We are developing a method and a tool for cultural investigation that start from informal speech rather than from questionnaires: spontaneous dialogues, gathered over time, which artificial intelligence helps analyse without a predefined framework. The point: to give investigation back its primary function, to discover what its designers had not anticipated.
The need
Questionnaire-based cultural surveys set the frame of the answers in advance: what falls outside the frame carries no weight in the analysis, and real innovation slips through the net. Benoît Labourdette set out this analysis and the principles of the method in Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence, extended by Are Polls and Surveys Objective ?. Local authorities and cultural venues need to know the real practices and expectations of their territory, continuously, where conventional surveys produce one-off and costly snapshots.
Where we stand
In design. Updated: August 2026. The method is published; the tool that will support it (gathering of dialogues, assisted analysis, ongoing syntheses) has no prototype yet. We are looking for a territory or a venue for a first full-scale investigation, which will build the tool while producing its results.
Taking part
If your local authority or venue wants to understand the cultural practices of its territory in other ways than through questionnaires, your territory can host the first investigation of this kind. Write to us.