Evaluating Participation and Entrepreneurship in the Cultural and Creative Sector: Experiences from Italy

This chapter analyses participative and entrepreneurial activities in the cultural and creative sector in Italy, by adopting a benchmarking approach. We present the case of a call for projects addressed to all actors working in the cultural sector by Lazio Region, regarding the promotion of the region’s cultural heritage. Projects are evaluated and graded by a team of experts: those scoring more than 70/100 points are included in the collection of “BuonePratiche”, a publication by the Regional Directorate for Culture. We propose a research design based on the following steps. First, we build the theoretical framework by defining the cultural and creative sector, and then we illustrate our chosen approach, i.e. evaluation in the cultural sector. Then, the case study regarding “BuonePratiche” is presented and analysed. Data was collected from the direct observation of the call for projects and subsequent evaluation by experts, and from accessing the database containing all projects and their scores. Results indicate that actors in the cultural sector prioritise the enhancement of cultural heritage over entrepreneurship: this may represent an opportunity for improvement by educating cultural players on combining entrepreneurship and culture. We also find that networking has a positive influence on achieving better scores.