Practices and history of “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione” in Italy: The case of cultural production and music education in Trentino

We address the question of what coordination mechanism can be used for cultural production, and in particular music culture. We locate our reflection within the specific institutional innovations introduced in Italy by the reform of the Third Sector, focusing on the value of the idea of shared administration and the particular management of the cultural policy set by Trentino, a Province located in northern Italy. This area has given itself an innovative system that enables thousands of people in urban as well as remote rural areas to access music culture through education. It did so by coordinating a unique combination of public-private solutions. The approach, which was developed prior to the Third Sector reform, places a strong emphasis on the idea of “sharing” the cultural project with community constituencies, thus interacting with private social economy organisations. The approach was then innovative with respect to the dominant one, which focused on public bids or on service production entirely administred by the public authorities. To illustrate, we will focus on the province’s music school system. To offer an innovative educational service the public actor (PAT) and the schools (TMS) have developed a strong interdependence at different levels of decision-making: PAT needs organisations that are sufficiently structured and organized to respect requirements of transparency and accountability, as well as educational standards, while TMS need public funding in order to maintain their service accessible for users, good labour conditions, and be financially sustainable. Likewise, the success of TMS in educating thousands of students every year, including additional teaching programmes funded by PAT within general public schools, has contributed to decrease the exclusion from music education, raise interest in young people for music, and fed enrolment in TMS as well as in the public schools related to the conservatoire filière. Conclusions emphasise the existence of a polycentric system of music culture production which needs to acknowledge the risk of being trapped in a static disequilibrium, while recognizing change and the need to support and promote a culture of cooperation among schools and across layered institutional levels over time.