CMU School of Drama


Sunday, September 14, 2008

Improving Arts Education Is Key to Stemming Audience Decline, RAND Study Finds

AScribe: "Policymakers have underestimated the critical role of arts learning in supporting a vibrant nonprofit cultural sector, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today. The study was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by RAND, a non-profit research organization.
Despite decades of effort to make high-quality works of art available to Americans, demand for the arts has failed to keep pace with supply. Audiences for classical music, jazz, opera, theater and the visual arts have declined as a percentage of the population, and the percentage of these audiences age 30 and younger has fallen even more."

6 comments:

Ethan Weil said...

I wonder if this data will encourage arts organizations to invest more in outreach to youth programs and schools or if that kind of work is prohibitively expensive.

Anonymous said...

While I do hope that this encourages art education in schools to be revamped, I also hope that this trend encourages the existing arts to evolve. While I do understand that classical music and jazz are so defined at this point that there is no way for them to easily evolve, things like theater and other more visual mediums could.
The best example I can supply of a classical art evolving to appeal to a more modern audience is actually from the CMU Orientation talent show. In it there was a cello player, and while I normally find the cello boring, this guy had composed a piece that included using the instrument as a drum and a pluck instrument. It was amazing to watch, and I hope I get to hear more of what this guy writes. The piece was classic cello, but with an amazingly awesome modern twist that was just as much sound as it was performance. What I hope is that more people like this guy exist in the world, since they're the kinds of people who are going to save the classical arts.

Anonymous said...

I have to disagree with your blanket statement about the arts needing to evolve. While it's true that some art forms are centuries old, there are lots of organizations that are doing amazing "out of the box" programming for youth audiences: Opera companies are reaching out to youth audiences with deaf and disabled programming. Orchestras are doing in-school residencies. Theaters host low to no-cost workshops for families. MANY universities (including some of the nations top conservatories) now include as part of their mission the importance of reaching out to in-need schools. Arts education and outreach is alive and, believe it or not, doing their part to educate and inspire younger audiences.

The issue, is that this isn't solely their job. So much time is spent away from the arts IN schools, that these arts organizations are expected to make up for the lack of programming. The economy is in horrible shape, and Americans just are not spending the time or money on introducing art forms in an inspiring way to younger audiences. It's the job of parents, families, school administrators and all individuals on a local and national level to make the arts a priority.

Arts organizations are evolved, and consider the many aspects of student learning. However, this seems to go unseen by the public because of big-picture misconceptions. Thanks for reading.

Anonymous said...

This is very interesting to me, because although I view education as the most important aspect of life I never would have thought about teaching people how to understand and appreciate art. Since I am an artists, and all my friends are, I guess this just comes innately to me, but it makes perfect (like duh) sense to teaching people how to view the art - it does seem that people don't like museums because they just don't know what they are looking at. I know that I always appreciate viewing work that I have studied in art class, or going to see work with another artists and discussing the piece with them.

(Though really if the economy doesn't improve the viewing and appreciation for art will just continue to plummet.)

Sam Thompson said...

It isn't just about teaching people how to understand and appreciate art, it's about exposing them to art in a structured setting where they can develop their own understanding and appreciation of it. This article has a really good point: how can we expect young people to become interested in art if they are not exposed to it, or don't understand it. Arts education is essential to creating artists as well as audiences, and it's a sad truth that the arts is often the first thing to be cut at a school in this country. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't gone to a school which supported the arts, or been exposed to art by my parents from a young age. We need to get the young people of this country interested in the arts again!

Anonymous said...

I agree with anonymous in that there is a huge shared responsiblity component that people are missing. Sure you can introduce a kid to something but if your not providing an outside school stimulus for some art form (underwater basket weaving!) It's kinda just filed in the back of the brain and forgotten.

I believe in that to appreciate art you need to see the classics and the modern pieces. A piece from the renaissance and a piece of dadaism. Architecture, and the process behind it, theater, film, dance, all have many faces. You can't rely on a school system to show it all to the kids.

On the flip side no child is left behind has left the arts the arts behind instead. The horror stories of teaching for standardized testing rather then promoting the individual to expand and grow in ways that are productive to the child are afterthoughts.

It's a shared responsibility issues. Schools need to more arts but it takes the public to put it in. Details of a democracy.