Abstract
ABSTRACTDo ticketing data and national survey data on attendance tell the same story? This question is particularly important in the context of debates over the power of new forms of data to supplant the “traditional” survey methods that have underpinned our understanding of the social stratification of culture. This paper compares three data sources on attendance: the Active Lives Survey, the Taking Part Survey, and Audience Finder. We first compare self-reported attendance at events in each English local authority from the Active Lives survey with ticket sales data, finding a close relationship. We follow up by comparing the distributions of ticket buyers across the Indices of Multiple Deprivation with those from Taking Part, finding that for widely-ticketed and widely-attended art forms they track closely together, providing support for existing trends. Ticketing data does not seem to offer more information on social stratification than traditional social science sources. However, we extend the comparison through more detailed analysis of subcategories within less well-researched forms – literature and dance events – where numbers of attendees are lower, with accompanying uncertainty in survey sources. We find that the audiences for dance vary widely, with ballet attendance being heavily socially stratified but attendance at contemporary dance much more similar to the general population. However, we find that audiences for literature events are more heavily socially stratified than almost any other art form, almost regardless of the subcategory. The power of new datasets is in offering specificity about artforms, rather than overturning what we know about culture and inequality.
Highlights
Survey data have been central to our understanding of culture at least since Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979/1984), if not before
While a headline comparison of Audience Finder and Taking Part suggests Audience Finder data does not demonstrate a “coming crisis” for our understanding of the broad patterning and axis of inequality associated with cultural consumption, Audience Finder offers important new insights within art forms. We extend this discussion by comparing Audience Finder and Taking Part’s understanding of dance and literary events
We show the power of new forms of transactional data for giving detailed analysis of artforms, whilst at the same time reaffirming the accuracy and status of the large-scale survey approach instantiated in Taking Part
Summary
Survey data have been central to our understanding of culture at least since Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979/1984), if not before. Among these four most popular categories, there are major differences in the distribution of ticket attendance across IMD Both traditional and contemporary ballet display the kinds of social inequality seen elsewhere in “highbrow” art forms, with people living in areas with lower levels of deprivation vastly more likely to purchase tickets than people areas with higher levels of deprivation. The differences between literary events at Arts Council England-supported venues, and other venues, are much smaller; where there are differences, they skew towards events at NPOs being more socially stratified than events not at NPOs. 25% of transactions for literary talks at Arts Council-supported venues went to households in the least deprived 10% of areas; the equivalent figure for non-NPOs was 21% This is even more striking for author readings, the numbers of author readings outside of NPOs in Audience Finder is relatively small. The exception within this category, though, is the top decile, where a relatively small fraction of tickets is sold in non-NPOs
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