A. Issue and Argument
The cultural sector has been registering a growing dynamic in Portugal, as a result of various cultural and artistic agents, central, regional and local policies, decentralization objectives, cultural demands, cultural audiences, and of participants in organized activities by various entities, public and private. However, it is important to continue to invest in its development from a sustainable perspective that promotes territorial cohesion. Therefore, it is essential to produce up-to-date knowledge, and the existence of an instrument such as an atlas that includes the various dimensions of arts and culture is fundamental.
With this objective in mind, OPAC in partnership with DGARTES/MC (the organization of the Portuguese ministry of Culture responsible for managing the support for the arts) developed in 2022/23 the Artistic and Cultural Atlas of Portugal (AACP). The cultural cartography that supports the construction of the Atlas can be defined as the collection, location and systematization of information related to the distribution of goods, services, and other resources in each territory towards its description (Duxbury et al., 2015; Freitas, 2016). The bibliographic and documentary research shows that this type of instrument has been available for a long time to support cultural public policies in countries such as France and Spain. As for Portugal, several studies and contributions were identified, with different territorial scopes and cutouts in the cultural and creative domains. However, there is a lack of a cultural cartography in a national perspective.
Thus, the AACP aimed to solve this issue through an integrated approach for the description of cultural dynamics in the Portuguese territory, based on geographical visualization (Redaelli, 2015). Through the collection, systematization, and aggregation of controlled data, produced by public bodies, following a top/down logic (Freitas, 2016), three fundamental components of the cultural offer (facilities, entities and activities) were identified in a wide range of domains resulting from the crossing of those adopted by EUROSTAT (Bina et al., 2012) with those of the areas of action of the protection of culture in Portugal.
From a temporal point of view, the AACP corresponds to a photograph in a certain period, here delimited by the years 2019 to 2022, according to the most recent available sources. We sought to illustrate the evolution registered in recent years to better frame the current territorial reality at a municipal scale.
The adopted analytical perspective privileges spatial representation to better understand the existences, and the shortages in the territory, and thus contribute to a better definition of public policies strategies, for which it was necessary to develop indicators.
Asymmetries that characterize the country (coastal/interior, north/south, urban/rural) are well known, and the analysis of the information mobilized for this atlas suggests that it is necessary to relativize these dichotomies in what concerns the cultural and creative sectors (Ferrão, 2013) and promote the identification of new lines of public policies intervention that contribute to their correction.

B. Methodology:
The main methodological strategy is quantitative, based on secondary sources, national and official (INE), and/or deriving from the cultural government body (Ministry of Culture). Assumes a national scope, with a municipal focus, in which structural factors such as demographic, economic, social and historical are correlated with existing cultural and creative resources.
To inform public policies, the territorial perspective assumed in the AACP was a national one, the smallest unit is the municipality, with all information structured according to this unit, and from this scaling to NUTS II (regions) and NUTS III (intermunicipal communities). From a time perspective, the Atlas assumes a synchronicity, the data refer to a given year or, in some dimensions, to the most recent data available in the sources. Cultural domains observed is based on the 2012 statistical grid of the ESSnet-Culture (European Statistical System Network on Culture) which is the reference in the European Union (Bina et al., 2012), crossed with public policies areas of action (management, funding and regulation) of the cultural sector.
The analytical dimensions considered in the Atlas include both supply and demand. The first includes facilities, entities, companies, events and itineraries. In the second, visitors and spectators of heritage and performing arts A special attention was given to programs of facilities networks, a key measure in cultural policies in Portugal (Silva, 2004)..
No-profits (public and private) are considered as well as profit organizations of the creative and cultural sectors. Transversal programmes are also considered, articulating culture with other governmental areas. International programmes developed in the country were also taken into consideration, so includes programs promoted by the European Union, the Council of Europe and UNESCO.
The considered dimensions benefit from a nationwide approached with a broader perspective. Therefore, a set of maps aim precisely at framing (with the municipality as the unit) sociodemographic variables, population density, low density, per capita income, and other dimensions closer to cultural issues such as the expenditure of municipalities on cultural and creative activities and the existence of higher education institutions with courses in these areas.

C. Results
With the AACP, it was possible to gather for the first time a very relevant set of information on various cultural domains (cultural heritage, performing arts, visual arts, cinema, libraries and archives), in various dimensions that can contribute to its characterization (e.g. equipment, entities, events, in addition to demands), making available an instrument with a broad perspective on the cultural reality, thus fulfilling one of its main objectives, which is to inform cultural policies and their planning at the various levels of State action.
The Atlas also fulfils another objective, that of helping to provide the artistic and cultural sector and all those interested in matters related to cultural issues, with up-to-date information that allows the specific field in which it is inserted to be contextualized in relation to other fields.
The Atlas makes visible the dynamics registered by cultural sector in Portugal. This visibility is easily observable in the field, in the contact with the agents in the area, and in the longitudinal data available, this visibility is often limited to the sector of activity in which it operates or to which, for whatever reason, it is closer and therefore more attentive.
As a result, the Atlas shows that despite the persistent territorial imbalances (social, economic and), especially coastal/inland, and also north/south and urban/rural, the effort to correct them is visible. Mapping clearly show that these asymmetries must be relativized due to the effective dissemination in the territory of investments, facilities, events, the presence of audiences, private, non-profit and for-profit entities.
As expected, areas and territories with different levels of development are evident, showing a territorial reality that is known to be heterogeneous, in part with very positive levels, but those in which the deficiencies are more glaring are also more visible and, therefore, should deserve specific and increased attention from public policies aimed at territorial cohesion, that is, equal conditions of access to culture regardless of place of residence. Following the Atlas results, DGARTES and OPAC has already adopted a pioneering “Partnership Support Program - Art and Territorial Cohesion” intended for municipalities with a lower artistic and cultural density. The Atlas maps and indicators show that there is a lot of relevant, secondary, administrative information produced by official statistics and government bodies in culture (and also by research centres) that can be mobilized and worked towards a territorial representation. However, there was a lack of a methodology capable of supporting a model of analysis and operationalization that would organize and give meaning to this vast information disseminated by various sources. This was an important challenge and at the same time constituted the main difficulty faced: in view of the vast amount of information that documentary research, available on the internet, reveals: which sources to use?
The choice for using administrative data, secondary sources proved to be the most appropriate and fruitful, not only because of the results obtained above all because of the potential for regular updating. Potential enlargement and regular actualisation are also a reality in the Atlas.

References:
Bina, V. et al. (2012). ESSnet-CULTURE European Statistical System Network on Culture Final Report.Eurostat.
Duxbury, N. et al., (Eds.). (2015). Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry. Routledge.
Ferrão, J. (2013). Território. Em J. L. Cardoso, P. Magalhães, & J. M. Pais (Eds.), Portugal Social de A a Z - Temas em aberto (pp. 244-257). Impresa Publishing, Expresso.
Freitas, R. (2016). Cultural mapping as a development tool. City, Culture and Society, 7(1), 9-16.
Redaelli, E. (2015). Cultural Mapping: Analyzing Its Meanings in Policy Documents. Em N. Duxbury et al., (Eds.), Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry (pp. 86-98). Routledge.
Silva, A. S. (2004). As redes culturais: balanço e perspectivas da experiência portuguesa, 1987-2003. Em AAVV (Ed.), Públicos da Cultura (pp. 241-283). OAC.

This chapter addresses the phenomenon of cultural observatories, questioning their role as sources of knowledge for cultural governance. On the background of a view of cultural governance as a collective endeavor of diverse actors (governments, civil society, macro societal forces, but also data producers about culture), this chapter zooms into the role of one such actor – cultural observatories. It reviews the practice of cultural observation around the world, reconstructing ‘what’ these entities observe, ‘how’ they observe, and ‘why’ they observe. Based on the findings, the paper draws a general reflection on the role of cultural observatories for informing cultural governance, calling for a shift from a use of cultural observation as a contemplative source of knowledge, through which policy makers observe without deriving punctual policy consequences, to one as a transformative source of knowledge, through which policy makers actively use observational data to enact a cultural ecosystem.

However intended between narrower and broader definitions (Bell and Oakley, 2014), culture is either way associated to the spontaneous expression of meaning of individuals or communities. And yet that very ‘spontaneous’ expression of meaning is also to some extent inevitably framed, more or less directly, within political, administrative or social institutions (Schmitt, 2001), based on Adorno’s idea that “whoever says culture, also says administration, whether he wants to or not” (Adorno, 1960). The concept of cultural governance strives to capture exactly such social steering of the production of sense and meaning, i.e., more precisely, “the set of negotiations, actions and practices, institutions and rules which are explicitly directed towards a certain object in its capacity as a cultural object” (Schmitt, 2001).
But which are the players of these negotiations, actions, practices, institutions and rules? The issue of ‘the who’ of cultural governance has long been discussed (Thompson, 2001; Hall, 1997). Pulling it all together, cultural governance is seen as a multi-factorial combination of top-down, bottom-up and wider contextual flows of decisions and actions affecting cultural production: government politicians and regulations; forms of subjectivity in the struggle over meanings and value (including the action of individual cultural actors and of organized civil society); but also wider economic influences, cultural norms and power structures (Schmitt, 2001). Beside these forces, Bell and Oakley (2014) noted how a further plethora of actors has some agency in the steering of culture, here including also the work of bureaucrats in administrative apparatuses, but also the contribution of think-tanks, consultants and academics.
Extant research on cultural governance is contributing to such composite picture. A bulk of studies, namely the ones which explicit deal with cultural policy making, critically address governments’ direct or indirect involvement in the promotion and administration of culture (Moon, 2001; Gilmore, 2004; Hesmondalgh & Pratt, 2006; Looseley, 2011 – just to name a few). Other studies, sometimes framed within the more general idea of collaborative governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008), focus more on the bottom side of the stream of decisions and actions, critically addressing the role of interest groups and civil society (e.g. Teissl et al., 2021), or unveiling the (still marginal) role of cultural workers and of non-elected administrators in participating in decision-making processes regarding cultural matters (Marx, 2020).
While most of this research focuses on either governments’ activities or participative trends in relation to culture, an important area of influence in ‘the who of cultural governance’ remains understudied: the role of data producers about culture (in the form of think-tanks, consultants, administrative apparatuses, or academia). To be fair, a reflexive discussion on the role of academics in contributing to cultural policy making is not stranger to the debate (e.g. Selwood, 2006; Belfiore and Bennett, 2010), but less is known about the confines, the shape and the impact of the work of other actors that engage in the production of data and empirical knowledge on culture, such as cultural observatories. This is what the paper will focus on.

We note how, in this wide view of the ‘who of cultural governance’, the role of this latter group of actors remains somewhat under-investigated empirically. On the other hand, though, there is a growing debate on evidence-based policy in the cultural field (Lægreid & Christensen, 2000; Hadorn et al., 2022; Belfiore, 2022), and apparently a massive work of cultural observatories producing data about culture around the world. In principle, “[i]n any policy arena, the crafting of effective policy depends on the quality of the information infrastructure that is available to the participants of that arena” (Schuster, 2017). But does it? Whether and how cultural observation informs actual cultural governance is an open question.

Therefore, in this paper we focus on cultural observation and explore it as a practice, reviewing it worldwide, and questioning its role for cultural governance.
Drawing on documental sources, we reconstruct ‘what’ cultural observatories observe, ‘how’ they observe, and ‘why’ they observe. What emerges is that cultural observation is a spread and variegated practice, mainly based on aggregated statistical data, and largely used to define taxonomies for cultural analyses, monitor cultural and creative industries’ economic relevance, and capture their social impact. This leads us to a reflection on how the practice of cultural observation is mainly used to contemplate cultural ecosystems - at best - or to further sometimes hidden political or economic agendas - at worst - but very rarely to really inform cultural governance.
On the background of the view of cultural governance as a collective endeavor of diverse actors, we overview the practice of cultural observation both worldwide and with a focus on the Italian setting. In discussing our main findings, we will share some practical implications for developing effective cultural observation practices, as well as a reflection on the importance of designing tools for cultural governance ‘hungry for data’, that uses observatories as learning tools about a cultural ecosystem for transformative purposes, rather than for contemplative ones, as simple ‘miradores’ with partial views, or worse, as instruments for perpetuating a given status quo or furthering sometimes hidden political agendas. All in all, we call for more research to better explore the (missing?) link between cultural observation and cultural governance.