The annual report has reached its fifth edition and has proved once again to be a great tool of observation and analysis of the cultural milieu in the Venice Area. On one hand it allows a longer life span to the information referred to temporary cultural events and it also provides the city and the professionals active in the field with a tool to better understand and interact with the cultural system.

The data analyzed to build the report are the ones gathered through the website www.agendavenezia.org, (a product of the Venice Foundation) which documents cultural events and initiatives promoted in the city and in the main cultural centres of the Province, through a census of all events that took place, underlining who the producers were and in which places they were held.

The study measures the city’s productive capacity in cultural terms; culture is an important source of occupation for its inhabitants and, at the same time, a means to develop the region’s role in the international landscape.

In 2007 Agenda Venezia web-site registered 1.861 events (for a total of 18.397 days) that took place in Venice Municipality, with an average of 50 events per day and an average duration of 9,9 days. This result, both in terms of number of events and for their average length, clearly validates the importance of temporary events for the city’s economy also in 2007. Visual art exhibition are absolutely predominant in Venice’s cultural landscape with 15.971 days per year, constituting more than 86 % of the total number of days. This occurrence can also be explained due to the duration of the exhibitions, on average 70 days, following meetings and conferences with 684 days and an average length of only one day. Music events gather 658 days corresponding to 3,6 % of the total, theatre and dance 587 days equivalent to 3,2 % of the total amount of days. Constituting more than 90% of the total number of events taking place in Venice, those censused by AgendaVenezia were divided into 5 main categories: visual arts (11,8%), music (21,3%), theatre and dance (16,3%), film reviews (19,0%) meetings and conferences (28,9%), following traditional Venetian celebration (0,9%), sports (1,6%) and fairs & markets (0,2%).

In 2007 the number of organizers of temporary events increased to 133. In this same year the historical centre was once again the key area for cultural initiatives, even though the number of events organized in the inland areas of Venice is growing.

The number of events concentrated in the historical centre of the city covers 66,8% of the total offer, a smaller part of temporary events takes place in the inland areas, 31,1%, and the remaining 2,1% is covered by events organized in Lido and on the other islands. More detailed analysis shows that visual arts and conferences & meetings are concentrated in the historical centre with respectively 84,5% and 80% of the total. Theatre and dance performances are rather equally distributed between the centre and inland areas, in the main city theatres. Music events, divided according to different genres, take place mainly in the centre (72,7%), whereas film reviews are more frequent in the inland (59,7%) due to Candiani Cultural Centre. Rating the places where the events take place according to the total number of events hosted, in the historical centre the biggest organizers are Casa del Cinema, Ateneo Veneto, Libreria Mondadori and Teatro La Fenice. In the Inland, with 346 events, Candiani Cultural Centre rates as the biggest organizer of the entire area. The longest events take place in Museo Correr and Palazzo Zenobio (historical centre) with more than 660 open days, Fondazione Querini Stampalia 585 days, Peggy Guggenheim Collection with more than 400 days and following all other sites distributed throughout the city old centre. In the inland, Candiani Cultural Centre’s open days are relevantly increasing up to 905 , following Galleria Contemporaneo and Teatro Toniolo.

The number of events taking place on the same day and their distribution over the months are useful information in order to understand their varying impact in economical terms and also the “overcrowding” registered in the city during certain months. Analysing the calendar two main clues emerge:

 Number of events per each month;

 Density of events taking place on the same day.

The last information, the density of events, may represent a valuable tool to determine the “calendar of events” and the cultural activities’ distribution over the year. In 2007 averagely 155 events per month were organized with peaks of 206 events in the months of June and November. Considering the density per day we learn that 18.397 event days during 2007 correspond to 50 events each day. The time of highest concentration (always more than 40 events every day) is the period going from June to November, sometimes during the month of June more than 90 events take place during the same day.