Effects of Arts Education on Participation in the Arts

Download or read book Effects of Arts Education on Participation in the Arts written by Louis Bergonzi and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using data from the 1992 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA92), research focused on the question: "Does arts education make arts participation more accessible to Americans?" The effects of both school-based arts education and community-based arts education were considered and compared. Art forms considered in this investigation were classical music, jazz, opera, musical plays or operettas, non-musical dramatic plays, ballet, other forms of dance, poetry, novels or short stories, visual art, and video programs about the arts or artists. Measures of arts consumption employed were live attending at arts performances (attendance); listening to radio broadcasts or audio recordings on record, tape, or compact disc (audio media); watching performances on television and/or using the videocassette recorder (video media); and reading print literature or listening to recordings of print literature (print media). The following are summarized research findings presented in this document. (1) Arts education was the strongest predictor of almost all types of arts participation (arts performances being the exception). Those with the most arts education were also the highest consumers and creators of various art forms. (2) The higher one's socioeconomic status (SES), the more arts education one received. The SES was more important to increased community-based arts education than for school-based arts. Men were only slightly less likely than women to take arts courses in school but much less likely to do so in community-based arts education agencies outside of school. White respondents reported much higher levels of community arts education than did Asians, African-Americans, or Hispanics. (3) The more one received of both school- and community-based arts education, the more one participated in arts as an adult, either through consumption or creation. The exception was in art performance where having received community-based arts education did nothing to predict arts performance, and receiving school-based education actually decreased the likelihood that individuals would continue to perform as adults. This document includes figures, tables, appendices, notes, and a bibliography. (MM)