PROJECT

The project “Cultural Welfare Ecosystems for Wellbeing: mapping semantics and practices, co-designing tools and raising awareness” is funded by the 2022 PNRR call for research projects on the practices and semantics of Cultural Welfare.

The project activities are organized around two key objectives.

On the one hand, the project aims to enrich the debate on the relationship between art and wellbeing, focusing on the emerging concept of cultural welfare. In particular, it seeks to integrate and reformulate the salutogenic approach from the perspective of cultural welfare ecosystems capable of positively influencing ways of living, inhabiting, producing, consuming, and organizing.

On the other hand, it is dedicated to expanding knowledge and awareness of the potential and challenges of cultural welfare practices through data collection and the promotion of an active and participatory knowledge-production process at the local level.

The combination of these two main research strands is intended to support the development of integrated, place-based policies aimed at promoting inclusive territorial growth.

Lenses for Defining Cultural Welfare Ecosystems

• Cultural participation, linked to the development of cultural capabilities, which are shaped by inequalities in terms of material, cognitive, and social resources.
• Social innovation, which addresses societal needs by improving social relations and fostering empowerment. Key aspects of social innovation include the role of the territory as a space where new social practices can emerge, participation as a process of knowledge production, and collaboration-based partnerships involving a variety of stakeholders.
• Cultural value, and its relationship with non-economic categories and "Institutional Value," which refers to how organizations behave when interacting with citizens and their territories, as well as how they contribute to local community growth and resilience.

Project Phases

• Background Research:
  Aimed at enriching the understanding of cultural welfare through a review of academic literature and identifying social semantics at the European Union level by analyzing policy documents and reports on the relationship between art/culture and wellbeing.
  
• Mapping Cultural Welfare Projects in Italy:
  Focused on analyzing the attributes and challenges of cultural welfare initiatives in order to provide a comprehensive and in-depth overview of the Italian context.
  
• Community-Based Knowledge Creation in Local Territories:
  Conducted within the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions through action research in collaboration with local stakeholders. This phase aims to foster shared learning and knowledge exchange about developing cultural welfare ecosystems and inclusive monitoring tools.
  
• National and International Dissemination:
  Promoting the Italian debate on cultural welfare on a broader scale throughout the project’s duration.