CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT:
MAXIMISING THE IMPACT
OECD-ICOM Guide for Local Governments,
Communities and Museums
Museums and cultural heritage are powerful assets for local development. They can help
attract tourists, bring revenue, regenerate local economies, promote inclusion, boost
cultural diversity and reinvent territorial identity. For several decades now, cities and regions
have been drawing on these assets to put in place heritage-led regeneration plans as partof their wider economic development strategies. At the same time, museums are
increasingly recognising the instrumental benefits of cultural heritage and areexperimenting with new roles that they can play as agents of economic and social change
while continuing to enrich their traditional objectives like heritage collection andpreservation and education.

Why local governments, museums and communities?
A general trend of decentralisation and tightening financial constraints have contributed tothe emergence of new partnerships between the museums and local authorities. In thiscontext, national, city and regional governments, the museum community, private
foundations and other stakeholders are increasingly interested in:‒New ways to demonstrate the impact of culture and museums on local development toeffectively channel public and private funding as the debate shifts from demonstrating
the tax revenues, visitors’ spending and jobs associated with the museums’ economic
activity to also capturing social impacts.

‒Examples of “what works” to maximise the impacts and create linkages between
museums, the local economy and the social fabric, and what the implications for a wide
spectrum of policies ranging from culture and tourism to employment and skills, health,business development, innovation and spatial planning.

‒New governance arrangements and funding models, as this new agenda affects how
museums are organised in areas such as human resources and finance. It also requires
local and regional governments to effectively integrate new dimensions in theireconomic, social and spatial development strategies.

The OECD-ICOM Guide for Local Governments, Communities and Museums
In 2018, OECD and ICOM partnered to produce Culture and local development: Maximising theimpact - Guide for Local Governments, Communities and Museums. The Guide was tested by morethan 20 museums and cities in OECD countries and by various ICOM committees. OECD and ICOM
jointly launched the Guide at the first OECD Conference on Culture and Local Development inDecember 2018 in Venice.
The Guide is a learning, self-assessment and development tool that can be used: By local and regional governments to assess and improve their approaches tomaximising the social and economic value of cultural heritage.
 By museums to assess and strengthen their existing and potential linkages with the local
economy and social fabric.
 To identify concrete ways for museums, local governments, communities and otherstakeholders to partner.
 As a learning tool for everybody interested in culture and heritage as a lever for localdevelopment.

Key Themes
The Guide is structured around the following themes:

1
Leverage the power of museums for economic development. The economic benefits from arts andheritage include employment, tax revenues, and spending for local communities. In addition,museums add to the attractiveness of places for talents and high-value-added firms. They foster
innovation and the creation of new goods and services through cross-feeds with other sectors.

2
Build on the role of museums for urban regeneration and community development. Construction orrenovation of a museum can stimulate urban regeneration and bring new life to areas that are losing
their traditional economic base. Museums are also places where social capital can be built between
people in a time where many traditional places of meetings or common events are disappearing.

3

Catalyse culturally aware and creative societies. Museums have mainly been created to increase
cultural awareness and education. With time, this objective has become more complex to also
encompass training and life-long learning, and not only for native populations but also immigrants andother marginalised communities.

4
Museums as places for inclusion, health and well-being. Museums can contribute to integrate
unemployed, marginalised, and at-risk groups by increasing confidence, self-discipline and pro-social
attitudes and behaviours. They also provide platforms for inter-cultural dialogues and promote
integration of migrant populations, and are also creating new ways to alleviate the well-being of
disabled individuals.

5
Mainstream the role of museums in local development. Museums can contribute to local development
as both drivers and enablers. Local governments can mainstream the role of culture as a lever for local
development and mobilise resources (regulatory, financial, land and human) that enable museums torealise their local development potential. New museum management frameworks, which account for
local development issues and perspectives, are also needed.
Next steps for the Guide in 2019-20

The Guide and you• Scaling up the use of the Guide by cities,
regions and museums world-wideCities, regions and countries, as well as museums can:• Creating a repository of good practices,available to the users, who want to beinspired,experiment,examine
alternative policy approaches, orimprove their performance• Developing 2.0 version of the Guide withlessons learnt from 2019-20 phase Request to join the full guided self-assessment
exercise and receive a personalized report Propose examples of innovative practices to be
included in the repository of good practices
 Invite the OECD and ICOM to present key findings atconferences and workshops
 Support the translation of the Guide into country
language

Access the Guide in your language: http://oe.cd/culture | https://icom.museum
Contacts: OECD - Ekaterina.Travkina@oecd.org, Coordinator, Cultural and Creative Industries & Local
Development, Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities |ICOM - Afsin.Altayli@icom.museum, Museums and Society Coordinator, ICOM Secretariat |