ENCOURAGE CHILDREN TODAY TO BUILD AUDIENCES FOR TOMORROW

In March 2009, a survey was undertaken by the Arts Council to explore the relationship between childhood arts experiences and arts engagement patterns in adulthood. The analysis was reported in the publication 'Encourage children today to build audiences for tomorrow'.

"Our analysis indicates that encouragement to attend and participate in the arts when growing up is associated with significantly higher chances of being an active arts consumer as an adult. Being taken to arts events when growing up significantly increases the chances of both adult attendance and participation. Similarly, receiving encouragement to participate in the arts when growing up makes one more likely both to participate in arts activities and to attend arts events as an adult.

These effects are present even after a range of other socio- demographic factors (the respondents’ age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, health, age of children in household, region, education, social class, income, social status) as well as the social status of the respondents’ parents (head of household, usually father) have been taken into account."

It is also said in this document that " children who are encouraged to engage in the arts when growing up are likely to learn to consider the arts an appropriate activity for ‘people like them’. Early exposure can demystify the arts and make them an attractive, or at least not unusual, possibility for one’s leisure time. Parental endorsement of arts events and activities as beneficial might have a particularly strong impact on children, since, in the period when children live at home at least, parents

tend to be a key influence on the development of child’s knowledge, values and sense of social norms. For those children who do not receive such parental endorsement of the arts and have fewer or no opportunities to experience the arts as a child, then, the arts remain a more distant sphere – for some, a sphere that they actively associate with elitism, pretence and exclusion."

In your opinion do you agree with this study?

Do you think that if children engage with arts early in their lives would they be more encouraged and confident to participate in arts?

An other point that has come up in this study suggests also that ethnic minorities and lower social statuses are a great influence in children not participating in arts. And a solution for this would be "Providing more opportunities for children to engage in the arts outside the family context, might be one way to ensure that a larger number of people have a chance to experience and become familiar with the arts when growing up."

Do you agree that families have a great influence in their children's participation in arts and that this would affect them in their adult life?

References: . 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0006/papers/children.pdf. [Accessed 27 April 2013].