Everything you always wanted to know about data for the Cultural and Creative Sector production system, but were afraid to ask: Part 2 – Assembling disparate data resources, and preparations for reporting them

This CICERONE paper (D4.3) is part of series addressing the problem of the lack of data available to describe the Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS) production system. This series explains how and why the currently available data is insufficient in its depth, and breadth of coverage, leading to an appreciation of which activities are made visible, and which are obscured or hidden, by such measures. In the first paper of this series (D4.2), entitled Everything you always wanted to know about data for the Cultural and Creative Sector production system, but were afraid to ask: Part 1 – Problems of statistical description, a first step is taken in proposing what a sufficient taxonomy would look like: a suitable framework of new data collection related to the CCS production system. In this paper, we set out this framework in more detail a following. The purpose of D4.2 was to describe the intersection between definitions, and their operationalisation in taxonomies and actual data collection. It articulates the implications of a ‘Romantic’ definition of culture that has been used previously with an industrial taxonomy: arguably both notions have been failed. It then describe various attempts to conceptualise and mobilise taxonomies that bridge this divide and, in so doing, articulate their limitations. In this paper (D4.3), we advocate a new data matrix – a radical realignment of concepts and industry taxonomies. This matrix is, in effect, the conceptual and practical foundation of a Cultural Economy Observatory that is built as part of the CICERONE project.