The project Lead Partner - Regione Piemonte and the partner University of Turin have co-organised the kick-off meeting of FINCH project in Torino, held on the 3rd and 4th of July 2018.

FINCH promotes the development of financial instruments and public-private partnerships in local and regional cultural heritage valorisation policies to increase their long-term social and economic impact. Financing investments in cultural heritage has a DIRECT IMPACT ON GROWTH and a considerable potential for creating new jobs, which leads to long-term social and economic benefits.

The active participation in the meeting of all the project partners has represented a good starting point for the implementation of the project and the pursuing of it objectives. The introduction done by different professors of the University of Turin about financial instruments and public-private partnerships, core issues of the project, has stimulated the discussion and has provided useful “food for thought”.

One of the most important concepts discussed is that every expenses in the cultural sector are able to influence the whole local economy, by affecting and contributing to other sectors. The direct link is to wages and incomes, which will be reinvested in the economy. Art and culture activate economical dynamism, so resources invested in culture can be transformed into added value through a process of accumulation and repartition in the territory. Anyway a long-term cooperation contract between a private party and a public entity (with the role of coordination and control) is necessary, both sides have certain advantages: by allowing each party to pursue its interests, public services and infrastructure can be provided in a more efficient manner.

At the end, the basic scheme that could result encompasses: 

1) a relatively LONG DURATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP, involving COOPERATION between the public partner and the private partner on different aspects of a planned project;

2) a METHOD OF FUNDING a PROJECT, in part from the private resources, sometimes by means of complex arrangements between the various players. Nonetheless, public funds - in some cases rather substantial - may be added to the private funds.