Cultural heritage and creativity: a powerful driver for small and medium-sized urban centres

Speakers:

Diletta Paoletti, Consultant, University of Perugia
Antonella Pinna, Director, Umbria Region
Camila de Epalza Azqueta, Head of Sector, Basque Government

Moderator: Jimmy Jamar, Europa Nostra

The workshop "Cultural heritage and creativity: a powerful driver for small and medium-sized urban centres" addressed the importance of the cultural and creative sectors in Europe and of the EU funding as well. The speeches referred both to the overall/European context and to innovative regional approaches and best practices for small and medium-sized urban centres, concrete cases which are related to cultural heritage, social inclusion through culture and territorial development.
The event was organised by the University of Perugia's post-graduate course in “EU funding for Culture and Creativity” and the Regional Initiative for Culture and Creativity (RICC).

Diletta Paoletti (University of Perugia) described the cultural policy of the EU as a “strong” soft policy. Starting from some data about the CCs in Europe, she firstly illustrated the EU definition of CCs and the legal basis of EU cultural policy. Among the main features of the European policy dedicated to culture and creativity, she emphasised the following: 1) the vision: in the Eu context a comprehensive definition of culture has been adopted, enlarging the perimeter and bringing together some trends resulting from international reflection. 2) strategies: the entire set of policy documents, strategic documents and methods which the policy builds upon; 3) funding: the EU invests in culture and creativity, both in the framework of the Cohesion policy (shared management funds) and with EU funding programmes under the direct management of the European Commission. At the end of her speech, Diletta Paoletti briefly described two important fields of today's action for CCs: cultural welfare and cultural citizenship.

Antonella Pinna (Umbria Region) has then presented the second open call of 2022 to facilitate development through culture, called Museums and Cultural Welfare. The call is addressed to micro, small and medium-sized cultural enterprises and nonprofit organizations operating in the field of art therapy management, cultural heritage enhancement and promotion, cultural activities and any other artistic activities. The call provides for the implementation of selected projects through the use of regional funds. Today the aspiration is to transform this project from an experimental to a paradigm of social development and replicate it with European funds as part of Implementation Action 1.3.4 of the ERDF Program 2021-2027. The aim of the project is to encourage cultural workers to assume social responsibilities towards disadvantaged or vulnerable people and to enhance the relational capital of cultural organizations and networks among cultural workers.

Camila de Epalza Azqueta delved into the role of the Basque Country's creative and cultural industries ecosystem and key strategic initiatives. Through the use of some data, it was shown that the creative and cultural industries constitute 10.25% of enterprises in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country and 5.29% of total employment.
One success story involving a museum and thus the cultural sector is the transformation that the city of Bilbao has undergone since the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in 1997.
Of equal importance to the Basque government in promoting the creative and cultural industries is KsiGune, the Cluster for Cultural and Creative Industries in the Basque Country. Since 2020, this Cluster has been promoting and supporting the development of training projects based on cooperation between Higher Education centers and agents from the creative and cultural industries sectors.

After the speeches a debate with the audience took place.
At the end of the event, great satisfaction, from the speakers/organizers and from the public as well, was shown.