Culture Ministerial Statistical Office
The Ministerial Statistical Office for Culture is the Department of Studies, Foresight, Statistics and Documentation (DEPSD).
The DEPSD is linked to the Secretariat-General of the Ministry of Culture.
Its remit covers all areas of cultural life: architecture, archives, libraries, museums, cinema, books, music, theatre, dance, art and heritage.
Main missions
The DEPSD has three missions:
- to gather, produce and widely share statistics on culture;
- to contribute, through studies and research in the various fields of the social sciences (economics, sociology, history, political science and others), to analysing the facts and institutions of cultural life;
- to make documentary information available to the administration, culture professionals and researchers.
Statistical production
This primarily involves:
- cultural employment and the demographics of cultural professions;
- analysis of public (State, regions, departements and communes) and privately (corporate sponsorship, and so on.) funding for culture;
- the types of cultural practices of the population;
- the activities of cultural facilities and institutions;
- artistic and cultural training and higher education;
- Tthe geography of the cultural offering.
The totality of the statistical output as well as data from external sources is brought together in a statistical database of culture (the BDSC). A selection of BDSC data feeds the annual publication Chiffres clés, statistiques de la culture, as well as l’Atlas régional de la Culture.
Studies
The study and research programme is submitted annually to the Ministerial Studies Council. The implementation of the programme is carried out by the department's study officers, or entrusted, under their responsibility, to study offices or specialized university teams.
This work is organised into six axes:
- economy;
- employment;
- education and training;
- public funding, territories;
- publics and practices;
- international.
In addition, the DEPSD works in liaison with major public study bodies (other Ministries’ research and studies departments, and so on), as well as with European and international organisations (Eurostat, Unesco and so on).
The DEPSD is regularly invited to give presentations in university settings, notably the following Universities: Paris-V, Paris-VII, Paris-X, École nationale du Patrimoine, and Instituts d'Études Politiques in Paris and Grenoble. It also presents at conferences in France and abroad.
Dissemination
The statistics and studies produced and published by the DEPSD are available on the culture.gouv.fr website, under the Ouvrir dans un nouvel ongletStudies and statistics heading.