THE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE CULTURAL SECTORS. Continued growth, but with a lack of data and widespread uncertainty on the horizon.

This note aims to highlight the economic trends in the cultural sectors, whose economic and social role is very important for a region such as Tuscany (but more generally for Italy), where cultural tourism is a very important driver of development.

Unfortunately, however, as the conditional tense of the initial verb suggests, keeping up with developments in the cultural sectors is an increasingly difficult task due to the limited availability of information sources and the delay with which they are updated. In particular, it should be noted that the traditional ISTAT surveys on cultural sectors, which until recently were conducted annually, albeit published with at least a two-year delay, will now be conducted every three years. This is the case, for example, with the survey on museums and libraries, for which the latest data collected by ISTAT for non-state facilities relates to the year 2022, while the next survey is scheduled for 2026, with the publication of the data necessarily following. In the intervening years, therefore, only data from ministerial sources, shared with ISTAT, relating to state museums and state archives will be available. For the entertainment sector, closer collaboration has been established between MiC, SIAE, and ISTAT, but even in this case, the publication of data has been rather slow. In December 2023, MiC relaunched the publication of the Minicifre della Cultura report, a collection of key statistical data for the sector, which had been produced between 2009 and 2014 and then suspended. At present, however, only the 2023 edition is available, with data for the five-year period 2018-2022, while the publication of the 2024 edition, with data for the three-year period 2021-23, is announced for the fall. The data sources we can access to measure trends for the year 2024 are therefore very limited. 

The lack of up-to-date data sources is compounded by certain dynamics within the broader economic system and the cultural sectors in particular, which create uncertainty and therefore do not favor the consolidation of cultural activities. Demand for culture and entertainment, as is well known, is supported by three different components: tourism, the resident population, and public bodies, which recognize the merit of cultural consumption, i.e., consumption that should be supported for its positive impact on individual and collective well-being. All three components of demand mentioned above are currently facing certain critical issues. International tourism demand is threatened by the persistence of certain geopolitical conflicts and by the shift from a policy of open trade to a progressive protectionist closure, which, by affecting the prices of certain services or even currency exchange rates, can make travel and stays in certain destinations more expensive (and therefore less accessible). In addition to the factors already mentioned, domestic demand is affected by the progressive erosion of disposable income, which implies the containment of certain expenses, starting with non-essential ones such as culture and leisure. Finally, demand from the public sector, usually in the form of support for cultural producers, is being held back both by the progressive reduction in the budgets of local authorities, whose action is traditionally important for the sector, and by the ongoing reforms of the main financing instruments under the responsibility of the MiC, starting with tax credits for film productions and ending with the criteria for evaluating theatrical activity, which create uncertainty and considerable concern among operators in the sector, as reported in the latest press releases. For the time being, however, data up to 2023-24, relating to both demand (visitors, users) and employment, are generally positive, especially for sectors that are more sensitive to international tourist demand (museums and monuments, certain events), although they have not yet fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. The library sector, in which local authorities play a predominant role, is essentially static: the 2019 level of demand has not been fully recovered, and employment growth is also being held back by constraints on local public spending. On the other hand, the trend in the publishing industry is positive. Cinema screenings confirm the structural crisis caused by the technological leap that has led to the success of digital platforms, while audiovisual productions continue to expand, according to SIL employment data for 2024. However, there is a risk that this trend could reverse in the coming months due to the conditions of uncertainty described above.

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