Sorry, this post in Italian only. I review the medium term fallout from a generative regional policy I worked on in 2007-2009, wearing a Ministry of Economic development hat. The policy in question seems to have spawned quite a lot of interesting stuff. My tentative conclusion is that the ingredients of this success have very little to do with the amount of funding allocated, and are basically a function of an initial investment of attention for details, time, and freedom to explore alternative paths. Feel free to use automated translation if you are interested, and to get in touch with me if you want to learn more.

Era il 2007 quando ho iniziato a lavorare a Visioni Urbane, un progetto della Regione Basilicata che si proponeva di realizzare alcuni spazi per la cultura. Nel gruppo di lavoro rappresentavo il Ministero dello sviluppo economico; il mio compito era di spingere il progetto nella direzione di investire molto sulle competenze creative e imprenditoriali invece che nella costruzione di edifici.

I risultati di Visioni Urbane hanno superato le migliori previsioni. Il progetto – almeno per ora – ha avuto successo: la scena creativa lucana, in precedenza divisa da una cultura di sospetto reciproco, ha collaborato con generosità e competenza con la Regione per progettare una rete di nuovi centri per la cultura. Quattro di questi sono stati anche realizzati, non costruendo nuovi edifici ma recuperando edifici pubblici esistenti ma in decadenza e non utilizzati (in questo modo, circa 3 milioni di euro di nuovi investimenti in mattoni hanno messo a valore 10 milioni di euro di investimenti pubblici già effettuati), mentre un quinto, a causa di problemi strutturali insanabili, ha dovuto essere demolito ed è attualmente in corso di ricostruzione. La gestione di tutti e quattro i centri completati è stata messa a bando; in tre casi è già stata assegnata, mentre il quarto bando scade a gennaio. Due dei tre bandi già assegnati sono stati vinti da consorzi di associazioni e piccole imprese della comunità di creativi raccolta intorno al progetto.

Questi sono già ottimi risultati. Ma ancora più notevole è il fallout di Visioni Urbane: il piccolo gruppo di funzionari che lo ha condotto, e che risponde direttamente al Presidente della Regione, ha esteso l’approccio del progetto ad altre policies, parzialmente integrate con VU stesso. A quanto ne so io:

• la rete di coordinamento tra i centri immaginata per Visioni Urbane si è evoluta in una fondazione di comunità, partecipata dalle associazioni e le imprese della comunità creativa, da diversi enti locali e dalla Fondazione per il Sud (che funziona da acceleratore, perché raddoppia la dotazione finanziaria raccolta dagli altri soci). La comunità appoggia energicamente questa operazione.
• la linea di apertura a collaborazioni nazionali e internazionali di VU ha attecchito; i bandi per lo startup dei centri saranno aperti anche a soggetti esterni al territorio.
• il gruppo di VU è stato protagonista nel lanciare la candidatura di Matera a capitale europea della cultura nel 2019. La responsabile del progetto e il direttore vengono entrambi dall’esperienza di Visioni Urbane.
• la Basilicata ha costituito una film commission negli ultimi mesi del 2011. La comunità creativa ha chiesto più volte che il metodo molto partecipato di Visioni Urbane venisse applicato anche in quel caso. Non sono sicuro, però, che questo sia effettivamente accaduto.

Visioni Urbane è stato un progetto generativo. Nei primi tempi è stato necessario fare un investimento iniziale di attenzione, tempo e libertà. Attenzione ai dettagli, per imparare a fare fruttare al massimo ogni occasione e ogni euro di denaro pubblico; e tempo e libertà di azione per crescere, esplorare le alternative a disposizione, rimettere in discussione il proprio modo di pensare la policy (ne ho parlato nel mio libro). Questo ha ridotto, inizialmente, l’efficienza amministrativa misurata in velocità di spesa (ci abbiamo messo diversi anni a spendere quattro milioni di euro), ma ha lasciato all’amministrazione nuovi strumenti per analizzare e per fare. In tempi di crisi e di risorse calanti, è un pensiero che mi dà speranza.

Kublai Camp 2011 is happening today; it is the third of its kind and the first one that I can’t take part in.. My friend Tito Bianchi at the Ministry of Economic Development asked me to make a short video to tell the people convened how I would envision Kublai’s future. I am happy to oblige: in the video above (Italian language) I outline three scenarios, two of which I would approve of and one I would not. They are:

1. shutdown at the end the next cycle and move on. We have gained a lot of useful knowledge we can deploy elsewhere, and that was the whole point of the exercise.
2. devolution of the project to its community, maintaining its public mission. This would be an extraordinary outcome: a public policy so appreciated that its beneficiaries step in to do the heavy lifting themselves. But it is a tricky one to pull off, and at this point in time I deem it unlikely to happen for reasons I explain in the video.
3. entrenchment and drift of Kublai into a kind of business planning online help desk, feeding into the plethora of contests for startups, creative projects etcetera. I think this outcome would be tired and – in the context of Italy’s constitutional architecture – not suited to a central government agency. I think it should be avoided.

I am curious to see what happens. More info on Kublai here.

Last week I had the good fortune of meeting three public servants of three different countries, each with a very high intellectual profile. Each of them is a point of reference in his or her field.

On Wednesday I was with Geoff Mulgan, British, founder of Demos, CEO at the Young Foundation, appointed to lead NESTA. He comes from a communication background. In the UK he is a star, having served in top posts under the Blair administration; and it seems he is about to becom one in Europe, too, because his voice is heard with attention in Bruxelles on the issue of social innovation, just as the EU is making investment decisions in this field. He is committed to designing Prime Minister Cameron’s Big Society – a controversial, yet carefully studied model. That’s not surprising, because it is the only one that promises a solution for defending the European welfare state in a globalized, finance-dominated world..

That same evening I had dinner with Fabrizio Barca, Italian, director general of the Ministry of the Economy and advisor to the European Commission for the reform of regional policy. He comes from an economics background. He got to be in government coming from Banca d’Italia, together with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (Ciampi is possibly the best statesman in the history of Italy after unity: a partisan turned central banker turned Prime Minister and then Minister of Treasury, who then went on to be one of the most popular Presidents ever). Ciampi and Barca shared an exceptional experience of institution building, recruiting a group of technicians with international experience to work on the issue of development of lagging Mezzogiorno. The result was the National Strategic Framework, the smartest, noblest policy document I have ever read. Fabrizio has an incredibly wide strategic outlook in which he subsumes everything from scientific papers to policy documents and his own conversations with civil society leaders, and is ultrafast (he answers his mail in minutes, and his colleagues say it is almost impossible to stay ahead of him). He is a leading authority on the issue of economic development.

I spent Thursday with Beth Noveck, American, founder of Peer to Patent, former deputy CTO at the White House, about to start a new appointment with the British government on OpenGov. She comes from a law background. Of the three, Beth is the one I feel I know best (we have been in conversation for a year, and she helped me with my book), and the one I am closest to in terms of interests. We both care about the collaborations between citizens and public authorities, and she is a world class expert in this field. Unlike the other two, she is above all an academic.

My take home from meeting these people is the usual one, always worth repeating: I have still much, much, much to learn. And learn I will.

An interesting place I visited recently is 798 Art District in Beijing. It is a large industrial complex for the manufacturing of electronic components (with transistors especially important) built in the Fifties by the Chinese government in cooperation with their East German counterparts. With production discontinued in most plants starting in the Eighties, 798 has known a second life after 1995 (or 2000, as other sources say), when artists and galleries started reclaiming the abandoned buildings, attracted by the abundant availability of cheap space and by the Bauhaus-style aesthetics dictated by German engineers. In the early Noughties the district turned into an art utopia: a fascinating place where artists and gallerists live and work side by side with workers of those factories in the complex that are still churning out product. There is so much space (it is as large as a small town) that people could and did engage in oh-what-the-hell activities, and scattered the landscape with ironic Mao statues, ceramics dynosaurs, ten-meters-tall manga style warrior robots build of pieces scavenged from old cars (my favourite); and hosting performances, raves, live concerts, film festivals like New-York based Tribeca. Today 798 is by far the most important – also in an economic sense – powerhouse of the fledgling Chinese contemporary art scene. And that means business: in the course of 2007 artist Zhang Xiaogang alone sold paintings for US$ 57 million. Obviously, trendy cafés, restaurants and shops with a bohemian penchant mushroomed.

It would be fascinating to study in depth, especially now that the Visioni Urbane experiment draws to its end, with the creative spaces being delivered and turned over to the coalition of firms and associations that will run them. For now I’m going to take a few notes, based on the visit and some reading.

• Aesthetics matter. As an economist, I always thought that artists like derelict industrial spaces because they are cheap, and, being aesthetically neutral, they can be made into whatever they want, from aseptic lab to steampunk cave. But no: the statements I have collected agree that 798 attracted artists for its unique looks. To be sure, the care put in designing it by the Germans is unparalleled in contemporary industrial architecture in China (just look at the sawtooth profile of the roofs, or the large windows facing north to maximize shadowless lighting)
• Organic growth just does a better job. 798 is home to a large variety of works and organizations, but at the same time it displays a very clear aesthetic and socioeconomic coherence. It feels like a coral reef, with various species fighting and cooperating and exchanging matter and information in an endless coevolutionary dance. Top-down planning dooes not stand a chance to achieve anything like this. This is not to say that there can be no role for the policy maker in the making of an art district, but it does recommend it takes on the role of starting the evolutionary engine and monitoring thatthe system moves in the general right direction, letting it work out its own layout. An example can be found in the story of 798 itself: the event that spawned the district’s second life is the temporary occupation of one of the dismissed factories by the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. The Academy only needed cheap workshop space while it relocated to a new campus, but the event did bring many artists and art students to visit the area. The dean of the Faculty of sculpure, Sui Jianguo, fascinated by the space, relocated his personal studio to 798, and he was among the first established artists to make the move.
• The economic success of an art district endangers its long-term credibility and sustainability. As corporations looking to be cool start to organize marketing events in 798, many artists lament a rapid rise in rental costs and fear excessive commercialization. To be sure, many of the pieces you’ll find in the maze of galleries have a disquieting tendency to rework in different contexts the iconography of Chinese communism: Mao statues, little red books and red stars. Why? Because (generally more sophisticated) references to Chinese communism are to be found in the work of the most successful and wealthy artists, like Zhang Fanzhi or the already quoted Zhang Xiaogang. Pressure on rental costs, of course, increases the incentive to imitation to make a quick buck, and takes away the mental space for artists and gallerists to develop new products. Many observers fear the collapse of the ecosystem now in place and the transformation of 798 into a sort of shopping mall of Chinese contemporary art.
• The district’s economic success, while in a sense too great with respect to the needs of artistic creation, is too small with respect to protect 798 from the real estate market. The area, once peripheral, is today on the strategic corridor between the city centre and its new international airport, and pressure is mounting to just bulldoze the whole thing and develop it to satisfy the housing demands of a 13 million inhabitants (and counting) city. The owner of 798 is Sevenstar, a State-owned corporation established in 2001 with what remained of the old Mao-era complex; it has responsibility for managing the buildings. There’s a clear governance problem here: the corporation’s mandate is declined in purely financial terms, so its management’s duty is to maximize financial return, without any regard for cultural significance. The alliance between it and the artists lasted only as long as the latter were the only people willing to pay a rent, however low, to occupy the derelict factories: as soon as the space became interesting for financially stronger entities, the tensions between artists and the corporation mounted. In 2005 art institutions in Beijing were able to persuade the municipal government that – in the light of the coming 2008 Olympics – the city needed a contemporary art showcase more than it needed new housing. The following year, authorities designated the area the first-ever “centralized district for cultural creativity”. No bulldozing: instead, roads were repaved, street lighting enhanced, and gentrification (and rents) sped up.

This is China: the government always has the last word. While it’s hard not to applaud its decision, the economist is left wondering whether market economy is doomed to keep art between the rock of excessive commercialization and the hard place of insufficient profitability. And this, I am afraid, amounts to saying that art economics – once stripped of explicit and hidden public subsidies and wishful thinking – is a delusional exercise, and that art and market can live in symbiosis in the short run, but when all has been said and done are incompatible.

The Visioni Urbane project – just now entering a new phase – taught me a lot. Our problem, in a nutshell, was this: a legacy decision bound the Basilicata regional administration to spend €4.3 million to build “creative workspaces”. These funds were to be “one shot” and earmarked for capital expenditure: we were to spend them in bricks-and-mortar at the beginning of the process, and then there would be no more. There were no ongoing resources for activities to take place therein. How to prevent creative workspaces closing doors immediately after their launch?

The answer could only be “by turning to the market”. The workspaces would become a platform for Basilicata creatives to invent, produce and bring to cultural market, products, products that could attract paying customers. Fine. But what products? Film? Music? And which kinds of film and music? Who would be their customers? How to produce them? Through which channels to distribute them? It was crystal clear that the small advisory group put together by the central government and the regional administration had no chance of solving the puzzle on its own. The only way of doing it was to mobilize the fine-grained knowledge embedded in the Basilicata creatives themselves.

The issue was not to “do research” to extract this knowledge form local creatives. Culture in Basilicata is predominantly financed by the public sector, a common situation in Italy. The market coincides with the local politician who greenlights the project. Local creative people, therefore, have almost no experience of markets: they actually tend to be scared of them. We needed a process that would produce at the same time the awareness of both the problem (public sector funding of cultural activities is scarce and unreliable) and the possible solutions (thinking up cultural products that are “hot”, that “people want”). Perception of the problem without its solutions would produce a defensive reaction, whereas we needed creatives to be optimistic and adventurous enough to innovate.

To get creatives fully involved we needed to treat them as equals, as a subject – as opposed to the target – of policy. So we structured Visioni Urbane as a conversation, much in the Cluetrain Manifesto spirit. And a solution – quite sophisticated, hand-on and utterly unconceivable at the beginning of the process – emerged. I tell the tale in a short essay, Policy as conversation,, to be presented at eChallenges 2008, in Stockholm, on October 24th. You can get it here.