At a time when cultural institutions are resorting to sensational protests to maintain government funding and asking private corporations to underwrite structural renovations, the Symbola and Unicamera Foundations have released the first-ever study quantifying the impact of Italian culture on the national economy.
Presented at the 9th Symbola Summer Seminar in Montepulciano, "Italy to Come" revealed that the Italian cultural sector accounts for 15 per cent of the national economy and provides jobs for 4.5 million people.
Industries traditionally grouped into the cultural sector—publishing, performing arts, and visual arts—directly yield 5.4 per cent of the wealth produced in Italy and employ 1.4 million people. But when the lens is widened to include creative industries, cultural heritage, historical sites, and the architectural industry, the sector accounts for 18.1 per cent of total employment in Italy.
More than 20 experts, under the direction of Pierluigi Sacco, professor of cultural economics at the Universities of IULM and Lugano, examined emerging trends in the industry and outlined the cultural sector's potential to fuel the recovery of the Italian economy.
Throughout the global recession, the cultural sector has remained one of the few areas of the economy in which job creation numbers have grown instead of declined and, over the last five years, the nominal value added to the Italian economy by the cultural sector experienced growth at a rate more than twice that of the economy as a whole.
