Visioni Urbane: The Basilicata Creative Scene

Slide 1: Visioni Urbane The Basilicata Creative Scene as Seen by a Traveller Alberto Cottica

Slide 3: Disclaimer The following is only a rough, oversimplified ● sketch of the Basilicata creative scene. However, it has been run before the community and approved by it VU's ideology: the market is not evil. It is a ● major locus for cultural communication. This does not necessarily represent the scene's generally accepted view Photos are courtesy of the Basilicata creatives ●

Slide 5: Who are the Basilicata creative people? Meetings and interviews (June-November ● 2007) A virally compiled database ● about 50 interviews, 90 “sightings” ● www.visioniurbanebasilicata.net/creativi-lucani/ ●

Slide 7: What do they do? 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Art Audio- Blog Cinema Informa- More than ICT Literature Music Theatre Unknown visual tion and one art at this time commu- form/other

Slide 9: Where are they?

Slide 11: More theater in Potenza?

Slide 13: More ICT/audiovisual/literature in Matera?

Slide 15: Good news Good attitude to cooperation ● Fairly good skills on organizing cultural events ● (some have been going on for many yaears) Strong ties between Basilicata creatives and ● high-profile artists (Abbado, Kiarostami...) Very strong ties with the land itself, seen as ● engine of the artistic experience The “returnees” move back to Basilicata, ● bringing fresh air, vision and relationships

Slide 17: Bad news difficulties to access cultural markets ● Most events are free: difficult to extract revenue – from attendees little involvement of private sponsors – insufficient demand analysis – little drive to reducing dependency from public – sector grants only very few art orgs have NOT quoted public – sector grants as a very important financial source cultural training activities are a little more private – demand driven

Slide 19: More bad news little scene awareness ● The relationships between Basilicata creatives ● and cultural movers and shakers are “point to point” Some of them have been opportunistic and ● driven essentially by the availability of public grants

Slide 21: What creatives are saying: There is no real cultural strategy for Basilicata ● There is no integration between the cultural and ● other policies (tourism, region marketing...) So, culture is not viewed as part of the region's ● strategy There is a shortage of venues/production ● spaces There is a shortage of certain key skills ●

Slide 23: Lucania's blogosphere: a resource In Basilicata blogs and online fora have ● become a locus for public debate Strongly connected between them and with the ● outside About 15 bloggers on the VU community, ● among which 2 of Italy's top 50 A bloggers association to “establish an offline ● presence”