Four years of the Basque Observatory of Culture

The Observatory is a tool for everyone which aims at helping to know, understand and interpret reality, a lucid camera at the service of the development of culture.

The need and conditions to create and maintain an observatory can only be generated within a politically and sectorially mature context. These services aim at structuring and systematizing the experience and knowledge of the cultural agents. They build a body of information and analysis which also offers a perspective to the sector in order to understand reality and transform it.

In these four years, the Basque Observatory of Culture has slowly established itself. Observation is often associated with gaze, with following the development of what is happening. However, it is necessary to have in mind that it implies intention and needs a structure of interpretation. This intention distinguishes what is relevant from what is not. That is why the first task of the Basque Observatory of Culture was oriented towards reflecting on its function, framework of action and its priorities. We started to deal with methodologies and concepts hardly used at our most immediate cultural context.

One of the aspects we have realized in these years is an attitude change among part of the cultural agents regarding quantitative research. At the beginning there was a bit of scepticism, however, nowadays a real interest can be appreciated in knowing the structural elements of the sector offered by statistics. A clear example is the increasing response to the research projects we have promoted throughout these four years.

The first study promoted by the observatory was the Statistics on Cultural Habits, Practices and Consumption 2007-2008. Thanks to this wide and complex research, we have now data on our cultural uses and we can compare ourselves with other contexts. Thus, for example we know that we are over the European average regarding reading, museum visits as well as concert frequency and cinema. On the contrary, regarding the use of libraries and performing arts our country is below other neighbour countries. Professionals of these sectors might probably have had an intuition on these numbers before, but now they can confirm said intuition and work on changing this situation.

Moreover, experience tells us that in order to know a reality deeply, it is interesting to go beyond data because quantitative aspects favour qualitative aspects and vice versa. Following the example of the cultural practices, interpretative articles were commissioned in 2009 to experts of urban culture, youth and Basque language taking the results of the statistics as a base.

As we mentioned before, during these four years the rhythm of information production has gradually accelerated. The promoted statistics aim at studying the offer and cultural production; practices and consumption; public expense in culture; enterprises and employment. These analysis however are synchronic at the moment, since they belong to the first editions. In the following years, evolutionary visions will be offered to enable accurate diagnoses, to identify tendencies and to distinguish what are mere temporal facts. That way we will be able to make the most of all the work done up to now. 

The Observatory has also analysed the field of creation. The objective has been double: on the one hand, the support policies to promote creation in other countries have been examined in order to obtain learning which might be applicable to the Basque context and, on the other hand, a study on the Factories of Creation has been developed. These latter experiences have become one of the main creative laboratories of cities and are being set as an important part of their artistic innovation and research and cultural production policies.

One of the issues of special interest nowadays is undoubtedly the change of paradigm happening in the digital environment and its effect within the cultural sector. The Basque Observatory of culture has carried out two qualitative studies to analyse this phenomena. The project on culture and digitalization, aimed at knowing the effect of the digital environment within the industries. Cultural agents have directly participated in this project. From another point of view, the study on Youth, Culture and New Technologies deals with the keys for the new consumption manners generated by the digital environment, amongst other factors, in young people. This is a research made within the framework of the International Network of Observatories which we entered four years ago.

Finally, the Observatory has also worked on issues like the application of the cultural 1%, cultural diplomacy, reading plans and Basque language within culture. The variety of topics of analysis, methodologies and results is very significant.

These results are also consolidating the line of products of the Observatory, among which we can highlight the collection of Statistics and Studies, as well as the electronic bulletin Kulturkaria which enables tracing tendencies, news and publications. The showcase of all of these results is the web of the Observatory, which gathers data, publications, studies, reports, plans and in general, all the production of the Observatory.

After four years, the Observatory has the conditions to offer information and knowledge on many issues to politicians, sectorial agents, researchers and people interested in these topics. The greater the echo of the Observatory’s work, the greater its success and true usefulness for the development of culture.