Joint Research Centre

Using cultural jobs statistics from Eurostat and the JRC’s Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor, this report identifies highly vulnerable cultural jobs and creative cities. Both national and city governments have issued a wide range of policy measures (from compensatory grants to tax reliefs) to maintain alive Europe’s cultural capital, while giving cultural institutions, companies and workers the time to get prepared to post-COVID times. Proximity tourism could indeed help compensate losses from international tourism, while new cultural services that meet societal needs (educational, health, environmental) would help restore the European social fabric and people’s well-being.
The policy directions that seem to emerge from the analysis also consider that a sustainable recovery of the cultural and creative sectors will require a truly out-of-the-box thinking to cooperate with other sectors to develop novel (welfare) services (in the field of education, mental and physical health, proximity tourism, environment, etc.) to make the contribution of culture to societal well-being much more evident.

This second edition of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor shows how well 190 cities in 30 European countries perform on a range of measures describing the ‘Cultural Vibrancy’, the ‘Creative Economy’ and the ‘Enabling Environment’ of a city. As one of the 65 actions of the European Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage, the Monitor wants to support the European Commission’s efforts to put culture at the heart of its policy agenda through evidence and success stories in cities. Under the Cultural Vibrancy domain of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor there is one dimension - D1.1 Cultural Venues & Facilities - which includes explicit mentions about the fact that participation in cultural activities enhances the connection people have to each other and to the place, and improves their creative skills and psychological well-being.