What practical conclusion can be drawn from all of this ? Culture is the springboard to the blossomimg development of any community or region. If a group is culturally impoverished, it falls into under-development for want of knowing how to find its bearings, how to select, how to resist and how to draw its indispensable self-esteem from its own identity. If this stage is reached, fatalism and submission, even inertia and anomy lie in wait for it.

1.1 UNDER-DEVELOPMENT AND DEVELOPMENT. To follow this train of thought, we could define underdevelopment as being the decline in one's ability to decide on one's choices freely, that is to say "the entry into dependancy" (Vincent Cosmao). Development would be, on the contrary, a process of autonomous creation whereby a community or region decides for itself within the existing balance of power and market. Can the work of cultural revitalisation bring back dynamism, strength and even material prosperity ? If the answer to that question is affirmative, if it is at least worth asking, then is would be wise to take it into account with regard to projects.

1.2 CULTURAL REVITALISATION. Self-esteem. the ability to select, to resist, and to give a sense are all strongly encouraged by a visibly living culture. The historical heritage, the language, the monuments and legends, the specific forms of spirituality and the know-how, the memory of ancient struggles or strong feats of resistance, the ancestral cosmology and craftsmanship, the contemporary or past artistic creations, the local and original ways of organising work, family or village life, are all elements that contribute to culture and are thus important. It follows therefore that any project with the intention of revalorising, revitalising or restoring these cultural elements is a springboard to development. Research about regional history, teaching a local language threatened to disappear, supporting local craftsmen and artists, creating museums dedicated to local know-how, restoring sites and monuments can all contribute to development. We can also add other types of intervention to these examples that are related to the activation of life in civil society, to the development of the community and to the exploitation of the hidden social dynamism in order to reinforce local democracy and the capacity to formulate a social project.

1.3 FROM OBJECT TO SUBJECT. We would be as well to move from "the culture of the object" to "the culture of the subject". When Ricardo Petrella, director of the EC FAST Programme, underlines (in the magazine "Economie et Humanisme"), the necessity of restoring a sense to our societies, he writes that the matter is basically one of cultural dynamics. "In a way, it means moving away from the culture of the object (building more houses, infrastructures, roads, facilities, striving to have more passengers, goods and money circulate...) which has held a privileged position in the last 30 - 40 years to the culture of the subject (developing ties to live together, looking for the "qualitative" (...).
This requires a "holistic" policy (...) and the setting up of devices for cognitive democracy. By this he means an in-depth and broad understanding of the area and the best possible ability for dialogue between the public authorities and private actors (companies, associations, trade-unions,...).

1.4 A QUESTION OF MEANING, DIGNITY AND FREEDOM. All of this work on culture comes back to enabling citizens to find a sense (meaning) to their social, political and economic life and to their existence as free and dignified men and women.

Thierry Verhelst and
Network Cultures-Europe