The Basque Observatory of Culture (OVC in Spanish), after completing the first tasks in its start-up phase, proposes to take a break to consider responses to future challenges. As a result, the International Congress on Working with Cultural Observatories aims to create a meeting space with organisations with a longer history behind them in order to share experiences and good practices.
This congress will be taking place in Donostia – San Sebastián on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of November 2007. The main aim of this congress will be to share experiences on launching a Cultural Observatory. This is an exercise that will be useful for all the observatories that are taking part as the solutions to the challenges and problems of observing cultural reality and the orientation of each observatory have special characteristics and subtle differences that will very probably prove to be useful for the others. The following observatories (and organisations) have been invited to take part:

• Observatory of culture and communications of Quebec
• Department of studies, forecasting and statistics (DEPS)
• Cultural Observatory of Piedmont
• Department of Culture of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia
• Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Autonomous Government of Galicia
• Basque Observatory of Culture

In parallel with this, on the 16th of November, in order to take advantage of the fact that the people in charge of the observatories that have been invited will be here, the 1st Annual Report on Culture, Kultura 07, will be presented to the public, and a public round table will be held at the Congress.