Widening The Lens: Social inequality and arts participation

• Almost every respondent – 96% – identified that they were engaging with the arts, either by reading for pleasure, listening to music, attending arts and cultural events and venues, or by making art themselves.
• A person’s level of arts and cultural engagement increases with higher levels of education. Findings show those with no post-school qualifications had lower levels of participation across each type of creative activity. Those with university qualifications had the highest levels of participation.
• People in occupations that are generally associated with using more skills, and more complex skills (requiring more formal education or professional training), have stronger rates of arts and cultural participation. These occupations are usually understood to be of higher status or higher socio-economic positions.
• People with greater household incomes have stronger rates of participation across all arts activities. Low-income respondents had lower rates of attendance, creation and reading, and were more likely to select ‘because it is too expensive’ as their main reason for not attending. Making ends meet is also an important condition for attending arts events or venues and for participating in arts and cultural activities.
• Those who self-identify as ‘lower class’ or ‘working class’ have significantly lower participation rates across all four creative activity types. Those who self-identify as ‘upper-middle’ and ‘upper-class’ have significantly higher rates of arts participation.
• City dwellers are more likely to participate in arts and cultural activities than those living in suburbs or regional areas. Almost four out of five respondents living in big cities attend arts events or venues (78%), compared to 70% of respondents who live in outer city suburbs or outskirts, and just over half (54%) who live in regional areas.
• Those who trust other people are more active in arts participation, particularly in attending or creating.

Social Factors in Cultural Participation is a series of four factsheets based on the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2019. The series is produced through a partnership between Creative Australia, RMIT University and the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre.

• Widening the Lens Summary: Social Factors in Cultural Participation
• Factsheet 1: Parental Occupational Class investigates the role of parents’ occupation in people’s cultural engagement practices.
• Factsheet 2: Gender, Social Status and Cultural Attendance explores the effects of gender, education, self-identified class and marital status on cultural attendance.
• Factsheet 3: Reading for Pleasure explores factors influencing the gender gap for reading, including age, self-identified class and education, as well as social benefits of reading for pleasure.
• Factsheet 4: Socio-Economic Differences Between Cultural Attenders and Creative Participants examines the ways income, occupation, education and self-identified class intersect with cultural attendance and creative participation.