The recent NEA report on the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (summarized in this Chicago Tribune story) receives a positive spin from the NEA (despite 9/11, arts participation stayed steady) and a gloomy spin from the Tribune (stagnant participation percentages from previous studies, same old same old audience demographics, etc.). But bundled in the spin control is an even deeper question: who gets to define what it means to participate in the arts?
The study breaks down participation into live attendance (going to the symphony, theater, museum) and mediated or informal experience (through mediated interaction like radio, television, books, or through informal attendance at fairs or historic sites, art classes, and so on). Most folks focus on the live attendance, that shows about 40 percent of U.S. adults have attended some form of arts experience in the prior 12 months. That’s where the doom and gloom comes in…only 40 percent, a bit lower than the 1997 study. Failure. Gnashing of teeth.
When expanded to include ‘attending art or craft fairs, visiting historical sites, reading literature, watching or listening to an arts broadcast, performing, and taking an arts class,’ then participation rises to 76 percent.
By the way we traditionally define participation, however, electronically mediated and ‘informal’ arts aren’t true arts experiences. Never mind that millions of Americans find peace and engagement through ‘passive’ listening to classical music radio, or clicking on the television to a concert broadcast, or throwing a pot at a community center, or performing in a community theater production, or streaming arts content while they work on their PC.
Who are we to define where people find connection, creation, and consolation? It seems the value is theirs, not ours, anyway.
