Cultural entrepreneurship and creative atmospheres

As in many other post-industrial countries, in the last decades creativity and culture have become keywords in the Italian economy. However, the global tendency of relating creativity and culture to economic development has had a peculiar translation in the Italian context. The very notions of “industry” and “culture” or “industrial culture” can be understood in the light of the original model of economic development that in Italy took the shape of networks of small and medium enterprise that characterize the economic and social fabric of some of the most competitive Italian regions. Due to relevance of this highly territorialized, deeply rooted form of economic action, also cultural and creative development have been understood as phenomena that occur in specific contexts, sustained by original combinations of both material aspects and immaterial dimensions. In this paper we offer both an empirical investigation of some of these contexts, interpret them as forms of cultural entrepreneurship and make sense of their success as embedded in creative atmospheres.