California Can Reconceive the Arts by Offering More Choices and Ways to Participate
Demographic and Technological Shifts Could Let Arts in the Golden State Better Serve Communities
California is undergoing massive changes in technology, demography, the nature of work and, thus, in leisure activity. So is its cultural sector, with consequences for how Californians experience art and for how California organizations and artists deliver the arts and engage their audiences.
Over the last three decades, the term “arts participation” has essentially been understood as arts attendance within the non-profit arts field. The field’s key indicator of arts participation over this time has been attendance at any of the seven “benchmark” arts events: performances of ballet, musical and nonmusical …