Cultural policy must think more about demand

Catalonia has for decades opted for a model of cultural policy focused on financing the supply. The main instrument has been editorial, audiovisual, and artistic subsidies. The logic of this model is sound. Many cultural activities generate high social value but have insufficient or too uncertain private profitability. Without public support, a part of the cultural production in Catalan would simply not exist.

The problem is that a policy aimed at financing cultural production is not necessarily the best way to expand the audience. The main beneficiaries, beyond the producers, are usually citizens who already consume culture in Catalan. Production subsidies provide few incentives to go further. But the strategic objective is not just to preserve this audience, but to expand it.

If the objective is to expand the audience, a part of cultural financing should shift from supply to demand. One possibility is a voucher exclusively for the consumption of culture in Catalan: books, shows, cultural centers, media, patrons, or audiovisual content. The most important change is in incentives. When a relevant part of income depends on consumers, and everyone has resources to spend, producers have more reasons to compete for new audiences, especially for those with less regular contact with Catalan culture. A well-designed universal policy can reach the entire population. A policy focused exclusively on supply, much more difficultly.

For it to work, both the amount and the number of beneficiaries should be large enough for producers to have real incentives to compete for new audiences and expand the cultural market. Symbolic programs hardly change cultural habits. What differentiates this proposal from other existing checks is not the principle, but the scope. The Spanish Bono Cultural and the Italian 18app only reach young people who turn 18, once, and with a very flexible catalog. A system specifically aimed at expanding cultural consumption in Catalan should be universal and recurrent. Despite its limitations, the Italian evidence is favorable: a recent study shows an increase in cultural participation, especially among young people less predisposed to do so habitually. If a program restricted to a single cohort and a single moment in life has these effects, a continuous and universal one would have much broader ones.

The voucher has other virtues. A larger part of cultural production would better align with public preferences because citizens would more directly decide where the resources go. This would generate more incentives to develop proposals capable of attracting a wider audience. It would also allow creators to depend less on specific public calls and more on building a direct and independent relationship with the public. This does not eliminate the State's role in defining cultural priorities. But it does redistribute the decision of which specific proposals connect with the public. In general, it is simpler to establish eligibility criteria than to directly select large projects.

This system would also generate valuable information about cultural consumption and data to evaluate its evolution and public policies. Today, the public sector knows in detail who produces culture. It knows much less about who consumes it, who stops consuming it, and why.

The most obvious objection concerns the quality of the catalog. But a partially demand-oriented system does not imply an absence of public criteria. Just as eligible activities for subsidies are defined today, it could also be established which cultural products can be purchased with the voucher. The difference is not the existence of criteria, but the moment in which they intervene and their consequences on funding. The most serious objection is fiscal. A mechanism large enough to alter incentives would have a relevant cost. But this does not necessarily require increasing total cultural spending, but rather redistributing a part of it from supporting supply to demand.

Catalonia will continue to need subsidies for cultural production. But if the objective is to expand the audience and strengthen the social centrality of Catalan, persisting in a model oriented almost exclusively towards supply is increasingly difficult to justify. The instruments exist; it is time to decide.