11
Public spending on culture contrasts with income from box office and sponsors. For example, Table 5
relates art subsidies in the Netherlands to box office receipts. The state subsidises every opera seat (not
counting contributions to costs of concert hall and orchestra) on average by 120 euro. Dance needs less,
48 euro. Theatre seats receive an average subsidy of 49 euro; seats in concert halls receive 41 euro. Each
museum visit is subsidised to the tune of 11 euro, a lot less. More accessible forms of culture need fewer
subsidies than more elitist cultural expressions. Orchestras that play popular music of the 18tt century,
Baroque orchestras and operettas thus need less support than opera or symphony orchestras. Paintings of
Van Gogh are loved throughout the world, so the Van Gogh Museum needs fewer subsidies per visit than
other museums. Each cultural organisation must obtain at least 15 per cent of revenues from box office or
sponsors. This is considered a tough requirement by many in the cultural sector. It is important to
compare subsidies per visit and percentage box office receipts on a thorough basis for the different
regions and countries of Europe and for the different types of cultural activities. Unfortunately, this
awaits systematic data collection on a comparable basis.
2.3 Size of creative sectors in Europe
DCMS (2001) suggests that the share of creative industries in the UK gross domestic product is about 5
per cent, while employing 1.3 million people. Garcia, Femandez and Zofio (2003) present statistics of the
contribution of creative cultural and leisure industries to employment and national income for the centre,
sectors and regions of Spain. They find that they contribute about 4.5 per cent of the gross national
product and give work to 7.8 per cent of Spanish employees of which only a tiny fraction relates to
publicly financed culture. About 70 per cent of value added is taken up by the performing, musical and
audiovisual arts and publishing and printing. Most of it is concentrated in Madrid and Catalonia.
Collection of employment and income data on the creative industries at a European, national and regional
level on a systematic basis deserves high priority. In contrast to many other sectors of economic
importance, no such systematic base of comparable data exists. It is thus difficult to conduct comparative
research on the effects of the cultural sectors on the creative industries of Europe.
2.4 Cultural participation in Europe
The Euro-barometer surveys ‘Europeans’ Participation in Cultural Activities in 2001’ (EU15) and ‘New
Europeans and Culture in 2003’ (2004 EU members plus Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) give a rough
comparison of cultural participation in Europe. The Nordic countries and the Netherlands seem to be
ahead in use of PC’s and Internet, while southern and East-European countries lag behind. The people of
Nordic and Baltic countries, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands read more books and newspapers
than the EU-average. Reading in Mediterranean and Eastern-European countries is below the EU-