Promoters: Cuebc, Federculture and Formez;

Partners: Italian Ministry of Cultural Assets and Activities, Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, UNESCO and Council of Europe (Participants: 132)

Enhancing material and immaterial cultural heritage constitutes an extraordinary resource for the economic and civil growth of country systems. Strategies and interventions supporting cultural heritage represent some of the most central issues through which territories can, in respect of their own cultural identities, recuperate competitiveness.

In this frame, Federculture, Centro Universitario Europeo per i Beni Culturali and Formez intend to realize in Ravello a periodical meeting at international level, about enhancing and managing cultural heritage.

Ravello's Forum is a place of discussion that, starting from a selection of best practices at international level, will deepen themes such as strategic and urban planning, services re-organization, processes of cultural heritage enhancing, and how all these will have to integrate in order to determine local communities development in the frame of a global international competition.

The idea stems from the necessity to create a meeting point where public and private administrators, experts and operators can compare strategies and policies for territorial development through enhancing environmental and cultural heritage. The participants, coming from different cultures and backgrounds, will describe their objectives, obstacles and opportunities, they'll come together, therefore, to learn from each other and to draw guidelines about the proposed key issues.

Ravello LAB main aim is to be both think tank and ideas incubator on Culture and Local Development relationship.

It should be a deposit of knowledge, opinions, policies and praxis, a place to re-elaborate them from several observation points of view, and an authoritative source for policymakers and social actors. In this way, the addressee could take Ravello LAB suggestions into account and translate them into concrete actions in favour of territories.

According to this philosophy, Ravello LAB would be, not only a comparing and discussing moment, but also a permanent forum that should organize knowledge, codify it, map sceneries, and provide codes to read evolution.
Ravello LAB has chosen to avail of a Scientific Committee, of a Technical Coordination Group and of a structured and constant comparison with experts in the sector.

The method is that of an open panel: Ravello LAB becomes a resource that collects and facilitates analysis, organizes synthesis moments, verifies practicability, projects and fosters concrete occasions of development.

Consequently, a strongly involving method has been projected in order to organize participants' contributions, to make diversities emerge, and to find out a series of guidelines, ideas and projects springing up from the various backgrounds of the involved actors.

From Ravello Laboratory we expect concrete guidelines, proposals and ideas, that will be tested with practical activities by Ravello LAB community.

“The Ravello Lab Agenda” will contain the results of the LAB and a series of deepening, experimentations and guidelines that could be adopted by policymakers.

Ravello LAB experience won't fade after the three October-days but it will go on to next edition in 2007. Ravello LAB aims at creating a permanent community that, even through scholarships, could be able to observe and monitor some pilot cases, to promote studies, analysis, materials, etc., useful to put the Agenda into practice.