Economia creativa e management del progetto nell'esperienza del Distretto Culturale dell'Oltrepò Mantovano

Radical revision and the cognitive renewal of the values which form the fundamental reasons of protection can turn cultural heritage into the driving force for developing a region. If we substantiate the paradigms of protection in the relationship that cultural heritage builds with a territory and its inhabitants, we could consider protection as a safeguard of co-evolutive potentiality of heritage itself, overcoming the old logic of denial of possible transformations. This approach outlines new and more positive scenarios in which heritage becomes catalyst for systemic and complex multidimensional process of production. Because cultural heritage, as any limited resource, requires measures of enhancement able to operate a controlled transformation without compromising its essence, the culture of projecting plays a strategic role for its subsistence and revaluation. With culture of projecting we mean a set of practices organisable in five steps: • Careful observation of reality on which action is taken; • Construction of interpretative models sufficiently simplified to treat operatively; • Formulation of hypotheses of model transformation; • Evaluation of the results (positive and negative); • Transfer of the changes to the simulated reality. Each step involves the fields of knowledge, practices, supporting technologies and control systems that, taken together, constitute a complex multidimensional and long-term design process. The paper describes the experience of participatory planning gained in the Cultural District Oltrepò Mantovano, conducted also through the involvement of practice and creative communities as well as the application of triggering models of bottom-up, which led to the creation of new businesses.