Thematic Panel MEASURING CULTURE THROUGH STATISTICAL INDICATORS: CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS AND METHODS BETWEEN CITIES, REGIONS, AND COUNTRIES Statistical indicators in culture are increasingly recognized internationally as a useful tool for policy making and public communications in conveying information on cultural sector's performance in fields such as public expenditure of culture, social participation and cultural consumption, arts education, cultural production, creation, national and international cultural mobility, and many others. Since several years, the international competitiveness in the field of culture sector development has induced a strong demand of harmonization of cultural statistics in various countries. For instance, the ecological or systemic nature of creative and cultural activities in cities is becoming more and more implicit in the international indexes such as Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor supported by the European Commission, or the Global City Power Index carried by the Mori Foundation in Japan. Indicators combined by these indexes vary from those conventionally focused on cultural resources to those that reflect broader dimensions comprising creative businesses, innovation index, urban and environmental variables, etc.: indicators that stimulate the development of the cultural sector in a sense that include, but is not limited to cultural amenities per se. However, the indicators through which each cultural ecosystem should be assessed strongly vary according to the specific socio-historical, cultural, and economic contexts. Thus, the granular variables that reflect the local realities are not always considered in statistical measurements. How can international cultural indicators reflect the local specificities of different cities, contexts, and countries? What methodologies and approaches derived from sociological, anthropological, and statistical perspectives should be deployed to identify, and statistically operationalize singular cultural practices and contexts? Finally, which indicators and dimensions should be used by stakeholders and public authorities to assess the heterogeneous reality of local cultural practices? This panel invites contributions that will investigate cross-cultural analysis and methods for measuring culture through statistical indicators between cities, regions, and countries. With the support of: ASPIRE United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi (DCT-AD) Parallel sessions 13.4.1: thematic panels Chair: Dr. Maxime Jaffre (Department of Government and Society, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, UAE University) Challenges for Culture Data Collection and Indicators Building in Abu Dhabi: an Empirical Perspective Dr. Elena Raevskikh (Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, UAE), Jorge Eduardo Pinto (Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, UAE) Evidence-based decision-making in Abu Dhabi culture sector is increasingly being influenced by the development of data generation from a coordinated statistical system. The Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi has increased its support of this focus through the launch of CultureSTATS-AD programme. The programme commits to consolidate a comprehensive classification instrument to measure the economic and social dimensions of culture. While addressing defined culture-specific activities, the programmes’ thematic indicators also transverse other sectors, overseeing and supporting cultural development in Abu Dhabi. One of the methodological challenges of CultureSTATS-AD project consists on the articulation of the locally anchored and the internationally comparable dimensions of the evolving culture statistics system. The presentation will focus on the current process and methodological challenges of the culture data collection and indicators building in Abu Dhabi. Measuring Local Cultural Change Across Neighbourhoods, Cities, Regions, and Countries. Solutions and Problems Dr. Daniel Silver (University of Toronto, Canada) This paper discusses various approaches to measuring change in local culture across a range of geographic areas. To do so, it elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local cultural styles may change. I refer to this as the “4 D’s”: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which I briefly review. To examine these models, I use ideas and data developed to study local cultural scenes, as part of the Scenes project: https://scenescapes.weebly.com. This approach features large datasets of local amenities, and the meanings they represent. After summarizing some major trends in scenes and amenities in the US context, for each change model, I present some initial findings about change across neighbourhoods, cities, regions, and in some cases countries. I conclude by reflecting on new opportunities to extend these measures with new data and methodologies. The Innovative Contribution of Arts Related Methods: How Can We Approach Cultural Participation and Cross-Cultural Divisions Through a Mixed Methodological Approach? Dr. Claudia Pato de Carvalho (Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal) The UNESCO thematic indicators for Culture in the 2030 Agenda consider “Inclusion and Participation” as one of its mains thematic areas. UNESCO’s advocacy for a culture-based approach to development has produced results that acknowledge the role of culture as a driver of sustainable development. This process culminated in the integration of culture in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015 by the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly. In the UNESCO development of the thematic Indicators for Culture in the 2030 Agenda, this process continues and becomes a valuable tool for a global overview, for assisting in the collection of data, contributing to inform cultural policies. However, we confront ourselves, within the national and local reality of our countries, regions, cities and neighborhoods with changing social realities, tensions, and divides, that require, in addition to more global frameworks, the contribution of tailored-based qualitative approaches based on arts and cultural related methodologies. With these challenges in mind, this presentation shares some cases and experiences where a mixed method approach was used to approach social contexts where cultural participation and cross-cultural divides were at stake. The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor Francesco Panella (DG Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Belgium) Measuring culture and creativity can be challenging in itself, firstly due to the broad and often controversial definition of the terms themselves, and secondly yet importantly, due to the limited availability of comparable data sources when expanding the analysis across different countries. The presentation will focus on these aspects, introducing the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (hereafter the Monitor), a monitoring and benchmarking tool developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. The Monitor aims to provide a monitoring tool for culture and creativity in European cities: it has been initially conceived in 2017 with an aim to compare and contrast different aspects of culture and creativity in a wide range of cities, relying on 29 indicators which provide comparable data across the sample. The presentation will look into how the tool has been developed, also highlighting the challenging aspects and outlining the complementary research carried out on the cultural and creative sectors and industries by the research team, with particular reference to the COVID-19 emergency in Europe. Assessing the Impact of the Cultural Flagship Institutions in Cities and Countries Dr. David Gogishvili, (University of Lausanne, Switzerland), Dr. Martin Müller (University of Lausanne, Switzerland) This work aims to think and characterise cultural flagships as a global urban type. In order to so it is building a database of cultural flagships worldwide, compiling data on their technical, cultural, urban, political and symbolic characteristics. This database will allow drawing more general conclusions on the prevalence, genealogy, context, rationales and outcomes of cultural flagships and tracing the pathways, practices and politics of the cultural flagship as a global urban type. But why database? The evidence base for the purported effects of flagship cultural development is thin and the majority of existing studies have anecdotal character, often focusing on just one or few cases. Too often, planners and developers consider cultural flagships as isolated, exceptional showcases, without integrating them into the wider fabric and policies of the city. The database contributes to bridging this gap by creating an evidence base of cultural flagships as urban interventions by establishing a comprehensive database. Containing a large number of cases, around 50 at the moment, the database will facilitate the identification of similarities differences, and the pathways of potential referencing between cultural flagships across the globe, extracting patterns and dynamics for analysing the emergence and features of a global urban type. The completed database will allow assessing cultural flagships as urban development strategies in terms of outcomes, costs and distributional effects across a large sample. By extracting shared features, the database will also help arriving at a definition of what makes a cultural flagship a cultural flagship – something that is still lacking in the field.