Access to the Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has been restricted for years to prevent visitors from damaging the masterpiece with their breath or their sweat. For the same reason, the caves of Lascaux are closed to the public, although a replica is on display 200 meters away from the site. This reproduction, named Lascaux II, is all that visitors have been able to see since 1983. So for decades, extracting value from our cultural heritage would appear to be the antithesis of safeguarding it.
But the digital transformation has brought about a paradigm shift: now capitalizing on cultural heritage and safeguarding it can go hand in hand. Indeed, we can design transformative cultural experiences that have impact people by enhancing their wellbeing and resilience – and this even for segments of the population who are hard to reach with traditional cultural value propositions. This is especially relevant for NEETs, three million 14-to-35 year olds who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training, and who seem to have given up on their futures.
Phenomena such as shortened attention spans among young people mean that the most effective channel for accessing culture is through emerging technologies, which have the potential to attract an audience that avoids complexity at all costs.
But to make this approach work effectively, and to make sure technology isn’t a double-edged sword, we need Marketing - the discipline that can pinpoint the most salient market segmentation variables and offer personalized solutions for every user category. As far as the audience for art and culture, the variables we can apply are two: competency in consuming art and competency in utilizing technologies. In fact, when approaching culture and technology, we are not all created equal, and digitalizing works of art can’t be the only point where the two worlds intersect.
Let’s go back to the NEET cohort, for example. We’re talking about people who probably aren’t very accustomed to cultural experiences, but almost all of them are digital natives, with impressive technological dexterity. So the most appropriate ways to engage them will have to put them in the leading roles, with virtual teasers on social media, creating physical spaces especially designed to be instagrammable, and setting up post-experience discussion forums.
The more advanced organizations build digital cultural experiences. By doing so, they don’t simply promote cultural consumption while serving as cultural guardians at the same time. They design experiences with transformative cultural impact. Emerging technologies enrich and transform cultural experiences because they are capable of turning these encounters into new platforms for sharing, co-creating, and nurturing wellbeing.
In our recent study, we reveal that the link between art and digital technologies can have a broad, positive impact on general wellbeing and resilience, improving six fundamental aspects: inclusion and social cohesion; accessibility of cultural experiences; cultural literacy; fine-tuning policies adopted by cultural organizations; developing an economically lucrative cultural-digital ecosystem; and personal development.
Since the 1990s, the prevailing idea was that public subsidies to support the arts should accentuate the impact on society, focusing primarily on social inclusion and cultural literacy. But in reality, at least in Italy, little movement has been made in this direction, and the parameters used to measure progress end up being the traditional ones: ticket sales for museums, the number of shows for the theater. Instead, the impact of culture on wellbeing and resilience can and must be measured. Indeed, this impact can become the focal point of a modern system for assessing and financing for culture.
During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, technology applied to art kept cultural organzations alive. But more importantly, it kept society united. Our hope is that this precedent fosters a greater sense of civic responsibility regarding the need for a paradigm shift, in the direction of a collaborative, integrated approach to implement the development and transformation of cultural organizations and of our individual lives. In the end, it’s for the wellbeing of our society.
Originally published in Fortune Italia
