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 4170 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. •We characterize the dynamic complexity of cultural vibrancy in the Swedish sub-region of​ Skaraborg.•We find that cultural vibrancy in Skaraborg is characterized by a ‘flare’ dynamics.•In the long term, vibrancy remains concentrated in the region’s main town.•This is due to important structural bottlenecks such as lack of highly educated women in the workforce.•Our approach sets the basis for a precision cultural policy design framework.