Luiz Carlos de Santana Ribeiro (p), Thiago Henrique Carneiro Rios Lopes, Amir Borges Ferreira Neto, Fernanda Rodrigues dos Santos

The creative and cultural industries have been growing faster than traditional industries over the last few decades. For instance, in Brazil reports by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) informed over 30% growth of gross output and value added between 2003-2005 and 2007-2010 periods. In addition, there has been over 10% increase in formal workforce in these industries for the both periods. However, most the literature on these industries in Brazil is still scarce, especially considering all municipalities at the same time in an economic and spatial perspective. The expansion of data availability in conjunction with software development contributed to the increase of empirical studies in cultural economics across the globe. This paper aims to measure the level of specialization, urbanization and diversification externalities on the cultural employment growth rate in Brazilian municipalities between 2006 and 2016. To do so, spatial econometric models are used. The main results show that there are no spatial associations regarding to cultural employment growth in Brazilian municipalities between 2006 and 2016 in none of the spatial econometrics models used. These results are important because, although there is evidence in the international literature that artists agglomerate in space and this is in their benefit, this was not the case for the cultural sector in Brazil between 2006 and 2016.The lack of complementarity of this sector, associate to the lack of incentives for its development, particularly in small municipalities, helps to explain our results.

Valentina Alberti, Valentina Montalto, Francesco Panella (p), Nicola Pontarollo

In a context where social inequalities are high and generalised discontent keep growing, the role that participation in arts and cultural activities can play in the achievement of broader social policy goals, such as countering social exclusion, is increasingly addressed in the European public policy debate. Culture can “bring Europeans together to experience what connects us instead of what divides us” (European Commission, A New European Agenda for Culture, 2018, p. 1).
This paper looks into one of the aspects which might act as facilitators or bottlenecks to the propensity of an individual to take active part in cultural life. In particular, this work focuses on the proximity patterns of cultural venues in different European cities, providing an initial comparative measure of population covered by cultural offer. Using geo-located data on museums, theatres and cinemas for a diversified sample of 179 cities from 28 European countries coming from the “The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor” – a novel dataset first released by the European Commission in 2017 – and population data.
The paper will address three main research questions: In Europe, how many people can reach cultural facilities in a reasonable amount of time? Are the proximity / distribution patterns of cultural venues related to the size of cities? To which extent are cultural venues reachable by public transport?
The paper superimposes population data and cultural venues concentration data, along with a basic measure of potential accessibility via public transport, to lay ground for future work extending the analysis to include also socioeconomic data on the local population.

Andres Artal-Tur (p)

The capacity of tourism to improve living conditions has attracted the interest of developing countries. Rural Community Tourism (RCT) represents an experience of community based tourism where local population retains control over the process, with benefits remaining within the community. The central role of the community confers a sustainable dimension to the process. In this context, the current investigation focuses on the study of successful RCT experiences in Nicaragua, proposing and testing a structural model that ensures the reproduction and extension of community life, limiting the undesired negative impacts of tourism, and providing a sustainable dimension in a
wider sense.