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.
Actually, it doesn’t matter whether these are already existing assets or they still need to be implemented: what it matter is whether they could efficiently help territorial management or not.
In this number we present both an historic assets of territories (that today is not evaluated as it could be) and an ongoing project related to a younger and in some cases unstructured industry.
The first is the relation between the territory and the ecclesiastical cultural heritage, that represents an almost ubiquitous presence in Italian territory (as well as in other Countries) and that could contribute to the diversification of cultural proposal for both citizens and tourists.
The second is dedicated to the development of a common platform that shows to indie-games developers where, in Italy, they could find proper locations for their plots.
Despite their apparent diversity, both the articles intent to highlight the potentiality of a specific asset that already exists but that, for the authors, could increase in value when managed with a proper management approach.
Researchers and private companies, as well as public institutions, should be always attentive to new form of development. For each asset that we recognize, new form of development we find, and so we can contribute in creating a more inclusive and satisfied society.
Obviously, whether these assets could efficiently help in the construction of a more productive cultural offer it depends to the specificity of each city or region we’re working on, since there are not passe-partouts in our compart.
All we should do is taking into account that, despite trends and current fashions, culture is a great resource for the development and that every tool could help in creating a better territory, and that following the flow is not always the better choice.
