A survey of the cultural needs of citizens

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.

How do we handle our data?

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:

Art Factories:

Let’s take a look at the data on our museum public

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.

Mercè 2017 report and survey

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.

What is the public attending the Night of the Museums like?

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.

Grec 2017 report

Grec 2017 closed with an occupancy of 75% and 113,541 spectators at its 102 programmed shows.

This was the first Grec festival to be directed by Cesc Casadesús and it was structured along two main lines:

Grec Montjuïc was focused on national and international productions which were linked to the theme of the festival and which had a shorter programming time. A total of 46 shows were involved, with an average occupancy of 80%.
Grec Ciutat featured companies and auditoriums that were programmed for longer periods of time, comprising 56 shows with an occupancy of 73%.

Additionally, the festival presented a set of parallel activities with various different stakeholders of the city, drawing an attendance of over 8,000 people.

More information is available at: