Toward a precision, complexity-informed cultural policy design: Structural bottlenecks to culture-led development in Skaraborg, Sweden

We analyze the spatial-temporal dynamics of cultural vibrancy in the Swedish sub-region of Skaraborg. Our database consists of 4,170 geo-localized cultural activities and facilities, mapped between October 2013 and March 2014. We make use of the TWC methodology for the dynamic simulation of the evolution of geo-localized activity starting from an observed distribution of events, and of the AutoCM ANN architecture to understand how cultural variables are related to the rest of the Skaraborg socio-economy. We find that cultural vibrancy in Skaraborg is likely characterized by a 'flaring' pattern of initial, widespread activity followed by a re-concentration into the main local urban hubs. The deep reason behind this unsuccessful developmental trajectory is the lack of centrality of cultural production in the local socio-economy, and of integration across cultural production sectors. This is in turn due also to structural bottlenecks of a non-cultural nature such as insufficient access of women to higher education. We make a case for the necessity to develop a new precision cultural policy design approach founded upon the science of complexity for both policy design and assessment, and we provide and illustrate a first technical toolkit to this purpose.