Examining the Arts & Arts Participation: A Discussion of John Carey's What Good Are the Arts?
by Robert Bailey

Arts advocates for years have cited the material benefits of the arts as justification for public and private charitable support. The impact of the arts on the economy and job creation and, most recently, the role of artists in fostering creative communities has been put forward as reasons to fund arts organizations and projects.  Countless studies have documented the effect of arts education in schools on improving math scores or reducing truancy. Others have studied the impact of a new performing arts center or a museum exhibit on a community’s economy. Florida’s popular book, The Rise of the Creative Class , connects the presence of artists in a community to economic success of that place, and the 2004 Rand Study cited in Steven Wolff’s article argues the case for the “intrinsic value” of the arts and the sociological and intellectual benefits. Arts advocates have added these arguments to make the case for public and charitable support.

In the minds of some, these arguments do not stand up to detailed scrutiny. The challengers of the material benefits argue that, for example, building a freeway overpass or a sports stadium has greater impact and that the evidence of the benefits of adding arts to our education system do not measure up to the cost. Although one might expect John Carey to present a continuation of these traditional arguments in his 2005 book, What Good are the Arts?, instead the reader finds a thought provoking and ultimately, entertaining book that raises some big questions about arts participation and the nature of experience.

Carey, a British critic and former professor of literature at Oxford, says modern art “has become synonymous with money, fashion, celebrity and sensationalism…” and contemporary painting, opera, ballet and theater are all removed from the life of ordinary people. Data generated by public surveys over the past 25 years by the National Endowment for the Arts seem to support this — attendance at traditional arts activities has stagnated, particularly within populations with high educational attainment.

Carey argues that doing art matters more because “it is in our nature to want to make something special out of the ordinary and that it relieves loneliness and helps us to feel that we matter as individuals.”

Making art is a social activity. “Art’” he states, “should be something done, not consumed, and done by ordinary people, not master spirits.” Rather than approaching artworks as showpieces, Carey argues, we would be better off emphasizing personal participation in the arts —the activity itself matters more than the quality of the end product. Such activity develops qualities of character like “self-discipline, patience, and delay of immediate gratification.”

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Although at first glance this book may be considered anti-art, it is in the end an argument for increased engagement in the arts through concrete experience. Carey asserts that it is only through experience that we gain from the arts. He doesn’t view attending a performance or walking through an art exhibit as a salient experience, and others may correctly disagree. But, more importantly, he implies that perhaps what has been missing from the discussion of stagnating attendance at arts events is that we have only been looking at numbers representing those going to a performance, exhibit, etc. instead of broadening our scope and understanding the overall participation in a variety of arts experiences, such as craft circles and book clubs and open mike nights at local cafes—activities defined as the “Informal Arts” as they are outside traditional non-profit and commercial arts experiences.

In emphasizing experience as a main motivator and benefit of the arts, Carey inadvertently defends the relevancy of the arts from a new perspective – that of creator rather than observer, active participant as opposed to detached citizen. As we and our clients look for new paths to understand and motivate participation, What Good Are the Arts? provides some intriguing possibilities for future program development discussion and research focus.

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