Abstract

Social and economic impacts of the arts and culture are a recurring topic in the literature of last two decades or more. Scepticism, in various extents, about their measurability coexists with an increasing accountability demand. In many cases, efforts to reporting cultural impacts appear disembodied from any planning frame of reference. It is so in many ex post evaluations, aimed at recollecting unplanned and unintended outcomes and spillovers of cultural projects of various nature. The European Capital of Culture Programme has increasingly developed a praxis for planning, monitoring and short term and medium term evaluating the desired impacts of the cultural investments, activities, events, etc. for candidate and selected cities. This paper investigates the impact and result indicators provided in the six Italian shortlisted cities Bidbooks in the selection process resulted in the adoption of Matera as European Capital of culture for 2019.