journal vi accompagnerà ogni mese con nuovi contributi nazionali ed internazionali, ed insieme saranno inaugurate diverse nuove sezioni che amplieranno l’offerta della testata. In un momento di grande difficoltà politica, il settore culturale – inteso nella sua accezione più ampia e fertile – registra una vitalità ignorata, attivando canali di produzione e di scambio innovativi e coinvolgenti, stimolando una crescente partecipazione diffusa ai temi e alle scelte culturali. Il nostro impegno, quindi, sarà rivolto, come è stato fino ad ora, a dare spazio ai contributi più interessanti della comunità scientifica, ma soprattutto agli operatori che ogni giorno si confrontano con i temi legati al territorio e alla sua valorizzazione. Il nostro occhio sarà sempre più puntato a casi e realtà internazionali: questa decisione è stata presa, non solo dalla nostra esigenza di porci su una dimensione europea, ma soprattutto perché in questi mesi abbiamo ricevuto una grande attenzione da parte della comunità scientifica internazionale.
I musei sono “servizi pubblici” di prossimità?
Al cittadino medio del nostro paese non è certo mancata nell’arco della propria vita la frequentazione di uffici di servizi pubblici, come quello postale o anagrafico. Fatte salve le eccezioni e le negligenze che ciascuno di noi può sempre enumerare, nel corso di questi ultimi vent’anni si è assistito ad un netto miglioramento […]
La forza delle comunità locali e del capitale umano
Credo si possa affermare con una certa tranquillità che il nostro futuro dipende dalla capacità che il Paese avrà di imprimere una svolta all’accrescimento della qualità del suo capitale umano. La situazione attuale della formazione, a tutti i livelli scolastici e universitari, è piuttosto critica per la carenze di risorse economiche e umane; oltretutto è critica a fianco della carenza quantitativa anche quella qualitativa. I sistemi di valutazione in Italia stentano ad affermarsi.
Le dimensioni della creazione di valore attraverso la cultura: distretti e responsabilità sociale di impresa
Due facce della stessa medaglia, due esempi di corto-circuito positivo tra mondo economico, cultura e dimensione territoriale. Da una parte il fenomeno del distretto culturale avviato in Canada, dall’altra il coinvolgimento delle imprese profit nel settore culturale. In entrambi i casi, interventi pratici che danno conto di come evolve la teoria quando diventa realtà.
(Ri)disegnare e (Ri)progettare città e territori: tra le urgenze di una catastrofe e il diletto di una Scuola estiva internazionale
Una catastrofe distruttiva e luttuosa e un incontro seminariale tra esperti di tutto il mondo che si confrontano sull’efficacia del design come strumento di crescita della comunità del territorio, due eventi assai distanti tra loro, eppure possibili occasioni di migliorare il nostro modo di stare al mondo e di progredire nella costruzione di civiltà. La prima, certo, mai auspicabile, ma di fatto accaduta, la seconda costruita con paziente lavoro tra ricercatori ansiosi di verificare ipotesi e approcci professionali, che allargano la propria sfera d’azione al disegno dei territori.
Socialmente coinvolti
L’impresa sociale è una delle recenti forme che l’impresa ha assunto negli ultimi anni. Analogamente a quanto succede nel caso dell’impresa culturale, essa sembra, ad un primo sguardo, assumere più che altro le sembianze di un ossimoro difficilmente comprensibile e spiegabile. Quanto succede di interessante nella pratica, codificata solo di recente, è la creazione di una sorta di modello messo in atto dalle tipiche forme di imprese sociale basato su un’azione imprenditoriale nella quale prevalgono trasferimenti monetari di tipo redistributivo, i quali riescono a mantenere l’efficacia e la sostenibilità dell’impresa stessa.
La cultura “integrata” alla socialità
Forme distrettuali avanzate, cultural district, processi decisionali partecipati, network sociali. Il massimo comune denominatore è, sia che si parli di sviluppo urbano, sia che si considerino le manifestazioni culturali, la partecipazione allargata e diffusa. Conviene però interrogarsi se e fino a che punto si tratti di soluzioni percorribili, e fino a quanto si rischi la retorica.
Complessità sociale e pluralismo culturale
Sulle pagine di Tafter Journal abbiamo affrontato più volte il tema del linguaggio e del racconto come elementi cardine ed indissolubili delle modificazioni di un territorio. Il compito che ci siamo dati è stato quello di porci di fronte alle tematiche dei luoghi e delle loro trasformazioni come osservatori attenti a descriverne i mutamenti. Il nostro impegno è più che mai, ora, imperniato ad un studio e ad una forte comprensione della complessità sociale e del pluralismo culturale della nostra società.
Cultura al governo! Il governo alla cultura!
Le pagine (elettroniche) di questa rivista hanno più volte richiamato la nostra attenzione sui temi della legislazione pertinente il patrimonio culturale e, da ultimo, ci propongono l’esperienza dell’Inghilterra in materia di sostenibilità ambientale della produzione culturale. Due facce di una stessa medaglia, che sembra, però, assumere un valore sempre più debole in un Paese come il nostro in cui le priorità politiche vengono con evidenza poste altrove. La contraddizione palese tra dettato Costituzionale (art.9) e gli scempi ambientali e le perdite di memorie storiche irripetibili, che hanno marcato il nostro passaggio da un’economia agricola a una economia industriale e terziaria nel sessantennio dal secondo dopoguerra ai giorni nostri, stanno ad indicarci chiaramente i valori di riferimento di coloro che ci hanno governato in questo periodo.
Ricercare per innovare. Nuovi strumenti e linguaggi per comunicare
Innovazione è la parola d’ordine alla quale a più riprese si fa ricorso per giustificare azioni ed interventi nel settore della cultura (e non). In questo senso, è il comparto dei musei luogo eletto di sperimentazione e di introduzione di normative ad hoc, strutture gestionali e nuove pratiche. Vale la pena seguire le “innovazioni” proposte, poiché l’ambito dei musei spesso funge da paradigma per l’intero settore culturale. Non a caso, infatti, l’ultima modifica proposta dal ministro dei Beni culturali, l’istituzione del super manager, direttore unico a cui è affidato il coordinamento generale di circa quattrocento strutture museali statali, che tante polemiche ha provocato, si concentra proprio sul funzionamento del sistema dei musei. Senza voler entrare nel merito della proposta, si sottolinea, però, quanto sia importante architettare sistemi di gestione che richiamino ad una reale efficacia di funzionamento del sistema.
Le ragioni della tutela
Difesa del paesaggio, del patrimonio storico, delle attività artistico-culturali, degli standard di vivibilità urbana, degli spazi pubblici, dell’ambiente minacciato da uno sviluppo quantitativo che non considera i limiti naturali delle risorse esauribili. Difesa. Questo il bollettino quotidiano dello scontro epocale, e del tutto inedito, tra natura, cultura e sviluppo. Uno scontro che vede contrapposte due ragioni: quella che identifica lo sviluppo con la crescita continua (di merci) e quella della tutela dell’ambiente e della cultura.
Grande e piccolo. I pilastri per riassegnare valore d’uso al patrimonio esistente
Da qualche tempo sono riprese sulla stampa le denunce relative al consumo di suolo e all’intensità delle nuove realizzazioni edilizie. Questo fenomeno, mettendo insieme numeri e quantità, appare massiccio. Stando a un recente articolo di Carlo Petrini su Repubblica, negli ultimi 15 anni sarebbero spariti in Italia più di 3 milioni di ettari di superfici libere con un’estensione maggiore del Lazio e dell’Abruzzo. Va, però, evidenziato che nel Paese ferve una significativa attività di riuso del patrimonio della città esistente, di quella più propriamente storica e di quella consolidata.
Il nome del territorio
La grana di un territorio, per dirla con Kevin Lynch, inteso quale mix delle varie modalità in cui i diversi elementi costitutivi di un insediamento – attività, persone, edifici – si affastellano nello spazio, richiama ad un senso del luogo al quale può essere associata un’immagine storica in grado di identificare quel luogo e solo quel luogo. Quando le pubbliche amministrazioni più lungimiranti attivano procedimenti, sistemi di programmazione, attività per supportare e veicolare il nome del contesto locale di appartenenza, si può assistere a casi di intervento particolarmente innovativi nella loro specifica impronta di intervento.
La capacitazione attraverso la creatività
Si fa un gran parlare di crescita, crescita intesa in termini economici, in termini di prodotto interno lordo, ci si interroga spesso anche sul valore da assegnare a questi indicatori, su quanto essi possano essere considerati affidabili per misurare il benessere dei cittadini. Il dibattito vede contrapposte le ragioni dei numeri, puramente basata sulla produzione di prodotti e servizi, con quelle della vivibilità, dell’accrescimento delle capacità dei singoli e, dunque, della comunità cui essi appartengono.
Strade verso una valorizzazione sostenibile
Rigenerare, favorire l’accesso, migliorare la qualità della vita, principi cardine degli interventi sugli ambienti urbani e metropolitani che si stanno affermando negli ultimi tempi con l’obiettivo di facilitare la visita e la permanenza dei turisti. I piccoli ed i grandi centri urbani sono accomunati dalla ricerca delle modalità migliori per attirare ed accogliere i nuovi turisti, i quali hanno sempre meno le sembianze dei turisti famelici ed improvvisati, ed assumono le sembianze di visitatori in punta di piedi, rispettosi della cultura e dell’anima delle città.
Allenare lo sguardo sul territorio
Allenare lo sguardo, insegnare la sensibilità nei confronti della comunità e del territorio, accrescere la consapevolezza degli abitanti attraverso l’uso di strumenti e chiavi di lettura inusuali: ecco cosa succede quando si utilizza il filmato video quale strumento di narrazione e di interpretazione del territorio. Il valore delle immagini diventa funzionale, in questo senso, all’attivazione di corto-circuiti comunicativi efficaci per esplicitare le dinamiche del territorio.
Narrazioni interattive e ricordi di comunità
I ricordi riflettono le nostre esperienze vitali ci fanno rammentare episodi, aneddoti, si intersecano alle nostre azioni e rafforzano l’immagine che abbiamo di noi come individui singoli, ma anche come appartenenti ad un luogo.
Esattamente come una foto o un’immagine, arricchita di supporti sonori e video, i supporti multi-mediali sono in grado di richiamare alla mente il contesto emotivo ricco e sfaccettato che caratterizza un luogo, amplificandone il senso per chi lo abita, lo sperimenta, lo vive.
Pratiche di ascolto attivo
Abstract
The communities, their different expressive potential, highlighted in the territorial cultures, interwoven with material and immaterial, everyday life and future expectations, draw non-linear trajectories, sometimes with critical outcomes – as regularly have reported the article of Ricci and Cabasino. However, the regenerative capacity that they express are unexpected and open to possibilities that bring changes.
The editorial illustrates the key elements of the articles included in the number of Tafter Journal, indicating how culture could assist the territorial development in different ways and highlighting how the quality of inter-organizational relationships plays a central role in this process.
Ricchi di territorio: puntare sulla coscienza civica
Rich of territory: working towards to a civic consciousness
By now, the territory has become a “dense” word, full of meanings, projects, expectations, not only for the town planners, which still frequent it, but also for economists and for cultural professionals. The territory is a mass of physical places, of communities that inhabit it and go through it, of forces and powerful potentialities, of tangible and intangible assets and economic and human resources. The editorial underlines the relevance of educational resources in the safeguarding the territory and how cultural skills could help in setting-up a civic consciousness.
