In September, the National Endowment for the Arts released the results of an Arts Participation survey, Why We Engage: Attending, Creating and Performing Art.

Much of the information about why people attend was very similar to other recent survey results I have written about in the last 3-6 months. To be honest, given that all the data was collected pre-Covid and so much of that may no longer be valid in the future, I didn’t want to devote a lot of time reviewing that information.

What caught my eye were some findings about how people view their own creative expression.

Like this bit about the intended audience for created art and how it was shared. I was surprised so few performing artists share their work on the internet compared to other artists.

Between 35 and 40 percent of art creators and performers said their art was intended only for personal consumption. (The percentage was highest for creative writers at nearly 40 percent.) Greater variance was observed among those who reported their intended audience as only people they personally knew: 52 percent of art creators identified this audience type, with only 32 percent of creative writers doing so. The highest percentage of respondents creating or performing for the general public were creative writers (29 percent), followed by arts performers (18 percent), and visual art creators (13 percent).

Nearly half of those who personally created art used the internet to share their work. In contrast, about 41 percent of those who engaged in creative writing used the internet to share their writing, and fewer than 14 percent of those who personally performed art shared their work in this manner.

The findings on price and income are interesting and complex. Income quartile was not predictive of whether people would say price factored in their decision to attend an event. In other words, income level didn’t necessarily align with whether they said price was a factor. However, of those identifying low cost as a motivation, it was almost the only reason they attended.

The percentage of each income group reporting that low cost motivated their attendance ranged from 30 to 39 percent, with those in the lowest-income quartile citing it the most often as a factor, and those in highest-income quartile citing it the least often. However, unlike in 2012, income quartile was not a significant predictor of whether an individual would identify low cost as a reason for attendance. Of those who identified low cost as a reason for attendance, between 68 and 71 percent of each income quartile group indicated the factor as the most important or only reason for their attendance.

Socialization was a big factor in generational terms. The younger the generation, the more frequently the respondent would say not having someone to accompany them was a barrier to participation. While Covid may change a lot about people’s willingness to venture out for in-person experiences, I suspect this is one finding of the survey that will hold true for those that are willing to attend in-person in the future.