There is a long debate on whether food is part and interacts with creative industries.

I would argue gastronomy is one of the most important segments of our creative economic ecosystem.

In the Italian model of cultural production, the Creative industries are of great importance, besides the components of Heritage, Performing arts, Content production and Contemporary artistic production.
Fashion, Artistic craftsmanship, Design and Eno-Gastronomy are significant industries both from an economic and their symbolic value point of view.

Specifically, the food sector is strongly connected to other cultural disciplines as it is often related to activities – as traditions, practices, celebrations, artistic representations – that foster social identity, knowledge and know-how transfer, conviviality, and intergenerational interaction. It often represents a distinctive element and an opportunity for local development and protection of local varieties.

That is the reason why we see a rise in projects that identify food as a fundamental element for the enhancement of cultural heritage.

Emblematic, in this sense, is the case of the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato area, which in a few years, thanks to the collective protection system – DOC and DOCG designations of origin – and to their consequently improved reputation, has seen the price of wines growing significantly and new and important cultural initiatives flourishing (book prizes, performing arts events, new architectures and contemporary art).

In addition, many important monuments and sites in Italy have a cultural and environmental capital with a highly significant potential for enhancement of its cultural impact, of the value of agricultural production, and of the development of gastronomy and proximity tourism.

Strategic plans aimed at the requalification of these monuments need to consider initiatives that could re-store ‘life’ into the local communities, abandoning common point of views typically adopted in the enhancement of cultural heritage projects.

We need to ask ourselves:
What could motivate an audience – wider than cultural visitors and tourists – to visit a historical complex? What are the non-cultural reasons to visit it?
What would further enrich cultural tourists stay?
What would benefit the local constituency?

In this context, food culture and production could become the fundamental attractors of a site and a pivot of the valorization process.

One of the latest regeneration studies, the Abbey of Santa Maria di Staffarda and its agricultural compendium – a Cistercian monastic settlement dating back to the 12th century, located in the territory of the Mont-Viso Transboundary Biosphere Reserve – offers a good example of the role of food in the requalification of sites and communities.

A religious and productive complex that supported itself autonomously – in a spiritual dimension and a philosophy very close to today’s circular economy – it has historically lived and thrived both thanks to its spiritual function as well as commercial activities: agriculture, animals’ husbandry, dairy production, shops and farmers’ market hosted within its walls lost in time.

Here restoring the agricultural and food business is a vehicle of a rebirth of the site and a re-activation of its community.
A sort of re-creation of the original village, where historical, natural and artistic components – together with productive ones – could merge through technological innovation and marketing.

Historical complexes like such as this need to be requalified respecting the ‘concept’ upon which they were conceived and lived, where food was often one of the bonding agents of a laborious society.

Through the deployment of multifaceted approaches rooted in interdependent and integrated action plans – Culture and Heritage; Tourism; Agro-food production and sustainability; Networking and Brand positioning – it is possible to re-habilitate the meaning of agricultural production and sustainability.
This in turn would ensure the sustainability of the community even today: increasing the demand for the site’s products, broadening the site’s reference market, and promoting the development of small local businesses and therefore creating employment.

For the critics, freeing heritage sites from their “museification” by building and narrating them through the knowledge of ‘minor arts” – such as agro-food ones – does not mean to lessen the cultural value of monuments or historical sites.

Quite the contrary.
It provides opportunities to residents to preserve their culture and represents a chance to attract visitors interested in gastronomy, nature and wellness, who could then spontaneously discover art, culture, history of the place.

It is a type of “philological” approach – vowed to understand the past and the legacy it has left us- in a way reflecting the original function of cultural heritage and its meaning within today’s setting, activating connections and creating opportunities for a contemporary use.

Above all, it responds to a vision that integrates cultural and creative industries, activating important local development processes and therefore generating a long-lasting impact that seem to be even more relevant now that we are assisting in a rebirth in domestic tourism, the rediscovery of local manufactures and gastronomy interest.