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Attendance and participation in the arts and an interest in reading are closely linked with social engagement, according to a recently published report by the National Endowment for the Arts, the American equivalent of the UKs Arts Councils. The conclusion emerged from an analysis of arts attendance in the USA, which revealed that more than half of performing arts attenders (51%) volunteered in their communities and 77% of them took regular exercise. By comparison, of the non-attenders surveyed, only 19% volunteered and 45% took exercise. The report argues that literature and arts participation are hallmarks of civic awareness. They play a part in revitalising the communities in which we live and our sense of community at every level.
The analysis was based on research undertaken by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 and involved interviews with a random sample of over 17,000 adults. Compared with similar data from 1982 and 1992, the latest figures reveal a drop in the level of attendance by young people at almost all artforms over the past 20 years. The number of 1834 year-olds who admitted to having read a work of fiction in the year prior to the survey had fallen from 61% in 1982 to 45% in 2002. Jonathan Katz, Chief Executive of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, said, The arts offer bracing encounters with image and idea, with rhythm and melody; these engagements illuminate and animate the relationships we maintain in civic life. A red flag in this report is that many younger Americans are surrendering these valuable engagements.

w: http://www.arts.gov/pub/civicengagement.pdf