Cultural Policy Indicators

01 May 2008

Your Question

Our organisation, which has a specific section for cultural statistics, has been commissioned to develop a set of key cultural policy indicators. Our principal task is to provide a list of indicators that would satisfy the demands of the renewed state budget and balance sheet framework, thus the Ministry of Finance, and be acceptable and useful for the the officials responsible for cultural affairs at the Ministry of Education as well. Above all we are expected to come up with indicators of 'societal impact' in the field of cultural policy.

I know that cultural and cultural policy indicators are being currently developed in many places in different parts of the world, but I wonder if the context is similar to ours in any country. I would also appreciate if you could point to any literature in this specific area which of course overlaps the debate on evidence-based policies, but it is not altogether the same as far as I can see it at the moment. The demand for more efficiency, greater accountability and more transparency are though shared. Next year I intend to continue the work towards more general cultural indicators that could be used in our country, part of which might be adopted to our regular statistics in the future.

Our Answer

There are a lot of statistical materials at the statistics topic page at our website:(http://www.ifacca.org/topic/statistical-indicators-for-arts-policy/).

If you are looking for indicator work that is being done in similar countries, the first projects that come to mind are those recently and currently being undertaken in Australia and New Zealand,
as both these countries have a ministry/department for culture and an arm's length arts council. Other countries with similar structures that have cultural indicators programs to a varying degree of activity are Canada, the UK, as well as most of the Scandinavian countries. You might like to restrict your research and comparisons to these countries.

With regard to New Zealand and Australia, I know of two projects that will be of particular interest:

Arts and Cultural Heritage - An Information Development Plan, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia, March 2008, available via the topic page at the IFACCA website:
http://www.ifacca.org/publications/2008/03/28/arts-and-cultural-heritage-information-development/.
A project is being undertaken by the Cultural Ministers' Council, which is a national network of Australian state and federal government ministers that also includes New Zealand. See Cultural Indicators working group: http://www.cmc.gov.au/working_groups/past_working_groups/national_support_for_the_arts/cultural_indicators Nothing has yet been published from the project, but you could contact them directly and see if they could provide you with any materials (contact details are available from the link above).

Canada
Statistics Canada:

Culture indicators series:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/ads/87-004-XPB/topics/culind.htm
Culture and leisure home page
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subject-sujet/theme-theme.action?pid=3955&lang=eng&more=0
The Canada Council for the Arts outsources a lot of its statistical research to Hill Strategies Research. This site may have some useful resources for you.
http://www.hillstrategies.com/

UK - The DCMS has released a lot of reports on evaluation and statistics. Again, the important ones can be found at the statistics topic page on the IFACCA website (http://www.ifacca.org/themes/).

Internationally

The UNESCO Institute of Statistics is working on developing indicators for cultural diversity. See the links to 'Final Report: Expert Group Meeting on the Statistical measurement of the diversity of
cultural expressions UNESCO Institute of Statistics, Canada, November 2007', again available at the topic page of the IFACCA website:
http://www.ifacca.org/publications/2007/11/29/final-report-expert-group-meeting-on/). There are a number of presentations from around the world on indicator development.
The Cultures and Globalization Series contains quite an extensive suite of data in its appendix. You might like to have a look at these if you can find a copy!
http://www.sagepub.com/booksSeries.nav?series=Series1021&desc=The%20Cultures%20and%20Globalization%20Series

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