Venice World Observatory

Abstract

In the global contest every town looks for its own specialization and consequently it becomes part of a net of towns and cities in competition: Venice plays a marginal role inside the global economic net but it is one of the world capitals of culture and arts.Following Salvatore Settis’ example in his cultural Project for Mantua – finalized to coordinate the missions and the actions of local cultural institutions and characterized by the adoption of strategies confirming the town a centre of art and culture – the research is concentrated on the theme Venice a world observatory of contemporary art.Venice cultural system is characterized by a strong fragmentation of the initiatives and a consequent standardization of the offer in its territory. It is to be hoped a coordination action by cultural programming and planning, as happened in Mantua.Within the Prin activities 2006, that make a study of the role of contemporary art in the cultural programme, our research group has considered the growing importance of culture in the development and in the local policy. In this sense, the recent experience of Mantua – that will be briefly presented later – is an example of good practices regards to the coordination of programmes and actions planned by the different cultural institutions, finalized to an effective cultural resources mobilization to local development.Cultural programming and city planning become today central themes of socialterritorial academic debate, which recognizes the important role played by local creativity in development processes (Landry, 2000). Researching innovative solutions, industry creative specializations, free expression of individual or groups creativity are key aspects of territorial amalgam (Scott, 1988), essential condition to start local development processes oriented by cultural planning, in which art and culture promotion – like in Venice – represents one of development engines. After some brief considerations about the debate in creativity, it will be briefly shown the results of the research about planning tools and methods that emerge from the analysis of cultural planning experiences taking place in Europe and in USA and that could address, procedurally, the action of Venice and of the other Italian ‘creative cities.’ The research focuses on Venice as a world observatory of contemporary art: although Venice plays a marginal role inside global network, it is a relevant study-case due to the role that it has historically exerted in contemporary arts. In the second part of this paper, after the theoretical and methodological references, we will individuate the peculiar features of Venetian system of diffusion and promotion of contemporary arts, characterized by a general fragmentation of the initiatives and a replication of offer 3 contents. The numerous city cultural institutions operate in facts in a context devoid of a real programming and they are, then, oriented by different missions, followed by single strategies. The need of a shared programming at metropolitan scale emerges when we link Venice vocation as a place of production, diffusion and valorisation of contemporary arts to the perspectives of city development.Research activities have been performed in collaboration with: Diego Antonio Collovini, for the part about art policies by museums; Cristina Costanzo, for the analysis of the case of Mantova, here briefly presented; Maria Giovanna Fara for the analysis of the case of London Borough of Lewisham, here mentioned.The paper is the outcome of authors’ combined work; anyway, due to laws effects, paragraph 1.2, part 2 and part 3 about recommendations are to be ascribed to Antonino Porrello, while paragraphs 1.1 and 1.3 are to be ascribed to Enrico Tommarchi.Since 80s, the research about cultural planning in Anglo-Saxon countries and some pioneer experiences of urban requalification and revitalization founded upon cultural programming, enlighten the important role played by art and culture promotion – where culture is intended in its anthropological conception, that includes traditions, practices, shared values and the products generated by human intellect, from fine arts to sport events – to the regeneration of cities central areas (Bianchini et al., 1988) and in general to rethink the urban and its most critical forms (Kunzmann, 2004). The rising discipline of cultural planning sees in facts the possibility to orient local development by a strategic-led planning of context cultural resources. Cultural resources mobilization is acknowledged as an alternative way to start urban renewal processes (Porrello, 2007).The reference is to Saskia Sassen and to the research path that has been developed from her works.About these themes we formulated some considerations, especially about the role of small cities inside the network and the one of culture in local development. The effects of Globalization impact also on medium-small cities, apparently unlinked from global network, but able to exert an economic – firstly, but not only – influence on their territories.