On the night of Saturday, 20th May, 87 museum centres of Barcelona and its metropolitan area were visited by 176,364 people.

The participation of centres based outside Barcelona has been growing year by year and the 15 centres of this type which took part in the initiative in 2017 accounted for 10% of the total visitors.

You can also find the participation data from previous years at this link.

The Night of the Museums is an initiative promoted by the Council of Europe which arose in 2005 and which now comprises over 4,000 museums. Since 2008, the Institut de Cultura has coordinated the activity in Barcelona and promotes a joint communication campaign for the city and its metropolitan area.

2017 SURVEY

In this edition of the Night of the Museums, the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona has conducted a face-to-face survey of visitors to learn about various aspects of the public who take part in this initiative. It has considered the following topics, among others:

• Is the public of the Night of the Museums loyal to this activity?
• Does participation in this initiative arouse an interest in repeating the visit or in visiting other museums during the rest of the year?
• Is the profile of the public of the Night of the Museums the same as that of the people who visit the museum centres during the rest of the year?

The analysis of the results of the survey will become available in the month of September.

Related news: What is the public attending the Night of the Museums like?

According to the data of the Òmnibus municipal survey, 92% of the city’s people have taken part in some cultural activity in Barcelona in the six months leading up to the survey.

The percentages of people listed below report that they have taken part in some cultural activity of the respective categories:

• Cinema: 70%
• City festival: 70%
• Museum or exhibition: 58%
• Library: 54%
• Concert: 52%
• Theatre: 43%
• Civic centre: 40%
• Conference: 35%
• Cultural festival: 31%
• Dance: 11%
• Opera: 11%

On the average, the city’s people as a whole have participated in 4.7 cultural proposals, although a big difference exists between the attendance figures for young people aged 16 to 24 years (average 6 activities) and the figures for senior citizens (3.6).

By districts, the lower participation of the residents of Ciutat Vella and Nou Barris (average 4.3 and 4.2, respectively) stands out.

PROFILE OF PARTICIPATING PERSONS

Young people aged between 16 and 24 years lead the figures of attendance at city festivals, cinema, libraries, concerts and cultural festivals.

Territorially, the fact stands out that the residents of the districts Nou Barris and Ciutat Vella are among those who have taken part in almost all the cultural activities the least (with the exception of city festivals, in which the residents of Nou Barris participated in above-average numbers). The attendance of the residents of the rest of the city’s districts depends to a large degree on the activity involved. For example, the people living in the Eixample district have attended museums, conferences and cinemas in greater numbers, with scant attendance at civic centres and city festivals, while the residents of the Sant Martí district show practically the highest figures of attendance at civic centres and cultural festivals and above-average attendance at museums and theatre productions, while attending concerts, libraries and cinemas in scant numbers.

More data are available in the complete report on the survey at:

2016 Òmnibus municipal survey. Culture report

The performing arts offering in Barcelona continued to follow the downward trend that began in 2011 but the number of spectators grew a timid 2% over 2015.

In recent years the performing arts field in Barcelona has been progressively reducing its offering of productions, performances and seats, while its spectator figures have slowly begun to recover. With respect to 2014, for example, in 2016 there was a loss of 624 performances (over 425,000 seats) while, on the other hand, ticket sales have increased by 15,536.

In the face of these data, a number of questions arise such as: was there an excess in the offering in past years? Should the offering be reduced even more, devoting greater efforts to policies addressed to drawing new spectators? Or, on the contrary, should a larger and more diversified offering be promoted with a view to drawing to the theatre the population sectors who do not feel attracted by the present offering? Does the city of Barcelona have a ceiling of performing arts spectators?

These questions obviously do not have one sole answer and they should be approached from beyond the analysis of the available data.

Yet even so, the data always challenge us to interpret them.

Would you like to take a try at it?

Performing arts data 2009-2016

Between 22 and 25 September Barcelona celebrated its annual city festival. In 2016, the feast of Saint Mercè fell on a Saturday which meant the festival would be short and condensed and that most activities would be held over the weekend.

A noteworthy feature of this year’s festival was the diversification of venues, with the inclusion of new stages in neighbourhoods that hadn’t previously hosted activities.

In the case of the Mercè Arts de Carrer Festival (street arts festival), activities spread to Trinitat Park, Fabra i Coats, Fàbrica DAMM and the CCCB.

If you require more information on visitors and crowd counting systems during the festival, please see the Attendance Report for La Mercè 2016.

On the homepage of this website you have available the report Cultural indicators for Barcelona 2015, a summary of the most important cultural events in the city in these areas:

• Museums and exhibition spaces
• Archives and heritage libraries
• Performing arts spaces
• Concert spaces
• Cinemas
• Art Factories
• Barcelona libraries
• Civic centres
• Cultural festivals
• City festivals
• Grants / Transfers

You have also available the reports of previous years.

The Observatori de Dades Culturals de Barcelona (Barcelona Cultural Data Observatory) presents a report outlining the basis for a proposed qualitative assessment of the Art Factories network.

Our focus, until now, has been on quantitative indicators, although we’ve always been fully aware that quantitative information is inadequate to explain what an art factory is in all its complexity. The qualitative assessment will allow us to provide a better picture of the role these facilities play in the sphere of creation.

In order to design a procedure capable of qualitatively assessing, in a sufficiently competent manner, the work of the factories, a preliminary definition task was carried out to gather the experiences of each of the factories, based on interviews of the managers in charge.

The main goals of the interviews were to:

• Detect the core values that can serve to qualitatively assess the facilities.
• Design a plan that pinpoints which practices can guarantee these values.
• Suggest the lowest common denominator that explains what art factories are and what they do.

The report that ensued from this process (only available in Catalan) is the first step towards a qualitative assessment of the Art Factories network.