The initiatives promoted by AMI (project leader), Bunker, CITEMA, Expeditio and Zunino e Partner Progetti in the framework of Sostenuto have provided evidence of the potentialities of creative and cultural activities in social dynamization and territorial development processes and in the consolidation of spaces prone to change and innovation.

Through their cultural labs - a creative business incubator in Marseille (France), an urban dynamization and participation system in Ljubljana (Slovenia), an arts & crafts cluster in Chiusi (Italy) and a set of territorial governance initiatives in Kotor (Montenegro) and Liguria (Italy) - the cultural organizations involved in the project have also contributed to create spaces for action and debate around those topics.

 Linking the experience of the labs to the expanding academic literature and the exchanges conducted with lab managers and external cultural agents, the project has identified some of the elements that explain the emergence of new forms of economic and social organization and reinforce the innovation capacity in the cultural sector.

The research conducted throughout the project has tried to seek answers to three main questions: does culture have special capabilities to generate or trigger innovation? Are there channels through which innovation can be transmitted from the cultural to the social or the economic sphere? Do Med regions perform differently from Europe as a whole in these spheres?