Platform Spaces: When culture and the arts intersect territorial development and social innovation, a view from the Italian context

This contribution intends to overview and frame a conceptual model for Cultural and Creative Enterprises (CCEs) that we call Platform Spaces. The paper contextualizes and discusses the main issues and challenges facing the CCE sector, identifying the need for more complex concepts better able to distinguish new policies and approaches being experimented with in Italy and across Europe. As Italy is currently experiencing a particularly rich period regarding the development of cultural creative activities based largely on social innovation, both in terms of organization management and relation with territorial development, it is an ideal context in which to explore the emergence of this new model. The paper describes three diverse examples of Platform Spaces based on multi-stakeholder cooperation mechanisms, arts and culture, and the engagement of local communities to not only ensure the accessibility of their activities but also to meet territorial development goals. With this analysis, the paper discusses a new conceptual framework that can be relevant both in theory and in practice, identifying policy recommendations to address territorial development approaches for Platform Spaces.