A new April 2009 report from Arts Council England, “examining current public attitudes to and experience of arts content online”. It’s just been published on their website. Arts Council reports often need to be taken with a pinch of salt but, surveying just 132 people in the U.K., it found that…

“Creating and participating in the arts digitally is considered a very niche activity by all segments, appealing only to the most ardent ‘leading edge’ enthusiasts. There is little expressed desire for these kinds of opportunities among participants, suggesting that the much discussed ‘co-creating’ and ‘remixing’ generation is still only a small minority.”

[people] “find the extent and variety of art that is available in the digital space overwhelming and intimidating. […] only those who are currently engaged with the arts are likely to explore [future digital] opportunities.”

   Related on the JURN blog: Validating interactive new media as a research output and The audience for quality intellectual content is constantly shrinking.

Why is this important? If the public, the funders, and even our fellow academics all make a collective mehh, whatever! in the face of rich interactive arts-related intellectual production, then the resultant mood risks adding to the ongoing undermining of the humanities — since it effectively shuts us off from one possible method to refresh and reinvigorate the humanities. A method that might have served to generate public support for spending scarce public cash on arts-related intellectual production.