The traditional definition of arts participation vastly undercounted actual participation. 

To most major arts benefactors, arts participation has been synonymous with arts attendance: going to a museum or gallery or sitting in the audience at a music, dance, or theatrical performance. By that measure, Californians seemed to be giving up on the arts. According to National Endowment for the Arts surveys, attendance at “benchmark” art events plummeted during the 2010s. But the findings didn’t square with the outpouring of art being produced in a state, much of which was becoming increasingly multicultural. Could it be that these surveys weren’t asking the right questions? 

NORC designed a paradigm-shifting questionnaire with a broad definition of arts participation. 

With funding from the James Irvine Foundation, NORC at the University of Chicago conducted a statewide telephone survey of 1,238 representative adults that started with an open-ended prompt: “Please briefly tell me about any creative, cultural, or artistic activities that you do.” We conducted the survey in English, Spanish, and Mandarin and oversampled Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations, who are often under-represented in surveys. In addition to asking what they did as audience members, we asked whether they participated in the arts themselves, by making visual art, weaving or crocheting, dancing socially, singing in a choir or a glee club, acting, reading for pleasure, writing, or gardening, among other things.