Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Thursday entry (for 4/8/10): Survey of highbrows and lowbrows.

Passage from Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life

Tepper, Steven J., and Bill Ivey. Engaging art : the next great transformation of America’s cultural life. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Page 322:

"Although the SPPA survey was not designed to learn what sorts of appeals are likely to motivate greater arts participation, nevertheless it can be used to get a better understanding of the many different kinds of people whoa re good candidates for greater arts participation. This study's primary findings can be summarized in five points.

*Some highbrows, called here highbrow univores, have nearly exclusive tastes for the fine arts, thus fitting the classical stereotype of the highbrow arts patron.

*Many arts participants, called here highbrow omnivores, have a primary orientation to the fine arts but also like a wide range of popular culture offerings. This finding has been substantiated by a large number of recent studies using data from the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel, and eight European countries (Peterson 2005).

*Looking across all the data collected in the SPPA survey for 2002 on the four tasts groups distinguished as highbrow or lowbrow and univores or omnivores, the level of omnivorousness in tastes is now more important in predicting participation in the arts than is the brow level of taste. This is to say, liking a wide range of types of music is a better predictor of arts participation than is knowing that a person chooses classical music or opera as their favorite kind of music.

*This study's data, as well as that of others, suggest that the more often people go to arts events, the more often they engage in popular culture and civic activities as well. This contradicts the assumption of those arts marketers who see themselves in a zero-sum competition with popular culture and other arts venues. In consequence, it seems that more is to be gained by attracting people to participate in arts events through cross-promotion with other arts and popular culture activities than from fostering competition with them.

*A goodly number of Lowbrows, here called targets, contrary to enduring stereotypes of lowbrows (Bloom 1987; Johnson 2002; Kristol 1978; Levine 1988), say they like fine art music. They are numerous, omnivorous in their tastes, and younger on average than highbrows. What is more, over a quarter already report attending classical music concerts, and over half report hearing or seeing classical music via records, radio, or television. There is not direct information in the survey to test the assertion, but based on the findings of Brown (2002), Walker (2003), and Walker and Scott-Melnky (2002), this study hypothesizes that highbrows are more likely to subscribe to season tickets and annual memberships whereas targets are more likely to buy tickets on an event-by-event basis."

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