High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, October 09, 2009
Participation and Attendance
In 2007 The Scottish Government's Scottish Household Survey asked adults questions about cultural participation and attendance for the first time. This has now been followed up in the 2008 survey to give a combined 19,000 responses. Key findings regarding cultural participation and attendance include:
Participation
- 72% of adults in Scotland stated that they had participated in arts or cultural activities during the previous year.
- Reading for pleasure was the most popular activity undertaken with 64% of adults in Scotland having done so in the previous year. Other common activities included: dance (22%), craftwork (12%) and playing a musical instrument (11%).
- Reading for pleasure was the activity most likely to be done at least once per week (for 81% of all people doing this activity). Playing a musical instrument was also likely to be done on a weekly basis (56%).
- Women were more likely to have participated in some form of cultural activity than men (77% v 67%).
- Participation was highest for the 25-44 year age group (74%) and lowest in those aged over 75 years (64%).
- Participation was lowest in the most deprived areas (63%) and highest in the least deprived areas (80%). Other demographic patterns for cultural participation and attendance providing the breakdown by urban-rural classification, disability and highest qualification are given in Scotland's People Annual Report: Results from the 2007/2008 Scottish Household Survey and supporting web tables.
Attendance
- 75% of respondents indicated that they had attended an arts or cultural activity during the previous year.
- The arts and cultural events attended by the largest proportion of Scottish adults were going to the cinema (52%), visiting a library (31%), theatre (28%), live music (27%) or museums (27%).
- The most frequently attended cultural event was visiting a library with 20% of library users visiting at least once per week. Cinema attendance is also frequently undertaken with 25% of cinema goers attending at least once per month.
Other sources show that:
- There were 1.5 million visits to the National Museums of Scotland in 2007/08. The number of visitors aged 16-24 to National Museums in Scotland has more than doubled from 270,000 in 2006/07 to 560,000 in 2007/08.
- There were 1.5 million visits to the National Galleries of Scotland in 2007/08, an increase of 24% since 2004/05. There were 675,000 visitors to the National Galleries website in 2007/08.
- The number of readers at the National Library of Scotland was approximately 69,000 in 2007/08, showing an increase of 15% since 2004/05.
- In 2005/06, the Scottish Arts Council undertook a major review which was implemented in 2007/08. Following its Strategic Review, the Scottish Arts Council reconfigured the basis of its revenue funding arrangements and it should be noted that the results below are not comparable with reports submitted by funded organisations for years prior to 2007/08. 2007/08 was the baseline year for the new arrangements and £26.12 million was invested in 93 organisations which fall into two categories: Foundation (FO) and Flexibly Funded (FXO). Total audiences, attendances and participation were 5.30 million. Information relating to each FO and FXO is available on the Scottish Art Council's website.
- There were over 480,000 attendances at Scottish Screen Regional Film Theatres in 2007/08. This was a decrease from the 540,000 attendances in 2006/07 but does reflect a reduction by four in the number of funded venues.
Further Information