Decentralization and devolution in Italian cultural policies: how micro-practices should inspire macro-policies

As Italy has always lacked national guidelines for contemporary arts, recent devolution policies have mainly centred on existing cultural heritage, leaving aside contemporary artistic production. Local and regional authorities, however, spontaneously launched initiatives to encourage contemporary creativity, putting in place a sort of de facto devolution. Only the recently created Youth Ministry has drafted the first national guidelines to promote contemporary arts. This begs a question as how these new national priorities will relate to projects which already exist at the local level. By offering an insight into the political, administrative and management challenges of this sort of de facto devolution by relying on the Giovani Artisti dell'Emilia-Romagna - GA/ER (Young Artists of Emilia-Romagna) case study, this paper suggests that the Ministry of Youth should build on existing initiatives and encourage a responsible management of existing local projects.