Production networks in the cultural and creative sector: case studies from cultural heritage, archives and libraries

The CICERONE project consists of seven work packages (WPs). This report is part of WP2, which constitutes the empirical backbone of CICERONE. It contains case study research that focuses on networked production in eight cultural and creative industries: 1) architecture, 2) archives (including libraries and cultural heritage), 3) artistic crafts, 4) audio-visual (film, TV, videogames and multimedia) and radio, 5) design, 6) festivals, performing and visual arts, 7) music and 8) publishing. The purpose of the case study research is to understand key linkages and mechanisms in real-life CCS production networks and their relationships to context-dependent variables.

Drawing on the case study research, the CICERONE project will identify policies that may contribute to enhancing the impact of the cultural and the creative sectors, their competitiveness, their cultural diversity and their environmental sustainability. It will also explore the organisation of the post-Covid recovery of the sectors. Furthermore, the case study research will facilitate the identification of gaps in extant sources of quantitative data, and it will point to means of plugging them. For this reason, WP2 is not just the empirical backbone of the CICERONE project – it also provides critical inputs for the work behind the other WPs (most notably WP4 and WP6).

This deliverable (D2.2) reports on the case studies on cultural heritage, archives and libraries. Together with reports D2.1 and D2.3 to D2.8, it provides strategic snapshots of the rich and variegated tapestry of European production networks, both within and across industries.

The cultural heritage, archives and libraries sector is probably the largest industry in the CICERONE research project, and it is definitely not uniform. Instead, it is characterised by a wide variety of organisations, entities and actors. For this report, we explored three case studies. Each represents a different segment of the industry. The first is the Jagiellonian University Museum, the second the Wiener Heurigenkultur (representing an example of intangible cultural heritage), and the third on the archive of the Austrian Popular Music.