The role of the private actor in cultural regeneration: hybridizing cultural heritage with creativity in the city

Building on the most relevant literature on cultural regeneration and creative cities, this paper provides an integrated framework to investigate the factors exploited by private actors to stimulate the hybridization of urban cultural heritage with creativity and the strategies adopted to engage stakeholders in bottom-up cultural regeneration processes. Two recent Italian cases of cultural regeneration driven by private actors, which exemplify two sharply contrasting urban extremes, have been chosen to validate this integrated theoretical framework of cultural regeneration in the city. Both have been recognized nationally and internationally as examples of best practice: IlCartastorie Museum in Naples and the Farm Cultural Park, Favara. Our results show that private actors mainly draw upon the innovative thinking of the creative class and innovative approaches to stimulate cultural regeneration. The evolutionary processes, and the resulting models of cultural regeneration, are shaped by the visions of these private actors, which are, in turn, influenced by specific urban conditions. In Naples' highly touristic inner city, the managerial innovation of the IlCartastorie Museum is fostered by the Foundation's pro-tourism growth strategy aimed at increasing both social inclusion and the organizational value of the actual museum. In Sicily, Favara's socio-economic marginalization means that its transformation into a creative city has to be supported by a strategy conducive to social inclusion and sustainability, which conjoins the explicit strategy of the private actor with an implicit emerging community strategy. Preliminary managerial recommendations and suggestions for effective private engagement and community involvement in cultural regeneration and creative city building are given.