E. Public Funding for Culture

Statisticians and other experts have been working over the past 30 years to establish a common framework to collect and compare data on public cultural expenditure in the context of UNESCO, the Council of Europe and OECD. In the 1990s the European Union Leadership Groups (LEG) of Eurostat were established to build upon these efforts. More recently, new expert groups have been formed on the EU level (ESS-Net) on funding, participation, cultural industries, etc., to continue working on common indicators and data gathering procedures. Results are expected over the coming years. The Compendium Working Group on Cultural Statistics 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.

The tables and graphs presented here are based on official data published in Chapter 6 of the individual Compendium profiles on "Financing of Culture". More recent information on public arts funding - more often rather on cuts executed in consequence of the world financial crisis 2008-2010 - cannot be fully reflected in such data, due to methodological considerations (comparability of official statistics). However, corresponding evidence can be found in a number of surveys, e.g. those of CultureWatchEurope 2009 (Council of Europe) and SICA (NL), the latter provided an update in October 2010. At the 2010 CultureWatchEurope Conference in Brussels, Péter Inkei (The Budapest Observatory) provided a broader picture of the effects the economic crisis might have on the European cultural domain, including on the different branches of the arts and cultural industries.  Additional material investigating or debating this issue is also published, on a regular basis, by Compendium partner LABforCulture. Compendium Editor Andreas Wiesand has tried, in his "hot topics" essay updated in July 2011, to integrate some of these findings and to provide an assessment of the consequences of the global financial crisis for cultural policy making in Europe.

Why public funding of the arts - and particularly of the work of artists - should not become redundant, even in critical times, is now being discussed everywhere, e.g. in the United Kingdom following the last elections - see Mark Ravenhill and Daniel Bye in the Guardian of July 2010; some activitsts and consultants fear a "final cut" in culture-related budgets of the EU -  see the position of Philippe Kern (October 2010) or the 2010 brief "Why should Government Support the Arts?" of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (United States).

E.1  Total government expenditure on culture

 Comparative table

E.2  Total government expenditure on culture per capita

 Comparative table

E.3  Share of spending on culture by level of government

 Comparative Table
 Graph  

E.4  Share of spending on culture by sector

 Comparative Table