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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > December > 10 > Entry
NEA report: Less participation in/audience for the arts in 2008
The National Endowment for the Arts today released its 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the nation’s largest and most representative study of adults’ arts participation habits.
The most important info culled from the report? Audiences for ballet, classical music, jazz and theater are both declining and growing older
- Nearly 35 percent of U.S. adults — or an estimated 78 million — attended an arts performance in the 2008 survey period, compared with about 40 percent in 1982, 1992, and 2002.
- Performing arts attendees are increasingly older (between 46 and 49 years old) than the average U.S. adult (45 years old). Forty-five to 54-year-olds — historically dependable arts participants — declined for all art forms except musical theatre.
- People with higher levels of education - usually the most likely to attend or participate in the arts -have curtailed their participation in nearly all art forms since 1982. High school graduates had the steepest rate of decline — 25 percent — between 2002 and 2008.
Also, Americans are increasingly participating in the arts through new media.
- The Internet and broadcast media are popular ways to engage with the arts. Forty seven million adults downloaded, watched, or listened to music, theater or dance performances online - and most said they did so at least once a week. More Americans view or listen to broadcasts and recordings of arts events than attend them live (live theater being the sole exception).
- Photography/videography/film-making increased in popularity as art-making activities, from 12 percent to 15 percent, since 1992, supplanting weaving/sewing as the most popular creative activity reported.
Generation Y reports taking fewer arts classes/lessons.
- When people ages 18-24 were asked if they had taken an art class/lesson at some point in their lives, they reported lower rates of participation than previous generations for all art forms compared in this study (by 6-23 percentage points, depending on the art form, from 1982 to 2008).
Further conclusions:
- About 35 percent of all U.S. adults — or 78 million Americans — visited an art museum or gallery or attended at least one of six types of the “benchmark” arts events tracked since 1982.
- About 23 percent of all adults visited an art museum or gallery.
- Musicals drew 17 percent of all adults, and nonmusical plays drew 9 percent.
- About 9 percent of adults attended classical music. Relatively fewer adults attended jazz (8 percent), ballet or other dance (7 percent), Latin or salsa music (5 percent), and opera (2 percent)
The NEA survey was conducted in partnership with the United States Census Bureau and asked more than 18,000 people 18 years of age and older about their frequency of arts engagement. It has been conducted five times since 1982.
Download a copy of the report here.
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