White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 11important for the success of adestination or a cultural touristattraction.Lastly, we must remember the two-wayrelationship between tourism andarchitecture. Over the centuries, manyarchitectural works have become touristattractions and since the late 19thcentury tourism has driven architecturalrenewal and development in technicaland aesthetic terms: examples are theeclectic style of the first grand hotels,the creation of bathing establishments(e.g. the Stabilimento Roma at Ostiadesigned by Giovan Battista Milani) andspa centres such as Montecatini.On this subject, it is worth mentioning arecent trend in the hotel sector, stronglylinked to the themes of creativity:designer hotels, full-blown art placeswhich have revitalised the design ofhotel facilities, changing customers’traditional perception of the function ofhotels as they become placescommunicating not only a style but alsoindividual brands.11.4 The economic impact ofinstitutions and culturaleventsCultural events: from a burden forthe collectivity to productiveresources and development driverInstitutions and cultural events make animportant contribution to the economicdevelopment of their local areas. Insome cases, the success of culturalevents, from high-standard exhibitionsto cultural festivals, radically change theperception of places, the sense of beingin and belonging to a community, andbring spin-offs in communications: howmany hundreds of thousands of youreuro would local authorities financingmajor successful events have had to payto buy the kind of space the media havededicated to their local areas in recentyears thanks to the events?From this point of view, impactanalyses are often used to assess culturalprojects ex-ante and ex-post. Theyprovide decision-makers, financiers andorganisers with tools for measuring,communicating and negotiating, and arecapable of persuading public and privatestakeholders who may understandablybe sceptical when faced with blithelypresented figures. Indeed there is ageneral situation, even outside Italy, inwhich the rhetoric of figures,increasingly given randomly, carries theday over any other form of sensiblereasoning. In fact the diffusion of the“festival” format or “exhibition” as acommercial product has degenerated topathological levels.Here we must seek to understand if the– actually rather few – successes arelinked to factors not usually found inother geographical contexts (this is thecurrent writer’s opinion) or if the sameformats can be used in other situations,acknowledging that cultural events arethoroughgoing “packaged products”.What is urgently required is productengineering to filter out from thenational scene the large quantity ofimitations which bombard and confusethe public, whose tastes should at leastbe better understood before beingcriticised.In Italy, in fact, the debate on culturalevents has taken on polemic tones dueWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 263