Cultural Innovation and Local development: Matera as a Cultural District

Is culture a strategic tool for local development? Cultural resources do foster physical, economic and social renewal? We have attempted to answer yes through the analysis of the Matera 2019 cultural capital project, using some fundamental drivers like: quality of cultural supply, development of local talent and attraction of external talent, capability building, education of the local community and internal or external networking. The Matera case study configure an extremely articulated aggregation of Universities, Research Centres, Associations and Enterprise and, more importantly, a strong social mobilitation in the field of cultural production. This aspect occur in the wide use of open data and in the networking of cultural circles, films archives as well as history archives with the aim to invent and re-invent forms of collaborative memory. Above all here culture is a system of coordination among local actors within a social learning activity.