HOW COVID-19 AFFECTED CASTELLER GROUPS IN BARCELONA

In January and February 2021, the Centre de Prospectiva i Anàlisi dels Castells (CEPAC) produced a survey –with the support of the Institute of Culture– to evaluate the impact of Covid-19 on Barcelona’s casteller (human tower) groups. 952 group members from the city’s eight groups (44.4% men and 54.6% women) responded. Here is a sample of the responses received (you can view them in detail in this document).

Assessment of the 2020 season

• Most people (68%) missed the social relations inside their group as much as the human towers.
• Over half of them felt connected to the group and the world of human towers and the vast majority took part or helped in the group’s activities, either in person or virtually.
• Seven out of ten positively valued the efforts of their group to keep the organisation alive in spite of the situation.
• Nearly three quarters of the people surveyed believe that the Covid-19 crisis will have a serious negative effect on their group.

Prospects for the 2021 season

• 69% discounted the possibility of getting back to human towers during the 2021 season.
• In general, they are really keen on getting back to casteller activities, but 84% think that people’s health is the most important thing and prefer not to put people’s health at risk.
• A coordinated and simultaneous return to activity for the whole casteller community is positively valued.
• 57% reject the idea that rehearsals in smaller groups in enclosed spaces will continue for a long time.

Returning to the activity

• 60% of the people surveyed recognise that they are concerned about returning to rehearsals.
• Approximately 70% believe that people taking part in rehearsals should be vaccinated or undergo a prior diagnostic test.
• However, 60% of them are not prepared to assume the cost of those tests.
• Nine out of ten people intend to return to their group when things get back to normal, and of these, half intend to do so with the same degree of commitment as before.

The first survey of the cultural needs of Barcelona’s citizens

Barcelona City Council presents its first survey of the cultural needs of Barcelona’s citizens, the diverse forms of their participation and involvement in the city’s cultural activities, and their perceptions of the network and activities available in the various districts.

The survey examines the cultural needs, interests and concerns of Barcelona’s population, and the extent and type of their participation in culture.

This project makes Barcelona one of the few cities in the world with a survey on cultural participation that includes a wide range of practices beyond merely attending events, and evidence of inequities in the right to take part in the city’s cultural life.

Given this innovative aspect, it was important for the report analysing the results of the survey to describe the project’s conceptual framework and the process of drafting the questionnaire. Consequently, although the fieldwork was carried out in January and February 2019, the final document is being presented a year later.

This report presents the process of drafting this survey and an analysis of the results.

The survey described and analysed in this report is a Barcelona Institute of Culture project conducted by its Technical Secretariat and the public policy researcher Nicolás Barbieri.

For years now we at the Barcelona Cultural Data Observatory have been collecting data on different cultural facilities of the city (museums, civic centres, the Art Factories network, etc.) and on various cultural activities (cultural festivals and city festivals). In the following document we explain how we carry out this task and what tools we use to process the data.

• The Barcelona data model: a system of systems

Information gathering systems have evolved over time. A few years ago we collected all our data on “travelling templates” (Excel files that were sent out and returned by e-mail), but now a number of our suppliers enter their data into various computer applications which, in addition to being “containers” where information is stored, allow the accessible return of the data which they contain.

Considering the large amount of data that we collect at the Observatory and the diversity of systems that we have developed over the years, we thought it would be of interest to offer the cultural agents the various models of templates which we work with (travelling templates and other types), to present the data that are collected in each one, and to share the glossaries that define these data.

Museums and exhibition centres:

• Museums: annual data and glossary

Civic centres:

• Civic centres: basic data
• Civic centres: annual data
• Civic centres: glossary

Art Factories:

• Art Factories: basic and annual data
• Art Factories: glossary

For the first time ever, experts of the public administrations and of the public and private museums have gone over these data together.

On the past 29th November we started up the #GrupDeTreball of #PúblicsDelsMuseus – the Working Group on the Museum Public. Experts of the public administrations (Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona Provincial Council and Barcelona City Council) and experts of the public and private museums of Barcelona got together to carry out a joint review of the data on the museum public that have been collected for years.

Why was it necessary to organise this working group?

• The creation of new proposals and the diversification of the activities and services that the museums are offering at present are putting to the test the system for collecting data on the museum public which have been used up to now.

• The museum centres are showing an obvious demand for the establishment and sharing of some joint clear-cut criteria on the collecting and processing of these data.

• The public administrations are interested in reaching agreement among all stakeholders on a unified proposal of data.

• The review and updating of the reporting items relating to the attendance of public at the museums are tasks that should be carried out on a periodic basis in order to ensure these items’ relevance.

For all these reasons, we feel that the time has come to adapt the respective glossaries to the current needs.

This working group will meet every two months for the purpose of creating and reaching agreement on a new glossary which will be acceptable to the majority of the sector.

4 days of festival and almost 1.5 million participants.

We present here the Attendance Report for La Mercè 2017, which contains full information, by spaces and types of activities, on the public who attended Barcelona’s annual city festival.

This report also includes a summary of the results of the survey conducted on the public of the four most prominent venues of street arts MAC Festival. If you would like further information on this survey, the complete Results report is available for consultation.

The report presented here also contains information on the various counting systems used to estimate the attendance at the activities of La Mercè festival.

A survey conducted on the Night of the Museums provides a better knowledge about the people taking part in this initiative.

For the year 2017 edition of the Night of the Museums, the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona commissioned a face-to-face survey aimed to provide information on various aspects of the public participating in this event.

The results of the survey show that:

• Visitors gavethe Night of the Museums an average score of 3.
• 48% of the people took part in the Night of the Museums for the 1st time.
• 61% of the people were visiting the respective museum for the 1st time.
• 51% of the people who had taken part in previous editions visited the same museum on another occasion.

We present an analysis and all the results in this summary and in the complete report on the survey.

Related news:

• Night of the Museums 2017: 87 centres and 176,000 visitors