Abolition of 18-year-old bonus, book deductions and other possible measures to help culture in the post-virus era

How to help culture out of the economic crisis triggered by the health emergency over the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic? In our view, there is a starting point that should be clear: direct state aid should be limited to the emergency only, and thereafter the need will be to revive the sector, and the best way to do this will be to stimulate demand. Of course, it is not intended that it will be necessary to give the green light to wild tourism, and to get our cities of art back to being traveled by masses of tourists in a short time: not least because, most likely, this will be a scenario that we will not see again in the near future, for various reasons (distrust on the part of people, countries that have yet to emerge from the epidemic, increased controls). Therefore, action will have to focus mainly on domestic demand.

However, if we talk about culture and tourism, there is an additional basis from which it is impossible to disregard, namely, without protection, everything else cannot exist. Therefore, it is impossible to rebuild without starting from the foundations, and those foundations are the professionals involved in the protection and preservation of cultural heritage, who have so far been held in low regard, but who will have to become the real protagonists of the restart. Only on a cultural heritage kept in perfect order depends everything else: valorization, attractiveness, ability to take advantage of “minor” tourist flows.

As for the relationship between Italians and culture, it is enough to look at Istat’s numbers to understand what will need to be incentivized: in 2018, only 4 out of 10 Italians read at least one book a year, 2 out of 10 went to the theater at least once a year (cinema is better: 5 out of 10), 3 out of 10 visited a museum or an exhibition, 3 out of 10 attended a concert, and 3 out of 10 visited an archaeological site. These will be the numbers from which we will have to start again, these will be the numbers to go up. So let us try to suggest, without any pretense and only seeing the situation from our perspective as journalists dealing with cultural heritage, some of the many measures that could be taken, in the short term, to help Italian culture in the aftermath of the virus: it is clear, however, that every measure (whether it concerns culture or something else) will have to be taken within the general framework of a radical change of habits from the past. No one wants to go back to “normality,” if “normality” is what we have witnessed so far: we hope, therefore, that the post-virus will bring with it a serious and unyielding fight against tax evasion and the underground economy, an end to waste, greater redistributive justice, economic policies that are more rewarding toward labor and less lenient toward rents, and so on.

Audience at the National Gallery ofUmbria in Perugia. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

1. Rebalancing the resources of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage: more weight for protection. It is proven that protection is the basis of everything (we suggest in this regard this interview with Stefano L’Occaso when he was still director of the Polo Museale della Lombardia). The MiBACT reform of 2014 split two entities, protection and enhancement, which were previously inseparable: since it is difficult to imagine a return to that state, however, it is possible to think that the internal resources of the ministry could be rebalanced, since now the functions appear unbalanced on enhancement. Translated: fewer temporary exhibitions, less weight to the large central hubs, more room for the care of diffuse heritage, more focus on local audiences.

2. Abolition of the 300 euro bonus for 18-year-olds. In a crisis economy, we believe there is little room for extras, moreover distributed in a haphazard manner: this is the case of the 500 euro bonus (later reduced to 300 for 2020) for 18-year-olds. Of abolishing this measure Carlo Cottarelli, among others, spoke a few months ago: the time has come. The culture bonus received, for 2018, allocations of 290 million euros (192 million were then spent) and for 2019 allocations of 240 million euros (about 200 million were spent). In 2020, the amount earmarked for the project was 160 million euros: these are funds that, yes, feed the consumption of cultural products, but which were also to be dispersed in many different rivulets, which in part guaranteed lavish earnings to the big online distribution platforms (Amazon and the like), and which could instead be reserved for creating jobs (not only by investing in recruitment but also by other methods, such as an art plan like the one suggested in recent days by Obrist, which would have the effect of reactivating the work of galleries and artists: something similar has already been imagined in Madrid) or to activate capillary campaigns to bring people closer to reading, theater, and museums, capable of creating the conditions to allow recipients to benefit from culture in a stable and lasting way and not just use it as a temporary bonus.

3. Tax deductions for those who book their vacation in Italy. To stimulate domestic tourism, one could consider tax deductions for Italians who decide to book their vacations in their own country, or simply for those who spend one or more nights away from home. Measures to spur Italians to spend their vacations in Italy, however, will have to be combined with massive promotional campaigns to make citizens discover their heritage, especially the lesser-known ones.

4. Strong tax deductions for purchases of services from licensed tour guides and museum tickets. To help tour guides and museums (i.e., two activities that, during the health emergency, were unable to work at all and had their revenues wiped out), it is possible to imagine a strong deductibility, with a percentage that would even be close to 100 percent. To do this (we are thinking especially of museums), however, it will be absolutely necessary to review the practice of free Sundays, because structured as it is now it makes no sense at all: it will be necessary, in other words, to discourage the assault on large museums, and to encourage encounters with small ones.

5. Dramatically review museum fees and encourage continued attendance, especially by locals. It is necessary to think not only about tourists, but also about citizens. On these pages already in the past we have proposed some possible measures: discounts and reductions for those who do not have a job or based on time slots, forms of season tickets (also in collaboration with other institutes and cultural places in the city), special tickets for families, extension of the duration of the validity of the ticket, conventions, tickets with the prices calibrated according to seasonality.

6. Increasing the Art Bonus tax credit. One could think about increasing the percentage of the Art Bonus tax credit (which is now 65 percent) to incentivize patronage and try to reach the levels of other European countries, where this type of culture is much more entrenched than here. In France, for example, the mécénat culturel, a kind of counterpart of our Art Bonus (but with a much longer history) guarantees in one year to the French state what our Art Bonus brings to Italy in four or five years.

7. Tax deductions for books, theater and concert tickets, films, DVDs, music. Individual purchases in culture should be encouraged: Italians should be spurred to read, to go to theaters or concerts, to buy films and records. The invitation to read will then have to be accompanied by an appropriate and widespread promotion campaign, perhaps even using unconventional means and channels. It will then be necessary to think about measures to incentivize purchasing from traditional bookstores (which perhaps also conduct online trade) rather than through large multinational distribution platforms: for example, major tax breaks for “physical” bookstores.

8. Unlocking unused resources. Former Undersecretary for Culture Gianluca Vacca has let it be known that there are unused resources to be released worth between 100 and 150 million euros: these funds could be used for the most urgent and non-structural measures (e.g., campaigns aimed at boosting Italy’s image abroad, campaigns to increase domestic tourism, measures to help professionals overcome the aftermath of the emergency, the plan for art mentioned above).

9. A ministry or minister of tourism separate from that of culture. An independent control room will perhaps be more effective for boosting tourism (also because tourism is not only cultural tourism: there is also beach tourism, mountain tourism, nature tourism, spa tourism, food and wine tourism, and so on). And given also that tourism has a significant weight on GDP, in our opinion we might consider going back to before 1993, that is, to when the Ministry of Tourism was abrogated: perhaps it will be time to start talking again about a Ministry of Tourism (or a minister of tourism) independent of culture.

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