Artists and art lovers have been saying it for ages: The arts bring people together. Now there’s data to back it up.
Earlier this year, the National Arts Statistics and Evidence-based Reporting Center (NASERC) released a landmark report on whether taking part in arts activities builds “social and civic muscle.”
In other words, does engaging in the arts make you more likely to engage in your community?
The question is urgent. More than six years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Americans still report record levels of isolation, loneliness, and social disengagement. Many people feel alone.
What the report found was striking. If you participate in the arts, you are nearly 4x as likely to be civically engaged in your community. In a time where we need to find a way back to each other, the arts can help get us there.
People who participate in the arts are nearly 4x as likely to engage civically compared to non-arts participants.
SUNIL IYENGAR, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH & ANALYSIS, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS“We’re trying to make more visible the fact that, in a crisis of loneliness and when more civic engagement is needed, the arts are part of the solution.”
Building On Past Studies
Plenty of studies have found a link between the arts and civic engagement. What makes this one different?
“We decided to apply statistical techniques to understand if you control for things like education level, income, race, and ethnicity, do you still see such a tight connection?” says Sunil Iyengar, Director of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
NASERC is the NEA’s main research hub. It tracks key indicators of health in the U.S. arts ecosystem. For this study, it widened its dataset to look at behaviors as well as demographics, drawing on three national surveys of U.S. adults and households. Earlier reports leaned on the public participation survey alone. Three nationally representative datasets gives this one a new scale, Iyengar emphasizes.
It’s also the first report of its kind built entirely on “post-COVID” data.
“Beginning around COVID, there was much more public health attention concerning isolation and loneliness, needing to encourage community activities and how we missed that during the pandemic,” says Iyengar. “People were starved for social interaction during COVID, and now there is interest in understanding how the arts can contribute.”
What we learned was pretty remarkable.
Arts Participants are Four Times More Likely to Get Involved
Across race, ethnicity, income level, and locale, artsy people are rolling up their sleeves. They’re volunteering, voting, and giving. They’re going to city council meetings and town halls, and some are even running for office. They’re planning festivals and performances, joining clubs and nonprofits, and checking in on their friends and neighbors.
Formally and informally, arts participants turned out to be four times more active in their communities than non-participants.
“There seems to be a spillover benefit that [the arts] are creating value for communities,” says Iyengar. “If you have a community with robust arts participation, it’s likely you’ll have a community with intensive civic engagement. This is vital for a healthy democracy.”
So forgive the late-night guitar licks or paint splatters on the floor, because artists make good neighbors!
The Most Engaged Citizens Participate in the Arts in Multiple Ways
There are lots of ways to “do art.” You can create it through writing, pottery, improv, and folk dance. You can take it in at a concert, in a gallery, through a book, or at the movies. You can support it by volunteering at a venue or subscribing to a theater. And you can learn it through classes, videos, or guides.
The report showed that the more ways you bring art into your life, the more likely you are to show up in your community. Art “consumers” tend to show the highest levels of civic engagement, and many of them also make and support art.
“That was really hopeful for us,” says Iyengar. “It may not just be museum visits or going to a particular type of performing arts event. It may be things people do with others in their basements, arts and crafts, the actual making of art. That too is correlated.”
Turns out collecting arts hobbies is a public service.
Education Matters . . . and That Matters
Race, ethnicity, income, and location didn’t make much of a difference in determining civic engagement among arts practitioners. Education, however, did.
A bachelor’s degree or higher is the strongest predictor that an arts participant will be active in their community. This has big implications for the arts, and for colleges and universities.
At a time when trust in higher education is low and arts departments are shrinking, the report encourages universities to lean into “amplifying civic and social outcomes, especially when coupled with the arts.”
“Community colleges, colleges, universities . . . the services they’re providing are conducive to more arts participation, which is more conducive to civic and community engagement,” says Iyengar. “This could be a way to empower higher ed to see themselves—and a lot of them do—where it’s not just about the arts on campus, but [promoting] the arts in their communities.”
How? Include these findings in marketing materials and reports. Build the arts into curriculum across every field. Invest in student art at all levels, from beginner to pre-professional. And make the arts central to your university’s community relationships. Higher education can strengthen a healthy society, and the best place to start is right next door.
Guiding Conversations, Broadening Perspectives
Who should be paying attention to this? Just about everyone, but especially the people making the case for the arts.
Omari Rush, Executive Director of the Michigan-based arts nonprofit association CultureSource, served on the technical working group that advised NASERC on presenting their findings. He sees the report as a key resource for anyone doing arts and cultural policy research, including those talking to lawmakers, policymakers, investors, and voters—“anyone who is talking to people about why the arts matter,” he says. “Having data is always very important in trying to move hearts and minds towards greater support of the arts.”
Iyengar agrees. “There is the promise of having a much more engaged citizenry if you have people who are also engaged in the arts,” he says. “If that was encoded in the way people talk about the arts in educational settings or about why it shouldn’t be cut, it’d be useful to have these data in hand.”
The report’s national scope can help arts and culture leaders gain new perspective on what Rush calls “a really expansive and nuanced arts field.”
“Sometimes we can just see the activity that is only in front of us, only on the surface,” he says. “This makes it easier for hyper-locally focused arts leaders like me to see a much bigger picture, much bigger impacts, much bigger possibility in the arts.”
That wider view builds solidarity across community, city, and state lines.
Iyengar says the study raises new questions, too. A prime example: Why does a college degree have such a strong impact on arts and civic engagement?
“We shouldn’t neglect what the report is telling us about that gap of access,” he says. “There seems to be real support for people getting engaged civically through the arts, and we should be thinking about those who don’t have that access and who don’t have access to higher education.”
OMARI RUSH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CULTURESOURCE“The arts are really omnipresent, and that can be taken for granted. What’s important about this work is that it makes the intuitive, the implicit, explicit in a way that [enables] even more communities and individuals to benefit from the transformative power of the arts.”
From Art to Action
The arts connect us. They put us in the same room to share the same story. And they empower us to see ourselves as members of something larger, with the power to make positive change around us.
So: what opportunities does your community offer for making art, not just consuming it? What problems is it facing, and where could the arts be part of the answer? How could you widen access to the arts and to education at the same time?
Investing in the arts is an investment in what makes the civic engine run. For neighborhoods, organizations, and even individuals looking for a way out of loneliness and detachment, the arts are a data-tested place to start.
Dig into the Data
Explore the full report, and the data sets used for its findings.
This report examines links between arts participation and broader community engagement. By analyzing statistical data from three nationally representative surveys, the report enlarges public understanding of whether and how taking part in arts events and activities can build social and civic muscle.
One of three surveys analyzed as part of the NEA’s new report.
This was administered by the U.S. Census Bureau for the National Endowment for the Arts. Responses were collected in July 2022.
One of three surveys analyzed as part of the NEA’s new report.
Also conducted by the Census, these data were the most recent. Responses were collected in February 2025.
One of three surveys analyzed as part of the NEA’s new report.
This was administered by NORC at the University of Chicago and collected July through September 2022.