Design Processes in Cultural and Creative Industries’ Oriented Development: A Regional Case

The paper investigates the role of design as mediator in between culture, creativity, industry and top down policies. In that respect, it is responsible for enabling the creation of CCI ecosystems, overcoming the traditional antagonism between culture and economy, creativity and industry. After de ning the CCIʼs phenomenon on a Europe- an scale, the contribution tries to describe how design is part of this phenomenon but its nature does not belong nei- ther to culture or creativity nor industry, but at the intersec- tion of the three, thanks to its ability of integrating di erent knowledge and interests within the production processes, multiplying values. Through the description of various creative eco- system models, the paper aims to establish the interactive role of design processes, practices and design cultures in the creation of these CCI systems within the Smart Special- ization Strategy (S3), to enhance the cultural and creative vibrancy and metabolism in cities

Mutating City: Designing Events as a Matter of Social Innovation

Contemporary European cities have become so large and complex that is extremely difficult, especially in times of economic crisis, to set up for them a top-down type of project. Cities can respond in a more measured way to the inevitable ongoing change by continuously mutating, in a process of collective awareness about their real-time status. This position was built up through a plethora of bottom-up, shared actions that are co-designed and implemented, and belong to a process that encompasses also what is transient and temporary, what is ad-hoc and what relates to the digital sphere. Faced with this challenging backdrop, the subject matter of design comes into play and, by operating on services, events and analogical and digital communications, it sets itself up as a discipline that can mediate between the need to govern continuous urban mutation and the way in which this proposal can take an effective and appropriate shape. In this article, the authors take stock of the role of design within the processes of mutation that are occurring within several large urban areas in Italy, in the cities where a culture of design is prevailing over grand projects of modern-day “urban mysticism”. This study will closely examine the class of events that form a process rather than a product. As such, they can adapt easily to a logic of continuous mutation that is feather-light, sustainable and engenders participation, both when design is their pretext and when design is the instrument to give events substance and a tangible form

Mutating City: Designing Events as a Matter of Social Innovation

Contemporary European cities have become so large and complex that is extremely difficult, especially in times of economic crisis, to set up for them a top-down type of project. Cities can respond in a more measured way to the inevitable ongoing change by continuously mutating, in a process of collective awareness about their real-time status. This position was built up through a plethora of bottom-up, shared actions that are co-designed and implemented, and belong to a process that encompasses also what is transient and temporary, what is ad-hoc and what relates to the digital sphere. Faced with this challenging backdrop, the subject matter of design comes into play and, by operating on services, events and analogical and digital communications, it sets itself up as a discipline that can mediate between the need to govern continuous urban mutation and the way in which this proposal can take an effective and appropriate shape. In this article, the authors take stock of the role of design within the processes of mutation that are occurring within several large urban areas in Italy, in the cities where a culture of design is prevailing over grand projects of modern-day “urban mysticism”. This study will closely examine the class of events that form a process rather than a product. As such, they can adapt easily to a logic of continuous mutation that is feather-light, sustainable and engenders participation, both when design is their pretext and when design is the instrument to give events substance and a tangible form

TRANSIENCE AS A DESIGN CHALLENGE. ITALIAN RADICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT THE ROLE OF DESIGN PROCESSES IN/FOR THE INCORPOREAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF CITIES (1969-1974)

The capacity of design culture to interpret changes and mediate different fields of research and action by integrating material, immaterial values and experiences, is becoming increasingly relevant, considering the deep transformations generated by the contemporary crisis, wars and migrations. The concept of transience therefore appears to be the only condition and dimension we can design, influence, shape, test, experiment and consume, but also use to narrate the not-linear relationship between design - as a culture of doing, producing, mediating, building relations, anticipating - and the transformations in cities and societies. This paper therefore intends to propose a transverse and inclusive interpretation of transience mediated by design, examining narratives of design-centred approaches in Italy, considering performative and temporary expressions as designed artefacts, with an influence on the development of urban spaces, and where spontaneous initiatives have been expression of latent processes of creativity and culture. The period under examination primarily covers the decades of 1960s and 1970s, a period in which the search for overlapping between disciplinary boundaries, the aggression of the overall vision of the project - which proposes a circularity between scales - and the climate of protest with movements and activism, brought with them the need for change. Moreover, the relationship between design, crisis and sustainability was a transversal theme that led design cultures to weave collaboration with different forms of knowledge and to explore transverse processes and methods. The design discourse around sustainability continues, today, to be fuelled by new instances of triple transition pervading the European landscape, in a process of continuous refinement of methods and practices that introduces new tools, with an eye to digital and new technologies, cross-fertilised by a variety of disciplines, because the forces conditioning change in contemporary and future societies are many and sometimes unexpected

Making Value: Storydoing Actions for Cultural and Creative Industries

The paper develops a comparative analysis of the cultural and creative competencies within the educational offer of the University of Bologna, using multiple sources and tools. This contribution is based on the hypothesis that the narration around the value of the cultural and creative disciplines in academia needs to be critically reviewed. This path of observation, mapping, narration, and visualisation resulted in being consistent with the critical role that cultural and creative disciplines have played at the University of Bologna since the 1970s; by developing unprecedented educational models and impacting the territory through the generation of new economic models and the development of a diverse system of cultural and creative industries. The methodological approach of the research is based on a comparative analysis of the main documents regulating the cultural and creative economy on the international, national, and regional levels. The second stage of the research process was built on an explorative strategy based on desk analysis to create the dataset. The question arose about how to make a database accessible to a broader audience: the conclusions show that data visualisations, as a creative tool, can enable story-doing processes and thus create awareness and value

An advanced design approach to support urban transformations through multi-stakeholder collaborations

Urban transformations depend on the uses of the city by “old” and new citizens (residents, workers, migrants, refugees, students, seasonal, homeless individuals, tourists, city-users, commuters), and on their relation within urban spaces and resources, triggering regenerative opportunities, networking and empowerment processes. Considering the city and its heritage as a common good, in which each citizen could access and play for the knowledge, management, conservation and transformation of urban contexts, the contribute illustrates the results of experimental actions in Bologna (IT) finalized to test new stakeholder engagement processes and to develop new tools for participatory practices and new productions for the reactivation of the city. In the last years Bologna represents a field of experimentation for different forms of collaborative approaches with the aim to test and innovate tools and policies for the public space. The paper presents the results of specific projects linked to EU funding schemes (ROCK project) and local multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as the Bologna Design Week, which are part of the research and experimentation carried out by the research unit team. This article illustrates a model to improve the regenerative capacities of the city, by reinforcing local identity and culture, fostering participation through active engagement of all relevant stakeholders, allowing a diversity of responses of groups of actors with different roles and different strengths

An advanced design approach to support urban transformations through multi-stakeholder collaborations

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A 28,000 Years Old Cro-Magnon mtDNA Sequence Differs from All Potentially Contaminating Modern Sequences

Background: DNA sequences from ancient speciments may in fact result from undetected contamination of the ancient specimens by modern DNA, and the problem is particularly challenging in studies of human fossils. Doubts on the authenticity of the available sequences have so far hampered genetic comparisons between anatomically archaic (Neandertal) and early modern (Cro-Magnoid) Europeans. Methodology/Principal Findings: We typed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) hypervariable region I in a 28,000 years old Cro-Magnoid individual from the Paglicci cave, in Italy (Paglicci 23) and in all the people who had contact with the sample since its discovery in 2003. The Paglicci 23 sequence, determined through the analysis of 152 clones, is the Cambridge reference sequence, and cannot possibly reflect contamination because it differs from all potentially contaminating modern sequences. Conclusions/Significance:: The Paglicci 23 individual carried a mtDNA sequence that is still common in Europe, and which radically differs from those of the almost contemporary Neandertals, demonstrating a genealogical continuity across 28,000 years, from Cro-Magnoid to modern Europeans. Because all potential sources of modern DNA contamination are known, the Paglicci 23 sample will offer a unique opportunity to get insight for the first time into the nuclear genes of earl

The Matter of Future Heritage

In 2018, for the first time, the University of Bologna’s Board of PhD in Architecture and Design Culture assigned second-year PhD students the task of developing and managing an international conference and publishing its works. The organisers of the first edition of this initiative – Giacomo Corda, Pamela Lama, Viviana Lorenzo, Sara Maldina, Lia Marchi, Martina Massari and Giulia Custodi – have chosen to leverage the solid relationship between the Department of Architecture and the Municipality of Bologna to publish a call having to do with the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, in which the Municipality was involved. The theme chosen for the call, The Matter of Future Heritage, set itself the ambitious goal of questioning the future of a field of research – Cultural Heritage (CH) – that is constantly being  redefined. A work that was made particularly complex in Europe by the development of the H2020 programme, where the topic entered, surprisingly, not as a protagonist but rather as an articulation of other subjects that in the vision of the programme seemed evidently more urgent and, one might say, dominant. The resulting tensions have been considerable and with both negative and positive implications, all the more evident if we refer to the issues that are closest to us namely the city and the landscape

Life history and ancestry of the late Upper Palaeolithic infant from Grotta delle Mura, Italy

The biological aspects of infancy within late Upper Palaeolithic populations and the role of southern refugia at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum are not yet fully understood. This study presents a multidisciplinary, high temporal resolution investigation of an Upper Palaeolithic infant from Grotta delle Mura (Apulia, southern Italy) combining palaeogenomics, dental palaeohistology, spatially-resolved geochemical analyses, direct radiocarbon dating, and traditional anthropological studies. The skeletal remains of the infant – Le Mura 1 – were directly dated to 17,320-16,910 cal BP. The results portray a biological history of the infant’s development, early life, health and death (estimated at ~72 weeks). They identify, several phenotypic traits and a potential congenital disease in the infant, the mother’s low mobility during gestation, and a high level of endogamy. Furthermore, the genomic data indicates an early spread of the Villabruna-like components along the Italian peninsula, confirming a population turnover around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, and highlighting a general reduction in genetic variability from northern to southern Italy. Overall, Le Mura 1 contributes to our better understanding of the early stages of life and the genetic puzzle in the Italian peninsula at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. © The Author(s) 2024