The Diversity of Cultural Participation: Findings from a National Survey

BUILDINGARTSPARTICIPATIONNEWFINDINGSFROMTHEFIELDFrancie OstrowerThe Diversity of Cultural ParticipationFINDINGS FROM A NATIONAL SURVEYThe UrbanInstitute Copyright © November 2005. The Urban Institute.Theviews expressed are those of the authors andshould not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. BUILDINGARTSPARTICIPATIONNEWFINDINGSFROMTHEFIELDFrancie OstrowerThe Diversity of Cultural ParticipationFINDINGSFROMANATIONALSURVEY ContentsThe Diversity of Cultural Participation..........................................................1About the Study...................................................................................................3Live Attendance over the Past 12 Months.....................................................5Frequency of Attendance ....................................................................................5What People Attended ........................................................................................7Attendance at Music Performances....................................................................9Motives for Attendance .......................................................................................9Where People Attend ........................................................................................11Respondents’ Most Recently Attended Event.............................................13What People Most Recently Attended ..............................................................13Motivations for Most Recent Attendance.........................................................14Venues: Where People Attended ......................................................................17Most Recently Attended Event: Respondents’ Experiences and Assessments ..18Who People Attend With..................................................................................23Implications.........................................................................................................25 .Those who wish to understand or expand cul-tural participation need to pay much greaterattention to its diversity. Participation in artsand cultural events is not monolithic, thoughit is frequently discussed and acted upon as ifit were. As one observer notes, “We often talkas if the ‘arts’ were a single thing.”1The fact isthat people attend different types of culturalevents for different reasons, with differentpeople, in different places, with differentexperiences. Thus, if those seeking to enlargeparticipation are to succeed, they need toclearly define and understand the type of“culture” in which they wish to expandparticipation and target their strategiesaccordingly. This is the central conclusion from a nationalsurvey of cultural participation commissionedby The Wallace Foundation and conductedby the Urban Institute. For instance, mostpeople who attend museums say they arestrongly motivated by a desire to learn some-thing new. This is not true of those whoattend music performances or plays, forwhom a primary motivation is to socializewith friends and family. Survey findings alsoindicate some important differences in partic-ipation among members of different ethnicgroups and among frequent, moderate, andinfrequent attendees. Arts organizations wish-ing to reach those audiences should be awareof such differences. 1Paul DiMaggio. 2002. “Taking the Measure of Culture.” http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/moc_prospectus.html. Seealso Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth H. Ondaatje, Laura Zakaras, and Arthur Brooks. Gifts of the Muse: Reframing theDebate about the Benefits of the Arts. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2004.The Diversity of Cultural Participation .Taking a broad and inclusive definition of cul-ture, the survey asked a random sample of1,231 Americans about their participationpatterns, motivations, and experiences. As istypical of such surveys, we asked people abouttheir participation during the previous 12months. The major innovation of this studywas that we also asked people a set of ques-tions about their most recently attended event: whatthey attended, why, where, with whom, andwhat experiences they had. This providedinformation that allowed us to link particulartypes of motivations, venues, and experiencesto particular types of arts attendance in orderto determine what people wanted from a par-ticular kind of arts event and whether they feltthe event actually delivered. The surveytherefore permits us, for instance, to gobeyond knowing that a desire to socialize is acommon motivation for arts attendance. Wecan now ask whether or not a desire to social-izeis common for all attendance or hasgreater or lesser importance for those whoattend specific kinds of arts events.The ability to do so distinguishes this surveyfrom others, including the Survey of PublicParticipation in the Arts, that ask about par-ticipation over the course of the past 12months but do not ask about motivations andcircumstances associated with particular typesof arts attenda