Statistics on Cultural Industries - International Trade Centre

B as a starting point of the analysis, the national projects will analyse these findings with regardto the conceptual framework for cultural industries, and examine how the findings relate to the“drivers” that contribute to or hinder the development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs) in the cultural industries sector. Assuming that support for these areas contributes to thestrengthening of the cultural industries and thereby to its economic and social outputs, projectsbased on the data framework will develop a methodology for assessing the vigour of theseelements in any given national context in order to clearly inform the policies and investment thatsuccessfully promote the strengthening of the cultural industries.To complement the data analysis, the national data projects will include case studies andbenchmarking mechanisms (Components C and D). The case studies will feature micro-case studiesrelated directly to issues related to the statistical analysis, or to the wider conceptual framework,for example in terms of the effectiveness of policy interventions for different segments of thecultural industries. The studies may also examine issues related to cultural capital, for example, thepotential of intangible cultural heritage for production and trade in distinctive and diverse culturalgoods and services. While intangible culture is not directly targeted as part of the framework’smain statistical activity (Component B), it should certainly be considered as part of the mappingactivities of Component A.Through the elaboration of a regional index that tracks the importance of culture and creativity toeconomic and social development, countries in the region that have already undertaken sectoranalysis for the cultural industries will be spearheading the development of a policy tool enablingan assessment of a) the contribution of culture and creativity to competitiveness, b) the wayssocietal transformation has taken place, and c) indications of how culture and creativity’s positiveeffects on society could be sustained.4.3 Project Design<strong>Statistics</strong> on Cultural IndustriesFramework for the Elaboration of National Data Capacity Building ProjectsWhile many national statistical offices do not explicitly collect data on the output of culturalindustries nor have the capacity to do so, it is nevertheless possible to derive such data fromexisting data-sets through secondary data analysis, as documented in the different mappingstudies that have been undertaken in recent years.The national data projects will therefore aim to strengthen and develop the National StatisticalOffice’s capacity in this area through the elaboration of guidelines and tools for data collectionand analysis, reporting formats, and trends analysis pertaining to the cultural industries sector. Inconnection with the efforts to document progress towards achieving the international developmentgoal of the Education For All (EFA) programme, it has been convincingly demonstrated that similarcapacity building can be achieved within a few years.To overcome the difficulties in clearly defining cultural industries and to cover the different aspectsof the impact of these industries, the data framework’s prototype national data project featuresfour components, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of the cultural industries. Each of thecomponents defines their subject differently within the same common conceptual frameworkand represents a separate element in the overall methodology.The four components (shown in Table 3) are not comparable in terms of the required resourcesand duration but complement each other and correspond to different stages in the developmentof a national system for collection, analysis and use of statistical data on cultural industries. Each18