Exogenous and endogenous factors affecting the social impact of cultural projects: the case of Barcelona ecosystem

Abstract

Cultural projects, particularly when aiming at social impact, are usually the result of the context, values, and social fabric. Some endogenous factors, such as governance models and availability of resources, mainly committed human resources, could explain their particular development as well, despite being widely recurrent. Cultural policies are also determined by dominant social values and usually respond to the territorial context. But to what extent are these also enabling factors for the development of cultural projects with specific social goals? The present article intends to study the emergence of cultural projects with a clear intentionality of social impact in the local context of Barcelona. Starting from the analysis of 14 cases, the article evaluates the exogenous and endogenous factors and typologies of programmes implemented in order to understand the non-linear complexity of social impact generation in the case of cultural projects.