ABSTRACT
How did cultural consumption change during the Covid-19 pandemic? Whilst the impact of the pandemic on cultural production has been given significant attention, work on consumption has seen less attention. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by presenting a comparative analysis of two, nationally representative, surveys of cultural activity in England. The analysis demonstrates that, when cultural consumption moved online and to digital modes of delivery and engagement as a result of the pandemic, there was no discernible transformation in the stratification of cultural participation in England. The majority of the population, characterised by the absence of participation in formal, and often state-funded, cultural forms, saw no change to their patterns of engagement. Where cultural consumption did increase, this was among the small minority of people who were already highly engaged. This minority maps closely onto pre-existing inequalities identified by existing research on cultural consumption, in England and beyond. For cultural consumption and the stratification of taste, it seems that the 'new normal' of pandemic life was much like the 'old normal' of an art and cultural audience characterised by significant inequality. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
This paper develops the concept of access to arts consumption as a necessary link connecting cultural taste and actual consumption. I present a theoretical model that deconstructs access to arts consumption into four dimensions of access: rights, opportunity, participation, and reception. I operationalize and test the model in the context of access to physical cultural consumption using Eurobarometer data on barriers to such access from a sample of respondents from 27 European countries. Utilizing regression analyses, I examine how different types of access are socially distributed. The results reveal the individual and country-level variables that shape physical access to art. The findings highlight the importance of using a multi-dimensional concept of access in the study of arts consumption. They also have implications for planning arts policies designed to increase access to art, both physical and online, especially post-COVID-19.