How does a cultural system work as a whole? What are the relationships and links between publicly funded, homemade and commercial culture? Seeing culture as ecology, rather than only as an economy, is helpful to stimulate discussion on the multiple values culture creates, rather than focusing only on financial or social ones. By applying ecological metaphors such as emergence, interdependence, networks, and convergence to culture, we can gain new understandings about how culture works, and these understandings in turn help with policy formulation and implementation.

Our keynote speaker John Holden is an Associate at the think tank Demos, where he was Head of Culture for 8 years, and also a visiting Professor at City University, London, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. In Lecce, Professor Holden will present “The Ecology of Culture” about new models of visualising and categorising the cultural world. His insight will shift the perspective from seeing culture in terms of its funding and business models (such as state funded or the creative industries) towards the roles different people and organisations play within an overall system.