Intesa Sanpaolo presents the study on the impact of the pandemic on Milanese cultural enterprises
the Galleries of Italy in Milan hosted today the presentation of one of the first studies on the impact of the pandemic on the Italian cultural industry. The research, conducted by the Studies and Research Department and the Media and Culture Desk of Intesa Sanpaolo in collaboration with theDepartment of Culture of the Municipality of Milan, took as a sample over three hundred entrepreneurial realities active in the area of the Milanese capital.
To be exact they were 367 cultural subjects mapped thanks to the data provided by the Department, the same enrolled in the calls of Culture Plan to cover the damages suffered between January and July 2020. Data that, referring only to the first six months of the pandemic, clearly return a partial photograph of the damage caused by Covid to the culture sector.
The main evidences, presented this morning by Tommaso Sacchi, Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan and from Stefania Trenti, Head of Industry Research e Gregorio De Felice, Chief Economist of Intesa Sanpaolo, show a complex and worrying picture. With regard to the maintenance costs of the subjects surveyed in the face of null collections, in fact, the loss amounts to a total of 33.8 million euros.
Trenti (Intesa Sanpaolo): “Cultural enterprises lost € 33.8 million”
The containment measures of the virus have affected, without distinction, all cultural sectors and their activities: 99% of the subjects surveyed had to reschedule or permanently cancel projects and appointments. 63.5% declare that they have discontinued all ancillary services. The subjects analyzed are small or very small: two thirds declare a turnover of less than 200 thousand euros, while half declare less than 50 thousand euros. However, despite the size in terms of turnover, 61.3% manage one or more spaces open to the public, of which about 20% are owned by the Municipality.
The subjects in the sample were also classified taking into account their own social activities. Specifically, realities operating in atypical contexts, of severe degradation or to protect people with conditions of fragility are identified: just over a third of the companies investigated operate in difficult contexts and are distinguished by the inclusion policies adopted.
With regard to and data by sector, in terms of specialization, a greater impact is observed for the visual arts, museums and design sectors, where the presence of museums and museum houses has heavily affected maintenance costs. Furthermore, subjects linked to music, dance, theater and cinema suffer heavily, not simply for the cancellation of events and shows, but also for the suspension of training activities within their structures.
In this bleak picture, however, a strong ability to react emerges. As also evidenced by Gregorio De Felice e Stefania Trenti to the microphones of affaritaliani.it, over half of the investigated subjects took action to benefit from the Government’s emergency measures, and more than80% has expanded its own offerta on-line, reinventing communication and the ways of using the services offered.
De Felice (Intesa Sanpaolo): “A differentiated and reactive cultural framework”