Cultural Welfare in the Digital Age: Participatory Practices and Local Empowerment

This chapter explores the relationship between digital transformation, participatory governance and cultural welfare, considering digital platforms as socio-technical infrastructures that reshape how cultural resources are accessed, governed and collectively produced, with particular attention to marginal areas. While the link between participatory governance and digitalization has been widely discussed in literature, the chapter focuses on a less explored dimension: how community engagement combined with digital technologies can generate positive outcomes in terms of socio-cultural welfare. Museums are interpreted as relational spaces that foster inclusive cultural participation and support the social and educational role of culture. The empirical analysis focuses on the MIRA Museum and its participatory photographic archive. The case illustrates how digital tools and community participation can strengthen the relationship between people and heritage, fostering inclusion, memory-making and forms of empowerment linked to digital citizenship.