Resources: Cultural Indicators

Cities and Communities: Cultural Indicators at the Local Level
Final Workshop Report Prepared by Nancy Duxbury (April 2007)

• Details and workshop transcripts: English | Français

Background Research Report:
International Perspectives on Cultural Indicators: A Review and Compilation of Cultural Indicators Used in Selected Projects
Derek Simons and Steven R. Dang (November 2006)

Research Directory: Cultural Indicators

Canada

Centre for Native Policy and Research – a medicine wheel model for indicator development: east is “Culture and family.” Two culture indicators selected:

Percentage of Aboriginal people in the GVRD speaking traditional languages
- Percentage of Aboriginal people in the GVRD participating in traditional activities

Community Foundations of Canada – Vital Signs (Signes vitaux), an annual community check-up conducted by community foundations across Canada, measures the vitality of Canadian cities, identifies significant trends, and assigns grades in at least ten areas critical to quality of life. In 2006, a number of Community Foundations included culture-related indicators in their reports.

Creative City Network of Canada – Intermunicipal Comparative Framework – benchmarking and documentation of municipal involvement and investment in cultural development.

Canadian Cultural Observatory, Department of Canadian Heritage – "Indicators/Frameworks for Measurement" section of the "Cultural Policy" resource area on the website of the Canadian Cultural Observatory. (Link no longer available.)

Department of Canadian Heritage has a number of interests in this area, including: Metropolis cultural indicator work; cultural citizenship measures; program/policy performance measures

Environment Museum – Environment Canada recently received a national mandate to contribute to strategic actions and evaluation in Education and Engagement in Environment. The department is in the process of developing more accurate cultural indicators to monitor changes in attitudes, beliefs, relation and representation of the environment and actions.

FCM Quality of Life Reporting System – Culture Working Group (municipalities) – established and beginning to work on ‘culture and arts’ area

Individual cities, linked to and contextualized by their city plans/processes and cultural plans (e.g., City of Ottawa, City of Toronto, many others)

Mapping Quality of Life and the Culture of Small Cities – 5-year CURA-funded research program (2006-2011) - Thompson Rivers University lead partner to connect a variety of research projects and community partners within 4 broad themes:

mapping points of entry
mapping community stories
mapping community and cultural assets
mapping cultural intersections and processes

As part of the Mapping Quality of Life and the Culture of Small Cities program, the Institute for Social Research and Evaluation at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) conducted an Arts and Quality of Life Survey of households in 5 BC communities. See total sample results. For more information, contact: Alex C. Michalos, Director | 250 962 8719 | michalos@unbc.ca.

Metropolis Project 10 years of research on issues of migration and settlement – growing interest to consider cultural issues, dimensions within the Metropolis research project. The International Metropolis conference in Toronto, October 2005 featured a session on cultural indicators; a book chapter on the cultural dimensions of immigration/settlement and the development of appropriate indicators currently under development.

Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec (Québec Observatory on Culture and Communications) – In 2003 the Observatory established a classification system for culture and communications activities in Quebec, the result of concerted discussions with government decision makers and with the cultural sector. This system allows for a coherent quantitative description of the wolerange of cultural activity in Quebec, but does not by itself answer key questions about the state of cultural development in Quebec, its accessibility, etc. To address these types of issues, an "informed synthesis" of the data (and perhaps the development of new data) is required. The Observatoire is addressing this challenge by developing a system of cultural indicators (2005– ).

• Paper by Benoit Allaire on this initiative: English | Français

Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory (RVu) – a public participation study group process to determine and develop sustainability indicators for the region. The project includes an “Arts, Culture and Community” component. The “top three” indicators developed in this area were:

1. Quantity and quality of opportunities for cultural activity, as represented by an annually updated cultural events matrix
2. Percent of individuals who feel that they have adequate or better access, freedom and time for cultural and artistic activity
3. Ratio of dollars spent promoting multicultural awareness/diversity and artistic endeavours relative to the dollars these activities contribute to society

International scope

UNESCO

UNESCO / United Cities and Local Governments - “Local policies for cultural diversity” – evaluation of local policies supporting expressions of cultural diversity, and development of related indicators

Evaluation of municipal policies against racism and discrimination (potential tie to Urban Governance Index being developed by UN-Habitat)

Revision of the 1986 framework for cultural statistics; recently commenced and likely to result in extensive consultation in 2006-7

Research to adapt the EU LEG/Eurobarometer survey on cultural participation to cultural activities in developing countries (initial investigations conducted in Thailand, Bhutan and Uganda)

The ‘Jodhpur’ initiative to develop a series of indicators for cultural industries for Asian countries. Begun in Feb 2005 as a partnership of UNESCO, WIPO, and UNIDO as well as other agencies from the region and led by UNESCO’s regional office in Bangkok. It has adopted four data modules covering employment, production, SMEs, intellectual property, crafts and other areas. The project is now entering its implementation phase and will be presented to Asian Ministries of Culture in November at Hong Kong where the group will also discuss the role of creativity indices

World Heritage. UNESCO is preparing its first State of the World’s Heritage report for which UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is preparing the data tables and figures. UNESCO is this year revising its Periodic Reporting system for World Heritage sites. UIS also organised a seminar at the annual conference of Archaeological Institute of America in Montreal January 2006 on statistics for the management of archaeological sites.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Economic and social impacts of culture – national basis; selected major cities (2006-07).

Recent OECD study. (2006). International measurement of the economic and social importance of culture. (Abstract.)

International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA)

IFACCA. (2002, November). International comparisons of arts participation data. D’art topics in arts policy, no.2. Sydney, Australia: IFACCA. Weblink to PDF

IFACCA. (2005, June). Statistical indicators for arts policy. D'Art report no. 18. Sydney, Australia: IFACCA. See also, a summary in Spanish: Indicadores Estadísticos para Políticas de Arte.

IFACCA. (2004). Cross-country comparisons: Problems and solutions. Sydney, Australia: IFACCA, with the Australia Council for the Arts.

Council of Europe

Methodological Guide on the Concerted Development of Social Cohesion Indicators – A massive study intended to develop an indicators set, based on the Council of Europe's definition of social cohesion as “the capacity of a society to ensure the welfare of all its members, minimising disparities.” Among the huge body of suggested indicators are two categories – Information/communication and Culture – that are directly relevant.

International – individual countries

Australia

Integrated Local Area Planning initiatives:

The Victorian Community Indicators (VCI) Project is a VicHealth funded initiative designed to support local governments develop and use community indicators as tools for measuring health, well-being and sustainability and for improving citizen engagement, community planning and policy making. Weblink: www.communityindicators.net.au

Cultural Development Network – Cultural Indicators Resources:

• Salvaris, Mike. (2006, May 8). Community indicators for culture and the arts. Australia, Victoria: Cultural Development Network Forum. Weblink to PPT
• Salvaris, Mike. (2006, May 8). The role of cultural facilities in community strengthening. Presentation for Cultural Development Network’s ‘Working Outside the Box’. Australia, Victoria: Cultural development Network Forum.

Belgium

Faronet.be: Flemish interface centre for cultural heritage

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Creativity Index – commissioned by the Home Affairs Bureau and undertaken by Desmond Hui and his colleagues at the Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Hong Kong. This is a very impressive piece of work which includes measures and indicators of human capital, social capital, cultural capital, etc.

The Hong Kong Arts and Cultural Indicators Research Report — commissioned by HK Arts Development Council and undertaken by International Intelligence on Culture, Colin Mercer, and the HK Policy Research Institute.

The Netherlands

Ghent University, Department of Sociology is conducting research on cultural policy indicators

New Zealand

New Zealand's Ministry for Culture and Heritage has collated cultural well-being indicators currently being developed by local councils.

New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage and Statistics New Zealand have recently published the report Cultural Indicators for New Zealand 2006. It draws on a range of sources to populate indicators in five theme areas – engagement, cultural identity, diversity, social cohesion, and economic development. While a number of proposed indicators do not yet have data, and others have only short time series data as yet, these gaps and limitations show where we intend to go with our indicator reporting over the next five to ten years.

Museum Aotearoa statistics/benchmarking project – created to address the lack of hard information on the museum sector and the contribution it makes in New Zealand.

United Kingdom

Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) – Results from national Taking Part Survey. (2006, July)

Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) – Creative Industries Economic Estimates Annual bulletin

Colin Mercer's work on cultural citizenship; culture and quality of life

Impact Research: Time for Measuring Culture, a companion booklet to the East Midlands Regional Cultural Strategy to promote the use of consistent cultural indicators.

Local legislative framework: All local authorities are required to develop Cultural Strategies + performance assessment legislative requirements; a wider range of indicators measuring outcomes (rather than just outputs) such as human and social capital, economic, and other impacts (Mercer, 2006)

Also, Cultural Strategies must now be linked to Sustainable Community Strategies for every local authority in England. These strategies are developed through a local partnership, which draws up a Local Area Agreement. The outcomes of the agreement are evaluated by performance indicators (e.g., related to participation in cultural activities and amenities, satisfaction an/or attitude, impact, value for money). (Mercer, 2006; LGA/DCMS Cultural Pathfinder Programme Evaluation Framework, 2005)

United States

Various local initiatives, e.g., Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley; Boston Foundation Indicators Project

Project to develop inter-city comparative indicators related to key questions (Brooks & Kushner, 2002)