Funding For Culture

UPDATED DECEMBER 2008

Statistical and other experts have been working over the past 30 years to establish a common framework and definitions to collect and compare data on public cultural expenditure. The recent exercise of the European Union Leadership Groups (LEG) of EUROSTAT has been building upon the original efforts of UNESCO and the Council of Europe. The OECD Statistics Directorate is now spearheading a new initiative to carry the torch forward in cooperation with all institutional and individual experts.

The Compendium Working Group on Financing for Culture is made up of many of the same experts involved in the UNESCO, EU and OECD exercises. This helps to ensure continuity and provides an opportunity to test and apply evolving definitions and frameworks.

To start, Compendium authors present the most recent data available in chapter 6, "Financing of Culture" of their individual country profiles. The tables listed below do not provide a comparison of actual figures but rather some comparative observations on e.g. the share of expenditure on one sector in relation to another.

Compendium Tables

• Monitoring the Share of Public Cultural Expenditure by Level of Government
  State / Regional Level / Local Level
• Monitoring the Share of State Cultural Expenditure by Sector
  Libraries / Museums / Performing Arts / Media / Visual Arts / Film
• Private Sector Sponsorship
  Laws / Public Schemes / Target Sectors

External Resources

• Cultural Statistics Observatory: comprehensive links to international, European and national data, expert studies and national statistical offices. See "facts and figures" for direct access to comparative data and transnational exercises on participation, funding, employment, development, culture industries, etc.
• Eurostat Pocketbooks: Cultural Statistics in Europe 2007 includes data on public funding for culture, participation rates in cultural life, employment figures for the cultural labour market. French version available.
• John C. Gordon and Helen Beilby-Orrin: International Measurement of the Economic and Social Importance of Culture. OECD, August 2006.
• KEA European Affairs with the Turku School of Economics and the MKW Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH: The Economy of Culture in Europe. October 2006.
• Arjo Klamer, Lyudmilla Petrova and Anna Mignosa: Financing the Arts and Culture in the EU. European Parliament, November 2006. (PDF 906 kb)