I am still working out what exactly you can do with culture once you accumulate it. The original idea was something like:
Renaissance
Event
Cost $2
+1 Buy
Choose one: Take a Culture token; or return 7 Culture tokens and if you do, choose one to get at the start of each of your turns for the rest of the game: +1 Card, +1 Action, +$1, +1 Buy.
The VP would be essentially a consolation prize in case I didn't want to put this into every game. Which I didn't, since the event itself is kinda bland and could be centralizing. What I am thinking now is to make these "cultural enhancements" each their own thing (not Events, just a different sort of thing you can do at the end of your turn by spending Culture), and cost from 5-20 culture to buy, and not be buyable more than once per game. Any game with a culture-generating card (might require a new type for this) would have like 3 of these "enhancements". With a setup like that, it would no longer be necessary to have culture worth a small amount of VP just in case there is nothing better to do with it.