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April 21, 2004

More on the Neglected Audience

In an add-on to my post last week on engaging school children in the museum experience, a colleague sent me a link to a recent study that's full of fun charts and graphs. The study, done by Harris Interactive for a December 2003 meeting of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (here's the meeting agenda with links to the Powerpoint, and here's a direct link to the Powerpoint), explored 'What Do Kids Really Think About the Arts?'

Among the summary findings:

• Youth believe that art is a positive influence and creativity is a positive quality.
• The majority of youth count creative or artistic activities among their favorite pastimes.
• Youth participate in a wide range of creative activities.
• The majority of young people like artistic activities because they feel good, use imagination, feel competent, express themselves.
• School is the primary location for music and arts programs for most students.
• Outside of school, creative activities are most often experienced at home or place of worship.
• Friends are the main source of recreation information for youth, and TV is also important.

Not particularly earth-shattering, to be sure. But there's some other useful details in the data that might help arts organizations seeking to connect with kids. For example, the survey found that for 'tweens' (children 8 to 12), the top source of information about 'fun things to do after school and on weekends' was their parents. For teens, the top source was their friends (parents ranked low in the listing, as you can imagine). Among teens, other sources of information ranking high were the Internet (57%), radio (53%), magazine or newspaper (47%), and posters and billboards (40%).

In bad but not surprising news, live arts attendance didn't rank in the 'top 10' favorite activities. Although seven out of the top 10 involved connecting with creative products (TV, movies, DVDs, Internet, music, computer games, reading).

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