Culture is future » Territorial attractiveness and social cohesion

Always Further - Publicly Funded, Intermediary and Economic Cultural Sectors: Impact Chains, Interdependencies and Potentials

Abstract of a Research Project  carried out by STADTart Dortmund, Institute of Cultural Policy, Bonn and Hamburg Institute of International Economics by Ralf Ebert

Experiencing the dynamics of culture and creative industries over the last 20 years, the Ministry of Economics and Technology of Germany has initiated in 2008, like many other European countries, a policy to strengthen the eleven submarkets. In the framework of this initiative all federal states (Bundesländer) and a wide range of local economic development agencies have set up programs to support and to promote culture and creative industries (for instance by coaching start-ups, offering micro loans). But compared to other economic sectors, the development of culture and creative industries is more interconnected with publicly funded amenities like opera houses, concert halls, cultural events or awards, and arts or theatre associations or social and cultural centres of the intermediary cultural sector. But there is little known on the impact chains and interdependencies between the publicly funded or intermediary sector, the 11 submarkets of the economic cultural sector (Graphic 1 -  Culture and Creative industries in Germany: Approach and sub markets) and the “cultural creative class” (Graphic 2 - Governance of the Cultural Sector).

The research project, commissioned in 2011 by the “Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media” (BKM), is exploring such interdependencies using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative part of the project is measuring the importance of the three cultural sectors on the national level, including the economic pre-conditions of freelancers of the culture and creative industries. The qualitative part of the research project is analyzing the impact chains of three selected submarkets. In Germany highly interconnected with the publicly funded and intermediary cultural sectors (including culture related education and training facilities), but all in a different way, are the music industry, the arts market and performing arts. The study is based on desk research and a few case studies of a wide range of cultural amenities and the curriculum vitae of artists. It distinguishes direct impacts related to the value chains of the different submarkets and indirect impacts referred to other submarkets (e.g. music and arts for advertising, design and film production). For example houses for artists can sometimes serve as informal incubators for start-ups in the design market. Given the fact  that culture and creative industries and most publicly funded and intermediary cultural amenities are located in bigger cities, the research is additionally analyzing the spatial dimensions of these interdependencies. Based on the results of the research project, knowing the potentials of the impact chains and referring to current trends (such as the tendency linking “cultural scenes” with the submarkets via internet for crowdfunding) the research team will give recommendations in which way the impact chains can be effectively targeted for developing the culture and creative industries by federal and regional initiatives, programs etc.

A contribution of Ralf Ebert

Credits: haags uitburo