In a bid to boost cultural and artistic development in the country, the government is set to launch the cultural capital index next month to help formulate better cultural programs, in addition to the hefty cultural endowment funding initiated by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

The index will be used to determine the goals of cultural activities and products as well as to measure the accomplishment of the upcoming National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) in regard to cultural development, director general for culture at the Education and Culture Ministry Hilmar Farid said.

"We are adopting the cultural development indicators of UNESCO. We have been forming the cultural capital index for the past year; there are several dimensions that would be used as measurement," he said during a forum discussion on the cultural economy held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday.

The index comprises seven dimensions, namely the cultural economy, education, social and cultural security, gender equity, freedom of expression, cultural literacy and cultural heritage. The dimensions are further detailed into 31 indicators.

Hilmar cited as an example the execution of cultural events aimed at achieving social and cultural security, with one of the indicators being the willingness of people to live in harmony with other people of different religions and ethnicities.

"Right now, we tend to reduce the value of culture and arts to their economic value, but there's a tendency for people not to see them as financially profitable. There needs to be another value and that is cultural value, but then how do we measure cultural value? We do it by using the cultural capital index, through which we can discover whether what we've been funding so far has contributed in terms of cultural value," he said.

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