Survey Says: Arts Rule!
Three out of four Austinites agree that the arts are where it's at
By Robert Faires, Fri., Jan. 23, 2004
No disrespect to the Longhorns or those who tout us as the Live Music Capital of the World, but when it comes to attendance by the people of the city, the arts in Austin have both beat. That's the word from a new survey funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts: 73% of Austinites polled by phone in the fall of 2002 said they had attended a professional performing arts event in the past 12 months, as compared with 63% who said they had been to a live music club in that time, 50% who had been to a live amateur or college sports event, and 48% who had been to a live professional sports event. Moreover, 16% of the folks in our town -- a solid 100,000 citizens -- said they had been to 12 or more live performing arts events in the previous year. And we aren't just talking about middle-aged and older well-heeled elite living west of Lamar; these are Austinites of all ages and income levels. One in five of these frequent attenders is under the age of 25.
These numbers and others were rolled out last week by the Performing Arts Research Coalition, a national partnership of arts service organizations that commissioned the survey as part of a three-year project designed to gather some hard data on the American public's support for the performing arts. With $2.7 million from Pew, PARC settled on 10 communities where information would be gathered through administrative data, audience surveys, subscriber surveys, and household surveys. Austin made the cut on the strength of its local organizations in all the performing arts disciplines (dance, theatre, opera, classical music), and eight groups committed to the three-year process. The household surveys were developed with the Urban Institute, and Princeton Survey Research Associates conducted them by placing random calls to 832 random households in the 786 and 787 ZIP codes between October and December 2002.
Among the other pertinent findings:
Some of these statistics may not sound so provocative, but they arrive at a time when the arts are front and center in discussions of local public policy. As the city government considers how to repair or reinvent the way it funds the arts, and how to turn Austin's sizable creative class to its economic advantage, data showing upward of three-quarters of city residents in support of local culture could serve as powerful ammunition for the makers of art and their allies. Of course, that depends on those arts types loading up their lobbying weapons and charging City Hall. But they made a good start last Thursday by presenting these findings to council during its weekly meeting. 
