CULTURAL OBSERVATION FOR CULTURAL GOVERNANce: Between contemplation and transformation

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, reconstructing ‘what’ these entities observe, ‘how’ they observe, and ‘why’ they observe. The paper thus 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 cultural change.