Luca Dal Pozzolo is Deputy Chairman of Fondazione Fitzcarraldo and Director of the OCP, Osservatorio Culturale del Piemonte (Cultural Observatory of Piemonte. He is also Deputy Director of the Master in Management of Heritage, organized by Corep- Politecnico di Torino and Fondazione Fitzcarraldo. Luca Dal Pozzolo has been visiting professor in different University in France. (Université de Provence, Aix Marseille II),Belgium (Ecole Superieure d’Architecture de St. Luc, Liege)  and Spain (Università de Barcelona, Università dell’Andalusia Antonio Machado, Ubeda-Baeza He is an architect, and teaches Regional Cultural Policies in Bologna, Economic Faculty. He has published many books and papers about cultural economics, cultural planning as well as on urban renewal. He also teaches at Politecnico of Turin, II° Faculty of Architecture.        

Considering your own experience, what would be your main advice to the young researchers who plan to pursue a career in the field of cultural policy?

Cultural policies are inside a niche of more general policies, but they deal with high complexity issues, like evaluating very immaterial things, long terms impacts and effects, change of mindsets, very complex cultural and human behaviors.  Specialist competences are not enough: it is necessary to know different scientific approaches, and different methods, from economics, to anthropology, sociology, philosophy,  urban planning, etc.,  and to be able to intertwine different interests and analysis, providing also a “translation service” for experts of different disciplines that are not used to speak together and to collaborate.

Curiosity for different disciplines and a strong education in social sciences and their methods are required to foresee a vision about the issues which we have to analyze and explore.

Another crucial competence pertains to the relations with politics and policy makers: a researcher  generally is not aside from political pressure and he/she is often forced to validate some position or to stress some specific conclusion: to defend the freedom to express also things that are not so agreeable for politics it is something that is necessary to learn: there is a strategy to research and another strategy to defend the independence of research, that is not refusing the relation with the public and politic power, but it is a high level mediation to make acceptable the result you produced.

What was the worst professional advice which you might have heard throughout your career?

To force a research process just to confirm conclusions already written and to accept to be paid only to validate something already decided. It is not necessary to be a hero to refuse it, and it’s a good signal that you are not on sale. Probably you will lose some opportunities, but you’ll gain a serious professional status.

Who (or what) motivated you the most by now in your research work?

The feeling of doing something useful not only for me; to be implied in something very difficult and challenging that was changing also my glance on the world; the feeling of building international bridges with experts and contributing for a very little, little part to build Europe as a common and dreamed home. With all delusions that experience and age fatally imply, I can still say that these personal feelings are not exhausted.

Are there any concrete achievements or failures throughout your career which you would like to share with the young researchers?

Achievement and failure at the same time: I had to assist in a public meeting to the massacre of a cultural plan of a city I did for the previous administration. The critic was very hard, brutal, and often invented, pointing out exactly the contrary of what I wrote.

I surprised myself keeping a very calm and serene attitude, notwithstanding this attack.  Though I was very sad, I analyzed again the whole work, trying to evaluate if some of the criticism could be right, or motivated by same weaknesses, or if some misunderstandings could be induced by some ambiguities or unclear texts.  I concluded that this was not the case and all the efforts to make it better could not have avoided that strong – mainly politically motivated – attack.

So I wrote a letter to the newspapers and to the administrators, to answer to all the list of critics.  And then I was no more worried about this problem. It has been a very important lesson for me to learn how to close a chapter doing my best, also if all the results are cancelled and wasted.

What still keeps you in the cultural research field?

The need of leading still for some while my structure, waiting for the young researchers to manage;  the will of transferring some competences and some particular “glance” on the matter;  the fact that I’m still enjoying my work.

In any case I’m managing a building yards of a little residence in the countryside with a little spa. That will be my next job in few years.

What are you working on now, what’s next?

I’m running the Cultural Observatory of Piemonte, researching on youngsters and new technologies, building up Observatories in other regions, working for strategic plans of museums.

As a next step of research, we’re opening a new section of Fondazione Fitzcarraldo on “cultural landscapes planning and researching”. In other terms, on territorial planning, with a specific regard to landscape conservation, touristic and cultural development.