Gambling on Culture

Lotteries as a source of funding for culture - the arts and heritage

 14th - 15th November 2003, Rome, Italy

This round table event brought together experts from many European countries, Canada and the United States to discuss the challenges and positive and negative aspects to funding for culture coming partially or wholly from lottery revenue.

Proceedings of the round table, including the conference reader, Prof. Mark Schuster's paper, M. Sharon Jannotte's paper and Vera Boltho's opening letter, have been published on the web site of our co-organisers, the Associazione per l'Economia della Cultura: www.economiadellacultura.it/english.html

In the lead up to the round table a questionnaire was formulated and distributed to CIRCLE members in 40 European countries in order to provide the meeting in Rome with an evaluation of the most current information. A copy of the questionnaire is available here and the responses are contained in the conference reader.  The results were briefly analysed by Diane Dodd and you can now view a copy of her presentation here.  

In brief, 29 responses were received and these results  suggest that 24 of the respondent countries have some sort of state regulated lottery and 16 of these provide some funding for the arts and/or heritage from their lottery revenue. In addition, of the 12 countries that either do not have a lottery or have a lottery which does not give money to culture, 7 had experienced public debates in recent times on the subject of using a share of lottery funding for culture.

The round table was organised in co-operation with the Municipality of Rome, the Associazione per l'Economia della Cultura, the Department of Economics of the University Roma 3 and with the support of Lottomatica, the Council of Europe and the European Cultural Foundation.

The programme is available by clicking here.