Strategic Profiles of Ecomuseum Management and Community Involvement in Italy

The aim oThe aim of this work is to understand how and if the ecomuseum could be considered an instrument of social and economic development through the enhancement of cultural heritage on a territory. With an ecomuseum view, such heritage is made up of all those aspects that help to define a social system, from the natural to the folk traditions, from the architectural landscape to food and wine production. Only in this way it can be constituted as a resource for a participatory and sustainable local development, where every social actor and stakeholder feel responsible for their own future and the cultural heritage. Therefore, the work aims at investigating the degree of feasibility of different ecomuseum strategic models. Generally, they should achieve positive effects on the territory in terms of image, social cooperation and involvement of local people in decision-making processes, cultural knowledge and identification in the local heritage and finally in creation of a shared "public value" and economic development (mainly, but not only, through tourism and the production of local products). Different strategic approaches can lead to different action plans for the ecomuseums. Some of these relate more clearly to the economic potential of the eco-museum, others focus toward the opportunities offered by the ecomuseum for the awareness and knowledge of the territory and its cultural heritage. Among the proposals for local development in an ecomuseum perspective, the most significant appear to be (1) the sustainable tourism promoted by the ecomuseum; (2) the cultural district linked to the ecomuseum; (3) the quality of the territory to be pursued by the ecomuseum for the local development in a broad sense. After a review of the basic elements of each of these three strategic approaches, we focused the analysis on four specific empirical cases of ecomuseums in Italy, the "Ecomuseo del Paesaggio" of Parabiago (Milan), the "Ecomuseo Val Taleggio" of Taleggio (Bergamo), the “Ecomuseo di Argenta” of Argenta (Ferrara) and the “Ecomuseo della Collina e del Vino” of Castello di Serravalle (Bologna). For each of these cases we have identified the key features and, in a comparative manner, we evaluated which of the three elements of the outlined strategic profiles were present. The cases represent different management practices that reflect different conceptions not only of the eco-museum principles, but of its objectives, as we will try to show in the empirical analysis. In the conclusions, we placed some possible future elements which are to be developed for the construction of a coherent approach between the strategy of the ecomuseum and its management system.