Statistics of the Arts and Cultural Industries 2008-2009

The execution of sectorial statistics has been one of the priorities of the statistical programme designed by the Basque Observatory of Culture in 2007. The statistics dealing with the arts and cultural industries are placed amongst these. These two new operations of census nature promoted by the Observatory start a new biennial statistical series which will offer for the first time orderly information about the sectors of the performing arts, music, visual arts, and the recording and audiovisual sector.

Objectives and Characteristics of the Statistical Operations

The main objective of these statistical operations is to get to know the behaviour of the cultural agents within each study field:

- Phonographic (recording) and audiovisual producers in the case of Statistics of the Cultural Industries;
- And stage arts producers and programmers, musical programmers and the production and exhibition spaces of the visual arts, in the case of Statistics of the arts

The results of the operations will allow possible a partial comparison of their data with other sectorial studies promoted by entities similar to the European Audiovisual Observatory, Eiken, FAPAE (Federation of Associations of Spanish Audiovisual Producers), Idescat (Statistical Institute of Catalonia), etc. which have been taken into account in the statistical design.

The Observatory has produced six specific questionnaires adapted to the specific nature and characteristics of each field of study: visual arts, performing arts producers, stage arts programmers, and musical programmers in the case of Statistics of the Arts, and audiovisual and recording producers in the case of Statistics of the Cultural Industries.  Besides covering the specific particularities of each subsection, the questionnaires share a similar structure divided in four entries related to the identification data of the business: human resources (staff, gender, professional category, dedication, contractual relation); economical activity (expenses, income, investments); and typology of the activity (name of the exhibition, show, concert; number of productions, references, copies, novelties, etc.)

The allocation of the field work took place in July last year, it started with a first phase of classification and debugging of initial directories that lasted until November, and was followed by a information collection phase of that finalized in the month of May.

Circulation and Results

The results of both studies with data referring to the year 2007, will be available in the last quarter of this year and will be published in a specific report of each statistical operation, as well as in the Observatory’s website.