When culture becomes good business

These days I participated in the Purpose Forum in Pisa, organized by Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, in my capacity as director of the Carnival Lab Academy, bringing with me a reflection that stems from my daily work around Carnival, its skills, its crafts and its ability to generate value for the territory: the link between what we do, the communities to which we belong and the contribution we can make to the common good.

It is the idea of good enterprise, understood as a concrete ability to produce value for the community. Because a good enterprise can also be recognized by the effects it leaves around it, the quality of the relationships it builds, the skills it imparts, the trust it generates, and the way it participates in the life of the territory.

I think this reflection is also closely related to the cultural and creative industries. We are used to talking about it in terms of economic, tourism and cultural impact, attractiveness, spin-offs to the city, employment, development and identity of places. These are fundamental aspects, which deserve attention and appropriate tools for reading and measuring. There is, however, an equally important dimension, which concerns the capacity of culture to hold communities together, preserve knowledge, accompany the passage between generations and offer people tools to recognize themselves in a common history.
The Viareggio Carnival, from this point of view, is an extraordinary observatory. Behind its spectacular dimension there is a living system made up of artistic craftsmanship, design, stagecraft, papier-mâché, creativity, collective work, productive memory and popular participation. It is a heritage that belongs to the city’s history, but it can also speak with great force to the present, especially if it becomes an opportunity for training, innovation and the growth of new professionalism.

That is, a vision of the cultural and creative industry capable of transforming an identity heritage into a shared resource, generating work, training, civic sense and development rooted in the territory. Because the common good is not only what we inherit, but what we are capable of making alive and beautiful, accessible and useful for the future.