IVth Conference with International Observatories: Turin 2010
The Basque Observatory of Culture is a member of the International Network of Observatories. This year the Network has celebrated its IVth Conference under the title Culture for the future: Youth, Cultural Consumption, New Technologies and Creativity. Three years after holding the Conference here in the Basque Country, the Osservatorio Culturale del Piemonte has hosted the Conference on this occasion. The event will be held within the framework of the activities promoted due to the celebration in Turin of the European Capital of Youth in 2010.
The Conference has served to share the conclusions of the research developed by each Observatory of the network regarding Youth, Culture and New Technologies. Young European students, local and international politicians, experts of the Observatories of Culture and renowned academic researchers have participated actively. The main objective has been focused on reflecting about possible recommendations to politicians involved within the field of youth and culture.
The Basque Observatory of Culture has contributed to the debate with the results of the study “Youth, Culture and New Technologies”. We had the results of the survey on habits and cultural practices made in 2007-2008. After extracting, examining and analysing the results corresponding to young people, it was considered interesting to complete said information with a qualitative research through focus-group to provide orientations on the sense and meaning given by these diverse young groups to their cultural practices.
The conclusions of the report include the most important elements of their practices, mainly leisure and entertainment; voracity and fleetingness generated by the huge amount of information which is available through the web; differences between virtual and live consumption; the importance of the social networks; and their considerations regarding gratuity and price.
The changes in values, the ways of consuming and enjoying culture require new methodologies of study. Thus, the Conference has served as well to debate on the possible future research fields, like, for example, the patterns of access of young people to specific cultural contents; the need for mapping the practices of youngsters in the web to overcome outdated definitions on “young cultural consumptions”, from these results new types of users could be obtained; and finally, the need for an exhaustive evaluation of the current public policies for youth, culture and new technologies to compare it with the obtained maps of uses and users.
Complete study (pdf, 339 KB)
