Three New Studies From The NEA

I’m betting most of you are on the NEA’s e-mail list, but just in case you aren’t, I just received word of three new studies going live. They’ve actually been on the site since February, but I guess the word is only getting out now.

For your reading/studying pleasure (click on the titles to download a PDF of the study):

Beyond Attendance: A Multi-Modal Understanding of Arts Participation
Report authors Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Alan Brown of WolfBrown explore patterns of arts engagement across three modes:  arts creation or performance, arts engagement through media, and attendance at arts activities. The report highlights the overlap in participation across modes, and examines factors that drive participation within and between modes. February 2011. 104 pp.

Age and Arts Participation: A Case against Demographic Destiny
Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania, analyzes the relationship between age and arts participation in the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts data for 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2008. The report concludes that age and year of birth are poor predictors of arts participation and that the age distribution of art-goers now generally mirrors that of the U.S. adult population. February 2011. 88 pp.

Arts Education in America : What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation
This report, commissioned from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, investigates the relationship between arts education and arts participation, based on data from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts for 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2008. The report also examines long-term declines in Americans’ reported rates of arts learning—in creative writing, music, and the visual arts, among other disciplines. Authors Nick Rabkin and E.C. Hedberg find that the declines are not distributed evenly across all racial and ethnic groups.  February 2011. 56 pp.