EVALUATING AND ENCOURAGING CULTURAL BEST PRACTICES: A CASE STUDY FROM ITALY

This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of benchmarking cultural projects and the difficulties of analysing the rate of innovation and originality from the Public administration’s perspective. This article presents the case of the “call for projects” held by Region Lazio, Italy, and addressed to all the active actors in the cultural sectors (local public administrations, private organizations, nonprofits, citizens’ associations etc.), asking them to submit their experiences and projects aimed at promoting the region’s cultural heritage. The paper focuses on the role of “BuonePratiche” (best practices award given by the Region) as a quality-oriented leverage in the cultural public policy of the area. The article allows to understand whether such evaluation techniques are effective and useful in encouraging both the implementation of cultural projects and their communication to the public administration, which indicates the existence of relationships between cultural actors and the public sector.