That is, at-risk youths get better grades and adapt better to society when they experiment with the arts.
Exactly. Within the same socio-economic group, there is a very solid correlation between academic performance and life conditions in the medium term among children who have had intense arts-related experiences compared to those who have never had any contact with the arts.
At-risk youths who have come into contact with the arts tend to do better at school and beyond than children on the same socio-economic level who do not participate in arts-based activities. The same thing happens with children from a higher social class, but the difference is not as big. That is, the greater the risk of social exclusion, the greater the benefit from participating in the arts.
So, we have a reasonable belief that the arts can help to level the playing field, especially for youths and children. Many of them have often not had the opportunity to access culture. But when we do give them such opportunities, they seem to act as catalysts for them to get more involved in academic life and become integrated into a social and economic group.
How can the benefits of the arts be measured socially and emotionally, or on people’s health? Can you give an example from specific programmes?
We do a lot of work, for example, with the U.S. Department of Defense. We try to understand how the arts can help heal the physical and emotional injuries of military personnel who have taken part in armed conflict. Arts therapies (music, dance and visual art) have been applied in these programmes. Such therapies, in the very early stages, have proven highly beneficial to patients, who are mainly war wounded. This is one of the ways we have been able to research and measure the value of the arts in other contexts.
How do you think new technologies, especially smartphones, social media and video games have affected youths as regards the consumption of the arts or access to them?
That is a very important question, and we are paying particular attention to it in the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a regular report we do for the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the latest data available to us, from a study conducted in 2012, between 81 and 83% of adults participate in some type of arts-related experience via electronic or digital media. It is a high percentage compared to the one for those who have visited an art gallery or attended a performing arts show.
So, in short, a high proportion of the population – youths for sure, but also older adults – participates in the arts via their smartphones and tablets. And these statistics will almost certainly be higher in the results from the next survey.
In a society as heterogeneous as the American one, are their differences in participation in the arts by the individuals’ cultural origin and social class?
One of the most significant results we obtained from our studies was precisely the high participation of demographically very diverse groups in artistic creation using these electronic media. For example, African Americans, Hispanic or Latino Americans, and Americans of Asian origin are more likely to create music or digital art with electronic digital media.
And that is great, because it enables them to empower themselves and become engaged in artistic creation at a much higher level than we have seen in the past.
As a consequence of these data, our agency is determined to allocate more funds and grants to the development of digital art projects across the country. Our director of media arts, Jax Deluca, is committed to fostering the cultural participation of the country’s diverse communities via these media because she considers it to be the best way of delivering services to the people.