The power of local networking: Bologna’s music scene as a creative community, 1978–1992

ABSTRACT

Musicians have always established a symbiotic relationship with the urban environments in which they live and work, with a tendency to aggregate into place-based relational networks. Bologna provides a clear example of this phenomenon to the point that the evolution of its musical scene can be characterized in terms of its relational dynamics. We study a network of artists whose main common trait has been the deliberate choice of coming or returning to live and work in Bologna, locally producing their records in the period 1978–1992, a sort of “creative golden age” in the recent musical history of the city. We use Social Network Analysis to reconstruct the structure of the relationships that have bound together the Bologna’s singers-songwriters scene in its relationship with the urban context. Making use of the Newman Community Detection algorithm, we find a dense, vital and collaborative scene, organized around four different, musician-centered communities, that are permeable to collaborations with each other. This vital system of related creative communities has been the driving force of Bologna’s salience in the national musical scene in the 1980s and early 1990s, and its analysis provides insights for the design of cultural policies aimed at leveraging the potential of urban creative scenes.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabrina Pedrini

Sabrina Pedrini is Adjunct Professor of Cultural Economics at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna where she teaches Circular Economy and Business Organization. She is also an Adjunct Professor at IULM University and Catholic University of Milan. She received her PhD in Economics at Marche Polytechnic University in 2008. Her research focuses on inter-organizational networks in cultural contexts, impact of cultural behavior on circular economy production and new cultural commons paradigm.

Raffaele Corrado

Raffaele Corrado is Associate Professor of Management at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna. He received his PhD in Management at the University of Bologna in 1999, and in 1996-1997, he was visiting scholar at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of the Northwestern University. He currently teaches Management and Social Network Analysis at the University of Bologna. He also taught Social Network Analysis in the PhD programs of several universities in Italy and abroad. His research focuses on the evolution of intra and inter-organizational networks in a variety of empirical settings, e.g., cooperative arrangements between airlines, interlocking directorates and shareholdings between large companies, interlocking winemakers between wineries, interlocking artists between art galleries, and the reproduction of collaboration ties across subsequent project-based organizations. He has published his work in international journals such as Organization Studies, Strategic Organization, Industrial and Corporate Change, and Journal of Management and Governance.

Pier Luigi Sacco

Pier Luigi Sacco is Full Professor of Cultural Economics at IULM University Milan, Senior Researcher at the metaLAB at Harvard, and at the Bruno Kessler Foundation; and Senior Adviser at the OECD. He received his PhD in Economics at the European University Institute in 1993, and was a Visiting Professor and then Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, 2016-2018. In 2018-2019, he was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. In 2017-2019, he served at the European Commission as Special Advisor to the EU Commissioner for Education and Culture. His research focuses on behavioral and computational social sciences and culture, evolutionary game theory, culture-led development and cultural policy design, and infodemics. He has published his work in international journals such as Nature Human Behavior, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Urban Studies, European Urban and Regional Studies, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.