Articoli taggati con ‘social innovation’
Taranto: a Social Innovation Lab
Since many years European policies have acknowledged culture as a key factor for the development of cities and regions and as a pillar of innovation and social cohesion (ECIA 2014; EU 2013). Nonetheless, it is not yet clear how to measure the impacts of cultural initiatives, especially with respect to intangible aspects such as sense of belonging, social capital, empowerment, and quality of life in peripheral neighbourhoods and post-industrial cities. The evaluation of the impacts of cultural policies usually refers to economic indicators, such as the increase of employment and the wealth produced by the so called ‘Cultural and Creative Industries’ (CCI) (Symbola 2015; Ernst&Young 2014; KEA 2012), or the contribution of big events, such as the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) to urban regeneration (Garcia e Cox 2013; Palmer et al. 2012, Garcia et al. 2010; Johnson 2009). There are several examples of industrial cities that experienced an economic renaissance and a redefinition of their identity and image thanks to specific cultural policies. Liverpool, Turin, Bilbao, Marseille, Genk are well known cities where culture played a strategic role becoming a real economic sector and a pillar of the new development model. If the results in terms of wealth, attractiveness and tourism are more evident and measurable, it is far more difficult to understand the role of culture as an agent of local development processes. This implies the observation of phenomena when they are still emerging and thus cannot be labelled within traditional classification frameworks or measured by means of statistics. Accordingly, the number of new cultural and creative enterprises or the increase of tourists are not useful indicators to measure the innovative potential and social impact of such initiatives. Instead, it is crucial to map the spontaneous clustering dynamics bringing local actors to aggregate, to develop projects and to cooperate with institutions and public administrations (Comunian 2011). This means to investigate what happens in the backstage to identify the preconditions enabling or impeding the emerging and strengthening of a creative milieu.
Innovation, Opportunity and Social Entrepreneurship
What actually makes a project or a company accountable with needs of society? And how the NGO or culture-driven organization could possibly avoid waste of resources and strive to deliver more socially responsible outcomes?
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”.
Social Innovation and the Arts. Artists alone are not enough!
While social innovation begins to be broadly embraced by policy-makers and scholars in the context of healthcare and education, hardly any research has been done in the fields of the arts and culture (Mulgan et al., 2007). This paper aims at exploring what social innovation means, how to foster this type of innovation and the possible links between social innovation and the arts. The authors will address those issues via the case study of the Waag Society – Institute for art, science and technology in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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.
