8 Impact Areas

The area of social cohesion is one of the most relevant of course: as it is well expressed in the UNESCO document “The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions”, the cultural and creative industries have become essential for inclusive economic growth in a continent in which diversity is an intrinsic feature such as Europe. The Convention provides a new framework for informed, transparent and participatory systems of governance for culture, and it is clear how active participation in cultural content creation and sharing can lead to meaningful connections with other users. In this process, digital open access and platforms widely expand possibilities.

Empirical evidence shows, for instance, that investment in some cultural projects that facilitate the cultural active participation of young people at risk of social deviance, has a significant impact in terms of reducing or preventing juvenile delinquency, as an effective tool for vocational guidance, or as a useful factor in resolving inter-ethnic tensions (Sacco & Teti, 2017). Indeed, digital cultural heritage activities give the chance for partaking in groups of different people, that may come from all over the world as now happens online; these types of opportunities provide individuals and groups with new skills to conceptualise and understand diversity, and to shift their behaviour toward an open-minded curiosity, overcoming negative social stereotypes, often linked to ethnicity, beliefs, gender, body shape, and amatonormativity. It generates a new sense of belonging to an intersectional global community (Deindl et al., 2016; Anderson et al., 2017). The proactive aspect of participation (for example, playing an instrument and not just listening to music) has a strong positive differential impact here. It is not only a matter of discovering new possibilities for personal development but also experiencing a new sense of belonging to an intersectional global community, an impact that can be ground-breaking in terms of social cohesion and collective identity (Deindl et al., 2016; Anderson et al., 2017).