Art And Participation In Urban Cultural Regeneration

Local transformation policies increasingly refer to culture, and above all to art in cities and urban public spaces. This approach, which directly or indirectly concerns the imagination, memory, traditions of people and territories, is an important framework for both local development, sustainable tourism and the improvement of the attractiveness of a place, and policies for equity and the fight against social exclusion. In the cultural planning of public spaces, for instance, there is an increasingly broad relationship between artistic production, land management and participation. Therefore, cultural and public art initiatives are often aimed at achieving regenerative objectives with not only economic spillover but also community wellbeing enhancement. Furthermore in the "art", we can find the influence of economic globalization, which is evident in the increase in biennials, in the emergence of international artists, "nomad" curators and collectors of contemporary art. For about thirty years, installation works have been increasingly present, even on a large scale, made for a particular site as biennial sections and often with a social, participatory and experiential function (Coates, R., 2013). Such installations require also physical participation by the public, almost making the public space of the exhibition private (Biennial public space, 2013). In fact, the first and most important Art Biennials were born in contexts in which profound cultural and political changes occurred (Filipovic, 2010, 2005) as Manifesta, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, linked to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1996). In this context, Manifesta was born and its 12th edition, which is taking place in Palermo, from June 16th to November 4th 2018, represents an opportunity to promote development, to relaunch the international image of the city, to stimulate an important tourist activity and start significant urban planning interventions and cultural initiatives. Manifesta 12 aims to create an ideal laboratory for re-imagine, from a Mediterranean vision, shared liberal values. The approach is interdisciplinary: the work close to local communities encourages to re-examine the city's architectural, urban, economic, social, identity and cultural infrastructure (Sepe, 2013), analyzing the important role that each cultural intervention plays in allowing citizens to identify their responsibilities and their own rights. Starting from these premises, this paper intends to illustrate the issues related to the relationship between art, city, regeneration, migrations and participatory involvement of the community in cultural projects. As an emblematic case study, the Manifesta 12 event will be illustrated. As typical of this Art Biennal, the event acts as a mirror of the socio-political and cultural conditions of the host city, and at the same time reflects the global geopolitical situation of Europe that now, more than ever, finds itself in a visible crisis in current economic and migratory debates. The case of the last edition of the Manifesta biennial Palermo, in which these aspects are particularly evident, will be described in detail trying certain comparison with the previous edition of the event held in Zurich.