Late in 2010, I wrote a series of posts based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics report: Arts and Culture in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 2010.

It looks like the 2011 version of this report was issued just before Christmas, although I only found out about its release a few days ago. So I thought I’d look at the 2011 report and compare it to the 2010 figures I blogged about previously, to see if there are any interesting changes (or conversely, evidence of stable patterns).

The first post I’m revisiting is Who’s visiting?, which looked at participation rates by age. (‘Participation rate’ is defined as the person having attended that kind of venue least once in the previous 12 month period). Now it looks like the participation rates shown in the 2010 report  were based on data from 2005-2006, whereas the 2011 report has more recent figures (2009-2010). So what has happened to participation rates over the past five years?

Firstly, let’s look at the overall participation rates from each year (NB: the ABS report also includes libraries, archives and performing arts, but these are not included in this analysis):

Attendance rates at Australian cultural venues (people aged 15 or over), as a total figure and as a percentage of the population (Source: ABS).

So it appears that participation rates are increasing across the board, albeit modestly (and the report does not say whether this increase is statistically significant or not). This increase appears to be spread across the age ranges:

Attendance rates at cultural venues by age group, comparing 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 (Source: ABS)

So there is no radical change in any particular age group, and the patterns of participation follow broadly the same patterns in both 2006-2006 and 2009-2010. Similarly to previous years, the report also showed that women are still slightly more likely to be visitors than men. So there is nothing earth shattering, but perhaps there is something to be quietly optimistic about if the increased participation rates are evidence of a slow and steady trend.

Taking Part, which has been run since 2005, collects data about participation in sport, the arts, heritage, libraries, museums and galleries from adults and children (aged 5-15) in England. The figures show that visiting to museums and galleries is on a steady upward trend, with the increase in visitation / decline in non-visitation being statistically significant:

Trends in the proportion of adults in England who have visited a museum or gallery in the previous 12 months (source: Taking Part survey - .xls file available on website)

So, somewhere in the region of 42-46% of adults in England visit a museum or gallery at least once in a given year (and this doesn’t include Heritage sites, which are visited at least once a year by a whopping 70% of English adults).

This fairly steady overall picture conceals considerable variation by geography, demographics and socioeconomic status:

Age and geographic breakdown of museum and gallery participation rates, for the earliest and latest years available (full data set is annual). Figures in bold represent a significant change from 2005-6. (Source: Taking Part statistical worksheet (Museums))

Age and gender breakdowns are pretty self-explanatory, and broadly reflect Australian trends (although ABS uses slightly different age categories). London residents are the most likely to visit museums while those in the East Midlands (which incorporates my English ‘hometown’ of Leicester) are the least likely in 2010-11. Interestingly, the East Midlands is the only region to see a fall in participation rates from 2005-6, albeit not a significant drop. It would be interesting to see how the different regional increases correspond to the opening / refurbishment of museums across England over the past few years.

Demographic and socioeconomic data show that museum and gallery visitors are still disproportionately white, wealthy and able-bodied:

Demographic and socioeconomic breakdown of museum and gallery participation rates, for the earliest and latest years available (full data set is annual). Figures in bold represent a significant change from 2005-6. (Source: Taking Part statistical worksheet (Museums))

Participation rates among lower socioeconomic groups, ethnic minorities, disabled people and people of non-Christian religions are all on the increase, which will be encouraging news for all those who have put so much effort into social inclusion projects in museums over the past decade or so. However, given the increases in participation across-the-board, it’s not clear whether there is any progress being made in closing long-standing cultural gaps.

NB: I tried to do a compare-and-contrast between the Taking Part report and the Attendance at Cultural Venues statistics published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but I ended up tying myself in knots. First off, the ABS report cites participation rates for Art Galleries and Museums separately (with each being in the low-mid 20% range – see here for more details). Where a combined rate is given, it appears that the figure has been reached by simply adding Museum and Gallery figures together (See for instance Table 8.1 in the ABS report (PDF), despite saying in the explanatory notes that the true proportion will be less than the sum of Museums + Galleries due to overlap between the visitor populations of each – as you’d expect. I’m actually wondering whether the wrong numbers were published in the report!). Either way, I suspect the 46-52% annual participation rates cited by ABS are an overestimate.

Thanks to the ICOM group on Linked In, I recently found out about EGMUS: the European Group on Museum Statistics. The group exists to collect and publish comparable statistical data from 27 European countries. I’ve pulled out some of the statistics I thought of particular interest, but there are also statistics for funding, staffing and management (although these data sets look fairly incomplete at this stage).

The overall picture looks like this:

The countries in the EGMUS sample, the year the data for each country was collected, and number of museums in each country. (Those in red have some consistency issues which will become clear later)

Most European museums are open to the public for at least 200 days a year (a fair criterion for considering a museum to be a ‘public’ institution compared to a facility primarily for specialists or researchers). The major outlier is Switzerland at 14%, although Germany too has a fairly low proportion of ‘public’ museums by this measure.

Some (not all) countries have broken down their museums by type:

Breakdown of European museums by type. Figures in red are those with clear inconsistencies with the 'total museums' figure listed above. The reason for this discrepancy is unclear from the data.

Differences between the respective countries are clearer when the data are presented graphically:

European museums by country and type. Many countries have almost (or actually) exclusively Art, Archaeology and History museums. Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg are the only ones to have mostly Science, Technology and Ethnology museums.

‘Art, Archaeology and History’ is quite a broad definition; probably too broad to give any detailed comparison between countries. Putting ‘ethnology’ in with science and technology also seems a bit weird to me and I wonder what the reasoning is for this.

It’s hard to compare to the Australian statistics, which use quite different definitions – Art Galleries (14%), Social History (60%), Historic Properties (21%), Natural, Science and Other (5%). (From ABS figures summarised in a previous blog post). However, I’d imagine that by the European definition most of Australia’s museums would also fall into the ‘Art, History and Archaeology’ category too.

The EGMUS figures also look at the number of visits per country and (on average) per museum:

Total and average number of visits to European museums. NB: Some of these are combined from multiple tables. Figures in blue are not directly cited in the EGMUS tables but were derived from other data provided. Figures in red showed internal inconsistencies in the are published data (beyond a 5-10% margin of error).

The clear outlier here is Switzerland, and I’m not sure if this is a typographical error or is in some way related to the very low proportion of museums that are open for more than 200 days a year. Even ignoring Switzerland, however, there are still considerable differences in the number of museums per head of population between European countries (which don’t seem to relate to geographical or socioeconomic differences between countries in any obvious way).

A lower proportion of visits to European museums are free compared to Australia, where an average of 68% of visits are free entry. Per-capita number of visits is comparable, however, with my back-of-the-envelope calculation for an Australian figure (taking ABS visitor stats cited above and assuming an Australian population of 22 million) being just shy of 140,000 visits per 100,000 inhabitants, with an average of roughly 26,000 visits per museum.

Continuing from my last post on the ABS Report: Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events, I’ve now had a look at the historical trends data comparing surveys from 1999, 2005-6 and 2009-10.

First, some caveats: the ABS acknowledge some methodological differences between the three surveys from which these data have been drawn, which may affect the validity of internal comparisons. Also, the report notes that only a minority of the differences between years are statistically significant (more on that later).

Historical attendance trends across selected cultural venues by persons over 15 years of age. (Source: ABS) Figures in red are statistically significant increases.

From 2005-6 to 2009-10, there were statistically significant increases in attendance to Art Galleries, Museums, Botanic Gardens, Performing Arts and Cinemas.  I’ve also represented these historical trends graphically:

Historical attendance trends across selected cultural venues by persons over 15 years of age. (Source: ABS)

This shows that attendance to Art Galleries and Museums is similar, as is that to Zoos, Botanic Gardens and Libraries. Most changes over time are relatively modest, even if some are statistically significant.

However, the state-by-state breakdowns reveal a more complex picture, particularly for museums:

Historical attendance trends to museums by State (Source: ABS)

So while there is a statistically significant increase in attendance overall, the only individual states to show a statistically significant increase from 2005-6 to 2009-10 are Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. The differences between states are quite stark when shown graphically:

Historical attendance trends to museums by State (Source: ABS)

This graph would seem to suggest that there are long-term, stable differences between states and territories with respect to museum attendance. ACT is the only one to show dramatic changes between time points. (I wonder if the opening of the National Museum of Australia is a contributing factor to the jump from 1999 to 2005-6?) While there does seem to be an upturn in NT attendance, apparently this is not statistically significant.

There were also noticeable state-by-state differences in Art Gallery attendance:

Historical attendance trends to art galleries by State (Source: ABS)

Again, ACT residents appear to buck the national trend. However, it is the increases in the NSW and Qld figures which are statistically significant:

Historical attendance trends to art galleries by State (Source: ABS)

There were no dramatic differences between states with respect to attendance rates to either Zoo & Aquaria or Botanic Gardens. While there was not a statistically significant increase in visits to zoos at the national level, the NT had a statistically significant increase:

(This would appear to go against the theory I had in my last post, that there had been a “Panda effect” increasing zoo visitation in South Australia since 2009.)

For Botanic Gardens, NSW and Victoria had a significant increase; the nationwide total was also statistically significant:

Age breakdowns also give a bit more of an insight as to who the additional visitors are – for Art Galleries, there are statistically significant increases for all the older age brackets (age 45+) . Interestingly, the increase of visitation by the 18-24 age bracket is also statistically significant.

Meanwhile, for museums and zoos, it is only the 35-44 demographic that shows a statistically significant increase. Botanic Gardens, meanwhile, show statistically significant increases among 15-17 year olds, as well as 45-54 year olds.

Last year, I wrote a series of blog posts about the ABS report: Arts and Culture in Australia – a statistical overview. This report did have museum attendance figures, but focused primarily on the funding mix of museums and other cultural venues.

A recent article on the Perth Now website, lamenting the relatively low levels of cultural participation and funding in Western Australia, alerted me to the release of a more recent report, which looks at museum attendance in more detail and gives a state-by-state breakdown.

The full report is available on the ABS website as always, but I thought I’d again take a look at the numbers and give my thoughts on what they might mean (and, as always, I appreciate your comments and additional perspectives!).

First, the headline figures – attendance numbers at cultural venues state-by-state:

Attendance at cultural venues and events 2009-2010 (source: ABS report cited above). *NT figures pertain only to urban areas. **Performing arts includes classical concerts, popular concerts, theatre, dance, musicals and operas. These are broken down in the full report but only the aggregates are used here.

Overall, over 85% of people aged over 15 in Australia attended at least one cultural venue or event for the year 2009-10. For people aged 15-17, participation rates were the highest at 97%. Participation decreased with age, and the lowest participation rate (64%) was that of the over 75s.

Total participation rates (Source: ABS)

Participation rates are also broken down by state and territory:

Cultural participation and attendance rates (percentages), by venue type and by state (Source: ABS)

Based on these figures, ACT residents are among the most active participants in culture, being the most likely to have visited an Art Gallery, Museum, Archive, Library, Performing Arts event or Cinema in the past year. With the high density of National Museums and Galleries in the Capital, the high attendance at these venues is not all that surprising – it’s a matter of availability. However cinemas, hardly unique to Canberra, are well attended as well. (Note that the data records people’s place of residence, not the venue they attended. So these numbers just ACT residents, not people from other states visiting Museums in the Capital. The report gives a breakdown of  where people attended venues in relation to where they live on pp 19-20).

As the Perth Now article said, WA residents are the least likely in the country to attend an Art Gallery; Museum attendance is also below average in that state. Having said that, WA is not alone: participation rates are below average in NSW (albeit slightly) across the board.

NT residents were the most likely to attend zoological parks and aquaria, by a significant margin. SA is above the national average for this year too and I wonder if this is a consistent figure or indicative of the ‘Panda effect’ (the Adelaide Zoo’s Panda Enclosure opened in late 2009 and there has reportedly been a jump in visitor numbers since then.)

Overall what these differences between states mean, it’s hard to tell: it’s possible that they are simply due other geographic and demographic differences between states. However, as the Perth Now article suggests, there could be genuine differences between states and their attitudes to culture. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

One pointer towards a geographic explanation (at least in part) is the difference in participation rates between capital cities and elsewhere. This is possibly skewing the figures for those states which have a higher proportion of their population residing outside the capital:

Attendance to cultural venues by region (Source: ABS)

The report also gives breakdowns of visitation by age and sex, household composition, country of origin, labour force status, educational attainment and household income, but I won’t delve into those here – if you’re interested in these figures, go to the original report (see link to ABS website above).

Later in the report, they have some figures showing attendance trends over the past 10 years, which I’ll look into for a future post.