A preview of the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts results have just been posted by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the news is a bit sobering. This is the mother ship of longitudinal surveys on arts participation in the United States — conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau every 10 years or so since 1982. Among the happy findings:
- Attendance at the most popular types of arts events — such as art museums and craft/visual arts festivals — saw notable declines. Even those most inclined to attend arts events in past years — college-educated adults — are participating less than before.
- Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.
- Fewer adults are creating and performing art. Only the share of adults doing photography has increased.
Much of the decline could be linked to a bad economy (NEA research suggests that annual consumer spending on the performing arts drops 0.8 percent for every 1 percent decline in Gross Domestic Product). But there are also indicators of more systemic shifts.
The real meat and analysis of the SPPA report will arrive in the fall. But this early preview gives us a taste of the difficult news to come.
Good. The theater community and The Arts in general need to hear this kind of info badly – for too long The Art World has turned up its nose at the masses. Sticking to theater here, an example is the constant production, and subsequent rewarding by critics, of tired, old, already done ad nauseum scripts.
If The Art World, and specifically theater want to stop hemorrhaging audience, it better figure out what Television, The Internet, and Movies discovered long ago – people want new material that they can relate to.
This is information that we definitely need to really take a hard look at espeically in these financial times.
While I agree that the repertoire of companies should be shaken up a bit, I do not agree that the arts world should look to emulate television, internet or movies. As popular as they are, they have an advantage that the live performance and gallery arts do not – they can be turned on, recorded or viewed by a touch of a button from anywhere. There are so many pieces (music, theatre, art, opera) that are relatable. I have always related to characters in plays more than those in television shows. Though I confess, am a bit of a theatre geek.
Perhaps the key may be a marriage of live performance and the “push-of-a-button” entertainment. The Met seems to be doing very well with its broadcasted performances. Perhaps we will begin to see more of this and other blending.
One thing is certain, changes are in the wings and I think we have some very exciting, albeit challenging times ahead.
I’m sorry they didn’t call us–our audience increased dramatically last year (we lowered our ticket prices even before the economy went sour) and we have a substantial number of young people at our concerts. And the concerts that sell the best, at least for us anyway, are indeed the “tried and true”–Beethoven 5 and 9 have been our largest classical draws by far in the past two seasons.
I don’t know how to square what’s happening locally with this survey, although I don’t doubt its results. I hear people calling for something new and different in the concert experience, and yet we seem to have the most success with a pretty narrow range of well-known programming.
Maybe it depends on where you are and how sophisticated your audience already is. Music education is practically non-existent in our area schools, but they’ve at least heard of Beethoven. Makes programming a real challenge.