Arts festivals and the vitality of communities: strategic control, accessibility and generativity.

Abstract: This study examines the potential of cultural social economy organizations to foster the vitality of communities by addressing the three fundamental questions: “who controls culture?”, “who is culture for?”, and “to what effects?”. The first question - “who controls culture?”- addresses the problem of identifying the aims and objectives of cultural activities. The second question - “who is culture for?” - points at who the direct beneficiaries of culture are, and the answer is hypothesised to follow from the institutional settings and processes identified with the first question. The third question – “to what effects” - considers the generative capacity of activities in terms of the public benefits created at the broader community level. The idea is that cultural activities are aimed at producing value for the entire community. We address these questions in the context of the Trentino province, characterised by a diversified rural and urban territory. Rural territories, in particular, often possess rich cultural and environmental resources that can spur socio-economic dynamism. However, many of them also face challenges of economic decline, cultural heritage depletion, and exclusion from development planning due to top-down approaches with predetermined aims. Against this backdrop, this research explores how these organisations can counteract these challenges by fostering inclusivity and participation, producing permanent spaces for enquiry and discovery of what has reason to be valued by the community, and supporting community-driven aims. The paper presents a picture of arts festivals in the province drawing from an original organisational survey conducted in 2024-25, addressing the nature of festival organisations and a series of indicators that address the three questions highlighted above.