Conserving Italian world heritage sites through live music events: Exploring barriers and opportunities

Consumers’ demands for innovative forms of heritage consumption combined with a desire for long lasting memories have highlighted the role that staged events and other live music performances at cultural and historical sites can play in the conservation of these assets. However, to date, research on these aspects remains fragmented and indeed lacking within the Italian landscape. Building on these considerations, this paper explores the tensions inherent the re-use and conservation of Italian cultural and historical assets through live events. The research uses three WHS sites distributed across the Italian territory as case studies to identify the positions of different stakeholders involved in the production of live music performances. A qualitative, comparative, case study design has been deemed as the most fitting to enable an in-depth investigation of the stances held by public and private sector organisations involved in the staging of events at WHS and to enable a rich analysis of the issues. Findings show significant ideological and cultural barriers impacting the use of staged live events at such venues. Besides suggesting a cross-sectorial cooperative approach to help rejuvenate these WH sites and to generate funding for conservation purposes findings suggest the need to develop a sustainable strategy for managing national heritage assets incorporating clear guidelines on the re-use of WH sites.