I love this so much. Russell Smith likes to say "start where you are," which has stuck with me. This is a great example of that, in Matera's decision to invest in empowering who is there vs trying to attract a magical outsider solution. Also undercuts our stubborn assumption that "growth" equals "success."
2,447 events in 2019 and brining in 500,000 visitors is impressive!
I also like how clearly you explained the benifits of investing in the local community had. I wouldn't have immediately thought there would be that big an impact on entrepreneurship. How good!
Your article reminds me of the story about Molly Melching. Molly was an activist who spent 40 years trying to end female genital cutting, child marriage and forced marriage in Africa.
As I'm sure you've heard, in a lot of places experts parachute in (just like in Matera), with good intentions but no relationships, or respect in the area. They don't do good. And often do bad.
Molly didn't do that.
Instead, Molly spent years living in Senegal. She build relationships and became a part of the community, before offering any solutions.
And when solutions came, they were often from the community.
That “build from inside” idea used to be niche, I’m so glad it’s becoming more mainstream. There are certainly many things we can learn from outside success stories, but a boots on the ground approach is still needed to implement them!
Villages are a very good size for a community to establish a new economy, but those villages can be virtual. The Open Source 'village' has been cooperating and sharing wealth for decades giving us the internet protocols and infrastructure software we all depend on. Their medium of exchange has been code rather than money, and access to the huge reservoir of communal wealth they have built.
There's certainly something to be said for the virtual village. I have something of that here, where my community of writers/thinkers shows up. We never meet in my local town :)
I have read a number of analysts who believe that we are headed or must head into an era where we are organized into smaller units and perhaps villages would be one of those. Many have a similarly utopian bent. However, there are all sorts of issues with moving back toward ‘village’ life.
In coming together around a particular vision and path like the one described, the ‘advantage’ small countries and small towns have is homogeneity. It’s easiest to get together and agree when most everyone is of a similar demographic. But this can also, of course, have less happy consequences for those not so similar and for any real diversity of thought and perspective. I suspect that’s why the passports were tried.
There are also just the obvious lessons of history that have always shown that organization into ‘villages’ is extremely vulnerable to cycles of conquest and subjugation. Likewise, feeding and otherwise supporting populations of millions and billions requires massive capacities for production, including a great many subsidiary ‘parts suppliers’ that tend to re-aggregate people into the needs of these larger productive, defense, etc., enterprises.
So, lots to think about in terms of local development and experimentation, but also in terms of sustainability, etc.
The way I see it is that we shouldn't "move back" to village life. But forward toward it. What I mean by that is that village life in the past wasn't good. Many were feudal, despotic, impoverished, homogenous, and constantly taken over by conquest and subjugation. That past is not one we should go back to.
But modern villages are not independent, they are part of states and nations that have done away with feudalism and despotism, that have installed human rights and democracy, that set up public transportation connecting that village with other villages and larger cities, and established wifi networks and infrastructure that connect them to work and food supplies and international shipping. They are protected from conquest by large militaries.
The future of villages is not the past of villages. It is a very different kind of village life. I'm interested in what the future of village life might look like and in my mind it looks absolutely nothing like the past.
This village sounds successful because (1) they are conscious of their own heritage of resiliency, (2) they didn't create programs to invest in but invested in longstanding programs (theaters, museums) that I suppose had been dreaming of what they would do with more money, and (3) the village's history since 1951 sounds as if it wasn’t the money that got them going, that they showed that they knew what to do with success.
I see this so often: experts from out of town who don't take the time to become members of the community. It would almost be better for them to hide their expertise.
It's interesting that they didn't try to attract tourism but that the cultural investment attracted tourism anyway. Perhaps the tourists sensed a connection between the place and the people that live in that place--a connection that many tourist destinations lose over time.
I wonder three things:
What were the innovative approaches to democracy?
What was the significance of the passports?
What caused the increase in citizen involvement just in the past ten years?
As far as their innovative approaches to democracy: The city's application to become a European Capital of Culture was co-created through public workshops, forums, and calls for ideas. Local citizens, artists, and organizations proposed projects and participated in shaping the final program. Over half of the projects in the winning bid were developed through open calls and collaborative design.
They also developed community hubs including one called Casa Netural, which functioned as spaces for co-working, civic dialogue, and grassroots entrepreneurship. They basically had your face-to-face town squares where people engaged in dialogue and planned all of their events through open meetings.
They also made everything open source/open data, sharing the use of funds and all projects in development for everyone to see. This got everyone paying attention to what they were doing, and they could come to town halls to discuss them!
They say the significance of their passports was that they promoted the view of citizenship as something active, creative, and participatory, not just legal or geographic. (More symbolic than anything, I think)
I think it was all of the above that increased citizen involvement!
Wow! I'm impressed. The community hubs, the team-based approach to the projects and program, and the purposeful town halls remind me of the best I've seen in innovative schools. I'd love to visit and check it out.
Thank you for this. I’m not sure how this is sustainable or capable of being replicated given this involved a huge national investment into a town that had been designated a European cultural capital. I like the idea of the future involving interconnected economically viable villages and towns (I think 60,000 is more like a town or small city), and perhaps this story is inspiring
because it involves a town branding itself with its local history and culture and perhaps that sort of micro branding is how towns stand out. And I agree with Orlando that the strategy can’t just be tourism, so I would be curious to learn how small towns can become competitive in manufacturing or making or providing specific services for export….maybe one idea is a town develops a particular craft and then hosts digital nomads or people who want to spend a season learning that craft. Mixing tourism with economic production.
I have to wonder if replicability ought to be the goal or measure of success, unless we are talking about process rather than outcome. The process--of investing in a community that knows itself better than its investors possibly can--might be worth applying elsewhere, just not necessarily everywhere. If the specifics of local geography, history, governance, and community self-image are ignored and if local voices are not driving the conversations in which cultural and economic development can be re-imagined, no template developed in Matera or anywhere else is going to enhance that community.
I'd be interested in specific services or crafts indigenous (or otherwise significant) to a particular locale and to the people who live there. How might a given enterprise, whether imported to or developed locally, improve the quality of community life on its own terms, not just as an economic driver or fungible commodity that might be produced anywhere?
It's a good point. I don't think every village needs to be developed the same way. But I think it's a good alternative to the other way: a lot of investment coming in from the outside to fund tourism.
I like the idea of process. It’s not one size fits all and maybe we identity a list of processes and practices that would allow/facilitate local communities to develop their own ideas, cultures and businesses. I’m inspired to dig into this more!
I’m not sure whether small towns necessarily need to be competitive in manufacturing, so much as they need to have manufacturing (or some other economic product). I like the idea of each one specializing in one kind of craft and attracting both local and transient populations to participate!
Interesting. What’s the distinction between being competitive in manufacturing versus having manufacturing? Maybe it goes to Jane Jacobs’ import replacement idea? In other words a town or city at least should be able to make some of the things it consumes even if it is not exporting those things…
What I mean is we have both large facilities like a Budweiser plant and smaller facilities like a craft beer plant. They are both competitive on the market, but the smaller one doesn't necessarily need to compete with the larger one. They both have their own markets, one bigger and one smaller. In this way, not every manufacturing plant needs to be the big giant one in the city with a lot of exports, there can also be smaller ones with small markets that support a village. If that makes sense?
Countries around the world invest in the economic development of their rural towns. The question isn’t how they will get the money but how they will use it. Some use that investment wisely and those investments pay off, some don’t!
Oh yes, of course. And that’s a good point. A better title would have been: Maybe villages are our future—not just cities. I’ll change it to reflect more what I meant.
Although there also might be something to be said about the spill over impact culture investment has on entrepreneurialism, as well as the idea that culture is uniquely local and must come from the bottom up, giving smaller towns and cities a unique advantage in cultivating their unique culture.
I love this so much. Russell Smith likes to say "start where you are," which has stuck with me. This is a great example of that, in Matera's decision to invest in empowering who is there vs trying to attract a magical outsider solution. Also undercuts our stubborn assumption that "growth" equals "success."
Stellar article Elle!
2,447 events in 2019 and brining in 500,000 visitors is impressive!
I also like how clearly you explained the benifits of investing in the local community had. I wouldn't have immediately thought there would be that big an impact on entrepreneurship. How good!
Your article reminds me of the story about Molly Melching. Molly was an activist who spent 40 years trying to end female genital cutting, child marriage and forced marriage in Africa.
As I'm sure you've heard, in a lot of places experts parachute in (just like in Matera), with good intentions but no relationships, or respect in the area. They don't do good. And often do bad.
Molly didn't do that.
Instead, Molly spent years living in Senegal. She build relationships and became a part of the community, before offering any solutions.
And when solutions came, they were often from the community.
That “build from inside” idea used to be niche, I’m so glad it’s becoming more mainstream. There are certainly many things we can learn from outside success stories, but a boots on the ground approach is still needed to implement them!
Villages are a very good size for a community to establish a new economy, but those villages can be virtual. The Open Source 'village' has been cooperating and sharing wealth for decades giving us the internet protocols and infrastructure software we all depend on. Their medium of exchange has been code rather than money, and access to the huge reservoir of communal wealth they have built.
There's certainly something to be said for the virtual village. I have something of that here, where my community of writers/thinkers shows up. We never meet in my local town :)
I have read a number of analysts who believe that we are headed or must head into an era where we are organized into smaller units and perhaps villages would be one of those. Many have a similarly utopian bent. However, there are all sorts of issues with moving back toward ‘village’ life.
In coming together around a particular vision and path like the one described, the ‘advantage’ small countries and small towns have is homogeneity. It’s easiest to get together and agree when most everyone is of a similar demographic. But this can also, of course, have less happy consequences for those not so similar and for any real diversity of thought and perspective. I suspect that’s why the passports were tried.
There are also just the obvious lessons of history that have always shown that organization into ‘villages’ is extremely vulnerable to cycles of conquest and subjugation. Likewise, feeding and otherwise supporting populations of millions and billions requires massive capacities for production, including a great many subsidiary ‘parts suppliers’ that tend to re-aggregate people into the needs of these larger productive, defense, etc., enterprises.
So, lots to think about in terms of local development and experimentation, but also in terms of sustainability, etc.
The way I see it is that we shouldn't "move back" to village life. But forward toward it. What I mean by that is that village life in the past wasn't good. Many were feudal, despotic, impoverished, homogenous, and constantly taken over by conquest and subjugation. That past is not one we should go back to.
But modern villages are not independent, they are part of states and nations that have done away with feudalism and despotism, that have installed human rights and democracy, that set up public transportation connecting that village with other villages and larger cities, and established wifi networks and infrastructure that connect them to work and food supplies and international shipping. They are protected from conquest by large militaries.
The future of villages is not the past of villages. It is a very different kind of village life. I'm interested in what the future of village life might look like and in my mind it looks absolutely nothing like the past.
Got it. Thanks.
This village sounds successful because (1) they are conscious of their own heritage of resiliency, (2) they didn't create programs to invest in but invested in longstanding programs (theaters, museums) that I suppose had been dreaming of what they would do with more money, and (3) the village's history since 1951 sounds as if it wasn’t the money that got them going, that they showed that they knew what to do with success.
I see this so often: experts from out of town who don't take the time to become members of the community. It would almost be better for them to hide their expertise.
It's interesting that they didn't try to attract tourism but that the cultural investment attracted tourism anyway. Perhaps the tourists sensed a connection between the place and the people that live in that place--a connection that many tourist destinations lose over time.
I wonder three things:
What were the innovative approaches to democracy?
What was the significance of the passports?
What caused the increase in citizen involvement just in the past ten years?
Good questions!
As far as their innovative approaches to democracy: The city's application to become a European Capital of Culture was co-created through public workshops, forums, and calls for ideas. Local citizens, artists, and organizations proposed projects and participated in shaping the final program. Over half of the projects in the winning bid were developed through open calls and collaborative design.
They also developed community hubs including one called Casa Netural, which functioned as spaces for co-working, civic dialogue, and grassroots entrepreneurship. They basically had your face-to-face town squares where people engaged in dialogue and planned all of their events through open meetings.
They also made everything open source/open data, sharing the use of funds and all projects in development for everyone to see. This got everyone paying attention to what they were doing, and they could come to town halls to discuss them!
They say the significance of their passports was that they promoted the view of citizenship as something active, creative, and participatory, not just legal or geographic. (More symbolic than anything, I think)
I think it was all of the above that increased citizen involvement!
Wow! I'm impressed. The community hubs, the team-based approach to the projects and program, and the purposeful town halls remind me of the best I've seen in innovative schools. I'd love to visit and check it out.
You should!!! I really want to visit myself...
Thank you for this. I’m not sure how this is sustainable or capable of being replicated given this involved a huge national investment into a town that had been designated a European cultural capital. I like the idea of the future involving interconnected economically viable villages and towns (I think 60,000 is more like a town or small city), and perhaps this story is inspiring
because it involves a town branding itself with its local history and culture and perhaps that sort of micro branding is how towns stand out. And I agree with Orlando that the strategy can’t just be tourism, so I would be curious to learn how small towns can become competitive in manufacturing or making or providing specific services for export….maybe one idea is a town develops a particular craft and then hosts digital nomads or people who want to spend a season learning that craft. Mixing tourism with economic production.
I have to wonder if replicability ought to be the goal or measure of success, unless we are talking about process rather than outcome. The process--of investing in a community that knows itself better than its investors possibly can--might be worth applying elsewhere, just not necessarily everywhere. If the specifics of local geography, history, governance, and community self-image are ignored and if local voices are not driving the conversations in which cultural and economic development can be re-imagined, no template developed in Matera or anywhere else is going to enhance that community.
I'd be interested in specific services or crafts indigenous (or otherwise significant) to a particular locale and to the people who live there. How might a given enterprise, whether imported to or developed locally, improve the quality of community life on its own terms, not just as an economic driver or fungible commodity that might be produced anywhere?
It's a good point. I don't think every village needs to be developed the same way. But I think it's a good alternative to the other way: a lot of investment coming in from the outside to fund tourism.
I like the idea of process. It’s not one size fits all and maybe we identity a list of processes and practices that would allow/facilitate local communities to develop their own ideas, cultures and businesses. I’m inspired to dig into this more!
I’m not sure whether small towns necessarily need to be competitive in manufacturing, so much as they need to have manufacturing (or some other economic product). I like the idea of each one specializing in one kind of craft and attracting both local and transient populations to participate!
Interesting. What’s the distinction between being competitive in manufacturing versus having manufacturing? Maybe it goes to Jane Jacobs’ import replacement idea? In other words a town or city at least should be able to make some of the things it consumes even if it is not exporting those things…
What I mean is we have both large facilities like a Budweiser plant and smaller facilities like a craft beer plant. They are both competitive on the market, but the smaller one doesn't necessarily need to compete with the larger one. They both have their own markets, one bigger and one smaller. In this way, not every manufacturing plant needs to be the big giant one in the city with a lot of exports, there can also be smaller ones with small markets that support a village. If that makes sense?
That was my concern. How will this be funded?
Countries around the world invest in the economic development of their rural towns. The question isn’t how they will get the money but how they will use it. Some use that investment wisely and those investments pay off, some don’t!
I see. So you really mean villages are an important part of the future.
We still need large economic powerhouse cities and other manufacturing centers to provide a tax base that can then be distributed to these villages.
Oh yes, of course. And that’s a good point. A better title would have been: Maybe villages are our future—not just cities. I’ll change it to reflect more what I meant.
Although there also might be something to be said about the spill over impact culture investment has on entrepreneurialism, as well as the idea that culture is uniquely local and must come from the bottom up, giving smaller towns and cities a unique advantage in cultivating their unique culture.