United States Of Arts Participation

In October the National Endowment for the Arts Quick Study podcast (transcript available) took a look at how arts participation broke down across the United States via data collected in 2022 by the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

What I found most interesting was how participation and attendance of different arts and cultural activities varied from state to state. While we might think of places like NYC as being a cultural center in the US, that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, New York State’s numbers were lower than one might expect though NEA Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar partially attributed that to the fact there were still Covid restrictions on Broadway productions during 2022.

According to Iyengar,

…higher than average attendance was clocked by seven states. Utah, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Per capita, Washington DC also drew more arts participation than most states

Utah, Vermont, and Nebraska vastly outstripped the national average for attending at least one live performance. Massachusetts exceeded the national average for art museum attendance and Vermont and DC exceeded the national average for overall museum attendance.

Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Montana had higher levels of people attending stage plays or musicals (school based performances were not counted). South Dakotans attended dance in higher levels than the rest of the nation.

When it came to music, Massachusetts was on top for classical music, DC turned out for jazz, New Mexico was triple the US average for Latin, Spanish, and salsa concerts.

Iyengar said the survey didn’t drill down on every performing arts discipline and used some catch-all categories. Indiana topped attendance in that category.

“…types we do not ask about on the survey, these may have been rock or pop concerts, rap or hip hop, or even comedy shows, circuses, or magic shows. That’s a kind of lump all category. We find that 37% of Indiana residents went to one of these types of events in the last year compared to 21% of adults in general. In Michigan, another Midwestern state, the rate was also high, 34%. And out East in Delaware, it was 35%.

Of course, someone has to generate all that creative content and the survey measured that as well:

…the states that did particularly well in terms of arts creation were Wisconsin, Maine, Montana, Vermont, Nebraska, Utah, Oregon, Washington State and Ohio. All these states had above average shares of residents who personally created or performed art…. Wisconsin, where the rate of arts creation in the course of a year was 73%, versus 52% of the U.S. as a whole. Wisconsin had an especially strong showing with people doing dance, taking photographs for artistic purposes and making visual art in general. And Maine, where 71% of people made their own art, included a lot of folks working with textiles, weaving, crocheting, quilting or doing needlepoint, knitting or sewing.

The full report, 50 States of Arts Participation: 2022, can be found on the National Endowment for the Arts website. There is a quick drop down menu to show some highlights for each state, but the report does a much better job of providing specific detail.

One of the things I take from the survey is the suspicion that many people down really perceive themselves as participating in artistic and creative practice. When I see that Hawaii pretty significantly is below the national average for participation in social or artistic dancing and playing a musical instrument, it doesn’t correspond with my experience living there where everyone seemed to at least dabble a little in both if not regularly perform or take instruction.

One Wicked Sing-A-Long Debate

For the record, I am not on the side of singing along with the movie in the theater.

That said, I think it is to the theater world’s credit that there is a notable debate raging about whether people should be allowed to sing along during screenings of the movie based on the Broadway musical Wicked.

The movie is very much based on the musical since it is only part 1, though it isn’t advertised as such, and even as Part 1 has a longer running time than the original musical. According to some reviewers the movie doesn’t seem to drag even though it is being stretched out.

Part 2 will apparently contain new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz which may mitigate concerns about people singing along to some degree when that movie comes out.

One of the obvious solutions to the sing-a-long issue is for movie theaters to offer audience participation screenings and no audience participation screenings. After all the same issue came up about a year ago with the Taylor Swift concert movie where some fans felt like there was too much audience participation while others were upset that the next screening over seemed to be creating a more communal experience than they were having. If theater were paying attention the last time, they could proactively address those concerns for Wicked.

I should probably amend that first sentence of this post to say I am not on the side of a sing-a-long when I am not expecting that experience. I have definitely tried to license the sing-a-long version of Song of Music and have hosted a number of screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where participation is expected.

As I said, I think it is great that the debate is occurring with Wicked because it will likely raise awareness about the Broadway show and perhaps generate curiosity about other Broadway shows.

Though stretching the story out across two movies creates a tenuous situation. If the extended version is boring and drags, that could reflect badly on the original show. (I’m looking at you movie adaptation of The Hobbit) If it is well received, it could create expectations that a Broadway show half the length (at least) can’t meet.

AI May Not Be The Best Tool For Writing Personnel Reviews

We are constantly told about the hazards of inputting sensitive personal data into unsecure websites. That is pretty much what you are doing when you provide information to an AI bot and ask them to create something for you. For this reason there are some significant concerns associated with using AI to write annual reviews and evaluations. Anything you provide the AI is being used to train the AI to do a better job and has the possibility of being retrieved by third parties.

I recently had a post on ArtsHacker discussing these issues in greater detail. In that post I note using AI for annual reviews is a viable option as long as you steer clear of identifiable information like names, don’t reference things like medical conditions, or use discriminatory language related to protected classes like age, race, national origin, etc.

Dangers Of Using AI For Annual Reviews

 

Ephemera Becomes Increasingly Ephemeral

Via Arts and Letters Daily is an article by Bailey Sincox about how theater tickets and programs, long regarded as ephemera are becoming increasingly ephemeral thanks to technology.

Tickets and programs had a life measured in terms of the dates of performance. Once the date had passed and the show run completed, tickets and programs had no value. Except in terms of a remembrance of time spent and a record of who contributed to the creation of the show. As Sincox writes, saving those tickets and programs as memorabilia has been practiced for 400-500 years.

But the move to digital delivery on tickets means there isn’t anything to save unless you specifically request to pick up tickets at will call or choose to print at home. Sincox notes that some ticketing services like TodayTix don’t deliver tickets to their app on your phone until 24 hours prior to the show time and then disappear at midnight of the show day.

As for programs, Covid saw an elimination in their use and the post-pandemic period has seen their diminished use as venues trend away from them. Even the vaunted Playbill program one gets at Broadway shows and other venues across the US was impacted as never before in its history:

Playbill’s presses ceased operations between March 2020 and August 2021 for the first time since the magazine’s 1884 founding. As Playbill’s editors reminded readers in the first postvaccine issue, the magazine had not stopped for two world wars, for Y2K, or for anything in between….After August 2021, many theaters made Playbill accessible via QR codes scanned in the lobby, much like the now-ubiquitous virtual restaurant menu

All this being said, Sincox observes near the end of the article that delivery of tickets and program content virtually still has its shortcomings. As a venue manager, I can attest that her struggles in retrieving her tickets on her phone is a common occurrence across the nation, if not the world. In the end, a good many attendees depend on the availability of the ticket office to print hard copies of their tickets so that they and their friends may share an enjoyable experience.