For a Contemporary Renaissance

Culture is considered by many as the crucial asset in 21st-century postindustrial economies. It generates income and employment, attracts investment to finance major events, constitutes the attractiveness of entire regions and countries, drives countercyclical consumption (during a crisis, people seek escape into entertainment). It's a new economic model, where growth opportunities and global competitiveness derive from knowledge and creativity.

Candidacies for world expos, investment in new museums designed by archistars, the economies of cities and nations are all determined by this economic imperative (and not only in advanced economies, think about fashion and cinema in Africa and India). It's a business-oriented, fashionista, luxury elite culture. But is it working?
There are cases where major investment in events generates urban renewal (like in the case of Turin after the Winter Olympics), but many projects leave behind failed opportunities and empty buildings.
So, as alternative to the jet-set, exclusive culture hitherto described, there is another line of thinking that says that resources should not be invested in sites, objects and projects, but rather in people and their communities: they will autonomously be able to generate their own development models.
This is the interpretation of culture as a way of individual and collective empowerment, through education and training, media communication and digitalization, rights of access and participation: culture as a tool of inclusion and democratization.
World-renowned thinkers like Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Jeremy Rifkin theorize art and culture as ways of empowerment and openers of a new age, where humans being not only seek autonomy and responsibility, but also meaning in their lives (see for instance (P. Wong, The Human Quest for Meaning, 2012). As religion and education fade in their roles of normative institutions, culture can become a new generator of meaning, by leading humankind toward a contemporary Renaissance, out of the Postmodern Middle Ages where we are currently stuck (see P. Khanna, How to Run the World, 2011).
The two approaches to culture are not incompatible. But culture must be tailored to the social and historical circumstances, even if it means to cancel an allegedly vital major project.