Informing Cultural Policy

The Information and Research Infrastructure

J. Mark Schuster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780882851747
• eBook ISBN: 9781351512435
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In any policy arena, the crafting of effective policy depends on the quality of the information infrastructure that is available to the participants in that arena. Such an information infrastructure is designed, developed, and managed as a critical element in policy formulation and implementation. While various attempts have been made to map the extent of the existing cultural policy information infrastructure in the United States, no structured attempt has been made to conduct a cross-national analysis intended to draw on the more highly developed models already in operation elsewhere.A cross-national comparative look provides valuable information on how this infrastructure has evolved, on what has succeeded and what has had less success, on what is sustainable and what is not, and on how the range of interests of the various individuals and institutions involved in the cultural policy arena can best be accommodated through careful design of the information infrastructure.In Informing Cultural Policy, international cultural policy scholar and researcher J. Mark Schuster relates the findings of a study that took him from North America to Europe to gain understanding of the cultural policy information infrastructure in place abroad. His findings are structured into a taxonomy that organizes the array of research and information models operating throughout the world into a logical framework for understanding how the myriad cultural agencies collect, analyze, and disseminate cultural policy data. Schuster discusses private- and public-sector models, including research divisions of government cultural funding agencies, national statistics agencies, independent nonprofit research institutes, government-designated university-based research centers, private consulting firms, cultural ""observatories,"" non-institutional networks, research programs, and publications. For each case study undertaken, the author provides the Internet address, names, and information for key conta

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The Research and Information Infrastructure

Introduction

In any policy arena, the crafting of appropriate and effective policy depends on the quality of the information infrastructure that is available to the participants in that arena. Such an information infrastructure does not develop on its own accord. Rather, it is designed, developed, and managed as a critical element in policy formulation and implementation. This should be no less true in cultural policy than in other policy arenas.

In the twenty-five years that I have been doing research in the field of cultural policy, various pieces of such an infrastructure have begun to develop in the United States. The National Endowment for the Arts has had a research division, which has supported a growing volume of research, most notably the Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts. Princeton University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, among others, have created university-based cultural policy research centers. Many of the major arts service organizations have added research directors to their staffs. But, while various attempts have been made to map the extent of the existing cultural policy information infrastructure in the United States—encompassing the mix of government offices, university research centers, research staff within arts service organizations, individual researchers, and consulting firms of various types—no structured attempt has been made to conduct a cross-national analysis intended to draw on the more highly developed models already in operation elsewhere.

What are the important models for a cultural policy information infrastructure that have been developed in other countries during the last thirty to forty years? What are the lessons most applicable to the United States? A cross-national comparative look can provide valuable information on how this infrastructure has evolved, on what has succeeded and what has had less success, on what is sustainable and what is not, and on how the range of interests of the various individuals and institutions involved in the cultural policy arena can best be accommodated through careful design (or, at the very least, reflective adaptation) of the information infrastructure.

This book focuses on examples drawn from the European and Canadian contexts. This selective emphasis makes sense for two reasons. First, these are the models most accessible by virtue of the involvement and visibility of these countries in various international research networks, as well as by virtue of their relationship with multinational agencies. I did uncover other models during the research, and where they are particularly relevant I have cited them, but the budget and timing of the project on which this book is based did not allow for their full exploration. Second, the models discussed here tend to be those that are the most highly evolved, suggesting that they are particularly good examples to consider when one is interested in the track record of various forms of the cultural policy information infrastructure. The evidence of accumulated experience is key to understanding the various models and their properties.

Research Questions

This inquiry was designed around a set of research questions that included the following:

□ What is the structure of the cultural policy information infrastructure? Which individuals and which institutions contribute most to its operation?

□ How is the infrastructure funded?

□ How are comparability, continuity, and stability built into the system?

□ How are the various research-related activities of data collection, data analysis, generation of statistics, information development, documentation, cataloging and archiving, dissemination, and communication handled?

□ What is the relationship between the private and the public sectors in providing the infrastructure?

□ How (and how well) are the interests of the various parties in the cultural policy arena met by the system? What is the nature of their relationship with the system?

□ To what extent does the cultural policy information infrastructure involve parallel structures operating simultaneously? How do they work together? Is there a division of labor in the system that allows it to function better?

□ How do demands for new types of information and new forms of inquiry enter into the system?

□ How does the system allow for multiple interpretations of the data it is collecting?

□ To what extent is the system motivated by a data collection and documentation mentality as opposed to a research mentality?

□ What is the balance between basic research and applied research? How is that balance managed?

□ To what extent is the system designed and managed as an element of public policy toward the arts and culture? To what extent has it simply evolved?

□ To what extent and in what form does the system generate information that is used for advocacy purposes?

These questions set forth an ambitious research agenda for this inquiry. It was not always possible to get clear answers to all of them, but the contents of the interviews that were conducted were incredibly rich, often leading in directions not imagined by this original set of research questions.

The Structure of This Inquiry

This book is organized in three parts. Part I provides an introduction to the inquiry and summarizes the main crosscutting themes that have emerged from the research. Note, however, that Part I is not entirely separable from the rest of the document; it draws heavily upon the analysis and the further detail of the case studies presented in Parts II and III. In Parts II and III, each case is summarized using a standardized format in which the significance of the case is explained, the background and evolution of the case are documented, and an assessment of the case is offered. Each description includes the Web site address, a list of key contacts, and a list of the documents that were consulted in the compilation of this book. Part II focuses on individual research and documentation centers, organizing them by country so that one can get a sense of the ecology of the information infrastructure by reading consecutive cases. Part III focuses on research and documentation consortia, including research projects involving multiple institutions.

Institution-Based Models

At the outset of this research, I identified several different models for the organization of cultural policy research and information, and I have made every attempt to include several examples of each model among the cases that were ultimately investigated. A description of each model follows.

Research Division of a Government Cultural Funding Agency

The archetypal model in which the research and information function in cultural policy is assumed by the central government agency is the Departement des Études et de la Prospective of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. This office administers what is probably the most extensive national-level research and information capability in cultural policy It commissions research on a regular basis, administers ongoing work in the development of cultural indicators, maintains an extensive documentation service, and provides policy-based research on a one-off basis.

The Strategic Research and Analysis Directorate of Canadian Heritage; the Cultural Policy Directorate of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; the Planning and Research Section of the Public Affairs, Research and Communications Office of the Canada Council; and the Statistics and Social Policy Unit of the British Department for Culture, Media and Sport also turned out to be similar in intent and in structure, if not in scope.

In some ways, this is the model that one would most expect to find: the central governmental agency taking its mandate seriously and maintaining an in-house research capability to document the field in which it is operating and to inform the making of policy in that field.

National Statistics Agency

In some cases, the national statistics agency has a specific mandate to collect, maintain, and disseminate government statistics on the cultural sector. This is true for Statistics Canada and will also be true with the creation of a new cultural statistics observatory at the provincial level in Québec. The Social and Culture Planning Office in the Netherlands provides an interesting variation on this theme. (Not considered in this study, the National Centre for Culture and Recreation Statistics in the Australian Bureau of Statistics is another premier example of this type.)

This model responds directly to the need to establish a foundation of statistics as a way of understanding the profile and parameters of the field toward which policy is being directed.

Independent Nonprofit Research Institute

On occasion, the research function is delegated to an independent nonprofit institute. The Boekmanstichting in the Netherlands is perhaps the best-known example of this model. Even though its emphasis is on information and documentation, it also provides a variety of research services.

This model offers the possibility of insulating research and information from the political pressures that might be brought to bear within a governmental agency.

Government-Designated University-Based Research Center

The model of creating government-funded research centers based in universities is used extensively in France by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (a rough equivalent to the National Science Foundation in the United States). Several of these research centers are discussed in Part II.

Another clear example of this model, not included in the current study, is the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy located at Griffith University in Brisbane. This center is part of the Australian Research Council’s Research Centres Program, through which research centers are established in a particular policy field and a specific university with expertise in that area is designated to host the center.

This model has two particularly interesting properties: It, too, allows the research function to be insulated from day-to-day political concerns and machinations, perhaps fostering research of a more social-scientific nature than would occur in centers that are linked more closely to policymaking institutions; and it makes it possible for the cultural policy information infrastructure to be more closely linked to university training and teaching programs than would customarily happen under other models. The relationship between the Centre de Recherche sur le Politique, VAdministration, la Ville et le Territoire (CERAT) at the Université Pierre Mendès France, and the Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles, both in Grenoble, France, illustrates well this latter point.

Private Consulting Firm

In some cases, the cultural policy information infrastructure has evolved so that it has become primarily the province of a private, profit-making (or at least profit-seeking) consulting firm that specializes in the field. Many private consulting firms have conducted cultural policy-related research on a one-off basis and have moved into and out of the field as projects have become available, but there are some that have made a longer-term commitment to building up expertise in this field. International Intelligence on Culture (formerly the International Arts Bureau) in London is a case in point. Originally formed when the international information and research capacity of the Arts Council of Great Britain was privatized, International Intelligence on Culture is now involved in providing a wide variety of information and consultation services to the field. EUCLID International is a more recent example, but there are many other examples in the increasingly complex cultural policy research and information environment.

The Zentrum für Kulturforschung (ZfKf) in Germany might also be placed in this category, but its structure and intent perhaps distinguish it from more traditional consulting firms. Although it is set up as a private company (with provision of up to twenty-five percent participation by public or nonprofit bodies in its ownership and governance), it functions more as a research institute than as a consultancy. Admittedly, this boundary is not entirely clear, but ZfKf has functioned primarily on the basis of contractual research relationships with the German federal government, with joint federal/Länder bodies, or with various European and international agencies. These contracts, which typically are for multiyear research projects, often rule out the possibility of realizing any “profit.” Perhaps the “private research firm” deserves a category of its own, but ZfKf may be unique in this regard.¹

Cultural Observatory

When I began this inquiry, I was aware of several institutions that called themselves “cultural observatories.” What I discovered is that there has been a recent proliferation of cultural observatories beginning with the Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles in Grenoble and the European Audiovisual Observatory in Strasbourg, both of which are frequently cited as the archetypes for the others. They have been joined by INTERARTS (INTERARTS Foundation: European Observatory for Cultural Research and International Cultural Co-operation) in Barcelona,² the Observatoire de l’Emploi Culturel within the Ministry of Culture and Communication in Paris, the Regional Observatory on Financing Culture in East-Central Europe in Budapest, and many others. Two new observatories are under development in Canada: the Canadian Cultural Observatory at the national level and L’Observatoire de la Culture et des Communications at the provincial level in Québec. This proliferation of observatories eventually led UNESCO to convene a meeting to discuss this phenomenon and to consider the creation of an International Network of Observatories in Cultural Policies.³

In a strictly taxonomic sense, these observatories do not constitute a separate pure type. Instead, they combine a variety of hybrids of the different models under a common rubric. Nevertheless, because of their recent popularity, it is worth considering cultural observatories as a separate phenomenon. Accordingly, they are considered separately in the next section of this book.

Non-Institution-Based Models

My research has suggested that there are at least three other categories of models not tied to a single institution that also need to be considered in any survey of the research and information infrastructure for cultural policy.

Networks

In recent years, a variety of cultural policy research and information networks have been created, and they should be considered as important actors in their own right. Arguably, the best-known example, at least in Europe, is CIRCLE. A program of the Council of Europe, CIRCLE (Cultural Information and Research Centres Liaison in Europe) is an international nonprofit association that brings together cultural policy researchers and users of the results of cultural policy research. It organizes roundtable discussions and conferences, publishes reference works and a newsletter, carries out research, and works to facilitate the circulation of policy-relevant information. Originally organized around independent research institutes, as well as the research offices of cultural ministries and arts councils, it has recently been restructured to include interested individuals as members, regardless of their institutional affiliation.

Other examples exist as well. In Canada, a Canadian Cultural Research Network has been formed. As mentioned above, UNESCO convened a meeting to discuss the creation of an International Network of Observatories in Cultural Policies. The field is even beginning to see the formation of networks of networks: The Council of Europe has established the Forum of European Cultural Networks (Forum des Réseaux Culturels Européens), a network of networks in the cultural field, and UNESCO has funded Culturelink, the Network of Networks for Research and Cooperation in Cultur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copy Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Research and Information Infrastructure
• Part II Research and Documentation Centens
• Part III Research and Documentation Consortia
• Appendix
• Index