Coloradans crave connections with Arts & Culture
10 key takeaways from Colorado residents
The arts are flourishing in Colorado–but many Coloradans feel they are not getting the news and information on the arts that they need.
With traditional advertising models for journalism broken, and local media forced to cut back severely on staff and resources, arts coverage has shriveled over the past decade. At the same time, with consumer habits changing toward digital and social media, there’s a glut of largely disorganized information about events available. This reality leaves people feeling overwhelmed, and at a loss about where and how to connect.
Over the past five months, with support from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and Gates Family Foundation, the Colorado Media Project has been working with Colorado Public Radio/Denverite and Rocky Mountain Public Media to explore this question:
How do Coloradans want to know about and engage with arts and culture in our state and how can media outlets and art organizations serve those needs? How do underrepresented communities in particular feel they are being served by arts and culture organizations and media coverage of arts and culture?
The answer: It’s complicated. People feel overwhelmed by information yet feel they aren’t getting what they need from current sources. They long for a sense of community among artists, arts audiences, and arts funders, but struggle to figure out how to build it.
Community groups of people interviewed:
Arts and Culture Funder/Convener:
These individuals work with high-level arts funding in Colorado. They also create and maintain gathering and workspaces for the arts community.
Arts and Culture Entrepreneur: These are individuals who make a living from working in collaboration with the arts and culture community. These individuals tend to work with smaller artists and be the touchpoint for collaborative projects.
Artist: These individuals are making a living and working full-time as an artist.
Arts Patron: These individuals are active patrons of the arts, particularly around a subject of interest.
Here are 10 top takeaways that synthesize results from the Corona Insights survey and the nearly 50 in-depth one-on-one conversations with community members organized by Hearken.
Takeaway 1:
The vast majority of Coloradans want to have more arts and cultural experiences. According to the Corona Insights survey, 92 percent said that if they could eliminate barriers to doing so, they would like to participate in more arts and culture activities. People outside metro Denver expressed willingness to travel to the area for arts and culture activities.
92% said that if they could eliminate barriers to doing so, they would like to participate in more arts and culture activities.
ACTIVITIES OF INTEREST
“I haven’t heard of many events that are low-cost or free that aren’t for kids,” one arts patron said in an interview. “There is a disconnect between arts and culture in Colorado with underrepresented groups…”
Takeaway 2:
Some Coloradans feel unsatisfied with arts and culture news and information available to them — they feel overwhelmed and disconnected.
Roughly half the people surveyed report they get information on arts and culture primarily from Facebook or word-of-mouth. But they crave curation to help make sense of it all. That’s at least in part because those who rely on social media said they most commonly get their information directly from arts and culture organizations’ social feeds. Arts consumers and artists interviewed said they tend to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information and often can’t find what they’re seeking. “I wish there was a one-stop-shop online to search arts and culture information — not just social media,” one artist said. “Is there anything like that out there? Or a cool magazine? Like Westword, but all arts.”
Word of mouth, Facebook, and television are the most popular ways to get information about local art and culture
“I wish there was a one-stop-shop online to search arts and culture information — not just social media…”
Takeaway 3:
There’s a sense among those interviewed that arts and culture coverage tends to be aimed primarily at a more affluent, whiter audience.
Broader coverage that explored community events in underrepresented areas could be richer and could potentially attract a larger audience.
“There are some issues with the representation of arts and culture events in lower-income areas,” an arts patron said. “It also seems like events are geared towards upper-middle-class families.”
Takeaway 4:
Coloradans do appreciate getting calendar information about arts and culture, especially about local festivals and music concerts.
The Corona survey shows nearly half of respondents regularly seek out information about local festivals, and nearly 40 percent on music concerts. Additionally, 83 percent of Coloradans regularly seek out information on at least one type of arts and culture event. Most (62 percent) also have a high degree of trust in the arts and culture calendar information they get from news organizations. While such information is readily available on social media, some experienced locals believe the creation of a shared arts and culture calendar could prove useful. Westword Editor Patty Calhoun and Culture Editor Kyle Harris offered: “It would give the organizations some control of their own destiny. It would give readers the opportunity to do their own specific searches from a vast database; and it would eliminate the necessity for trained-monkey listings typing jobs at the few media outlets that have them, freeing up time and money for writers/editors who could use the database to create curated pieces, or maybe just write actual stories.”
Takeaway 5:
People are hungry for coverage of more than the biggest, splashiest events.
They want curated information about artists and events that might not otherwise be on their radar. This means coverage of small venues, student art shows and performances; and local and community-based performances, including communities of color and other underrepresented communities. “I would love to see more reviews of smaller plays,” an arts and culture entrepreneur said. “I would love to see features of RMCAD (Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design) and other students and young talent. They are being educated here and they are really talented.” Said another: “When you invest in large things you get the lowest common denominator, like Star Wars costumes at the art museum. It’s not landing Denver on the map for anything. It’s popular, but it’s not adding value or depth.”
“When you invest in large things you get the lowest common denominator… It’s popular, but it’s not adding value or depth.”
Takeaway 6:
There’s longing among people interviewed for some kind of curated connection that creates a sense of community and mutual support.
Local arts and culture supporters and enthusiasts are looking for such a curated connection to help them create and maintain a deeper sense of belonging. This holds true for both those who are working as artists, arts and culture entrepreneurs, funders and conveners, as well as consumers of local arts across Colorado. “I would love for people in our community to know more about the many brilliant, smaller artist studio collectives around the community, for them to just be able to connect with those artists and support their practices, because they’re doing really exciting work,” an arts funder said.
“I would love for people in our community to know more about the many brilliant, smaller artist studio collectives around the community.”
Takeaway 7:
Organizers of the arts and culture community think local journalism coverage has not caught up with the growth of the local arts and culture community.
Art patrons interviewed said local arts coverage tends to be somewhat dull and predictable. The overall perception is that there’s a scarcity of deeper storytelling and information-sharing focused on placing what is happening locally in a national context.
Takeaway 8:
There is an unexploited opportunity for arts and culture organizations and news outlets to join together to bolster revenue through joint membership.
A third of survey respondents who do not currently hold arts and culture memberships said they would be more likely to pay for membership to an arts and cultural organization if that membership included “support for a local news source that you trust,” or pay for a news subscription if included membership in a partner arts and cultural organization. More than 80 percent of those who currently hold memberships said that they would be more likely or equally likely to renew, even if the cost increased.
1/3 survey respondents who do not currently hold arts and culture memberships said they would be more likely to pay if membership included support for trusted news source
Takeaway 9:
Younger Coloradans and people of color financially support local news organizations at higher rates.
Another opportunity: younger people and people of color are slightly more likely to pay for news, whether via subscriptions, memberships or donations. Given this population’s reliance on phones to receive information, this may affect strategy on reaching out to these groups. More than one-third (36 percent) of all respondents say that they participate in some sort of fundraising for new organizations. The rate is slightly higher among people of color, younger people, and Democrats. The rate is lower among people who rely most on television to get their news. Among all respondents, 30 percent support news agencies with subscriptions or memberships.
Younger Coloradans financially support local news organizations at higher rates
Takeaway 10:
Younger Coloradans tend to get their arts and culture information by phone; how people get information varies by age.
While most people surveyed get information on arts & culture events from their phones, people 55 and older rely on television as their top source for this kind of information. This pattern is consistent with Colorado Media Project’s 2018 survey of Coloradans on how they get news and information.
How CMP gathered information
Our consortium decided that the best way to learn about the public’s appetite for arts and culture coverage, the barriers that keep them from attending more events, and the role the traditional and nontraditional media can play was to approach the questions in two different ways.
The first was to conduct a traditional survey of a wide, general audience of Coloradans. During July and August 2019, Denver-based Corona Insights conducted an online panel survey of more than 2,000 Coloradans. Questions relevant to this report focused on participation and interest in arts and culture, and means of getting information about arts and culture. To ensure adequate representation of the opinions, preferences, and actions of large racial or ethnic minority groups, Corona Insights specifically sampled sufficient numbers of respondents who identify as African American or Latinx to draw conclusions and to identify similarities or differences between major groups.
Responses came in from across Colorado, and were analyzed by location, as well as age, gender, race and ethnicity of participants. Because the survey captured a broad spectrum of people, most weren’t necessarily avid consumers of arts and culture.
Corona conducted a similar survey in 2017 for the City and County of Denver, though our survey focused more heavily on news coverage. But where surveys overlapped, findings were similar.
By contrast, the second approach dove deep into the thoughts and feelings of people deeply immersed in Colorado arts and culture. It consisted of a statewide collaborative community listening project led by Hearken, a company that helps organizations better listen to and engage with their stakeholders. The goal of the listening project was to converse with dozens of Colorado residents over the summer about how they engage with arts and culture in our state — and how media outlets and art organizations can best serve those needs.
Special care was taken to reach out to members of marginalized or underrepresented communities, including African American, Latinx, LGBTQ, living with a disability, Japanese-American and more. As part of this work, CMP and Hearken also hosted a community design meeting to develop ideas for newsrooms on deepening arts and culture coverage and engagement.
Hearken categorized interview subjects into one of four community groups of people:
- Arts & culture funder/conveners: These people work with high-level arts funding in Colorado. They also create and maintain gathering and workspaces for the arts community.
- Arts & culture entrepreneurs: They make a living from working in collaboration with the arts and
culture community. These individuals tend to work with smaller artists and be the touchpoint for
collaborative projects. Some of these individuals are artists themselves. - Artists: Defined as people making a living and working full-time as artists.
- Arts patrons: Active consumers of the arts, particularly around a subject of interest.
Each prong of research yielded an abundance of useful information. Those who want to delve deploy into the findings can find source material collected here: https://coloradomediaproject.com/arts-culture/
What comes next?
The findings of the survey and interviews reinforce two core beliefs that drive the Colorado Media Project: that deeper engagement with audiences and collaboration among media outlets better serve the community and make coverage stronger. Consumers of news, as well as patrons of arts and culture long for a sense of community.
Engaging more deeply with audiences, which doesn’t always come naturally to traditionally trained journalists, can help build that sense of community, as well as stronger trust in the reliability and fairness of news coverage, not just of arts and culture, but more controversial and contentious subjects as well. It can also help newsrooms connect with underrepresented communities and communities of color, and their rich arts and culture offerings and heritage, which are too often underlooked by media coverage.
On the news collaboration front, 2020 will mark the opening of CoLab, a shared newsroom to be housed in Rocky Mountain Public Media’s new Buell Public Media Center in Lower Downtown Denver. At least nine news and supporting organizations will share space there.
Together, these organizations will comprise one of the largest newsrooms in the state, and they are working on new ways to work together to benefit Colorado communities. Already many newsrooms are joining in collaborations such as “Parked,” an exploration of the mobile home industry spurred by The Colorado Sun and joined by 15 newsrooms statewide. The opening of CoLab will spur more such collaborative projects, not just with the organizations colocated there, but with news organizations from across the state.
Website: coloradomediaproject.com
Newsletter: bitly.com/cmp_newsletter
Email: info@coloradomediaproject.com
Social:
facebook.com/co.mediaproject
medium.com/colorado-media-project
twitter.com/co_mediaproject
Acknowledgments: Thanks to our partners at Colorado Public Radio/Denverite, Rocky Mountain PBS, Hearken, Corona Insights, and the many community members who lent their insight to this exploration of arts and culture coverage in Colorado. A special thanks to Andrew Elliman and Alan Gottlieb, consultants to the Colorado Media Project, who contributed deeply to this project.
We also are grateful to support from Colorado Media Project’s major funders:
- Bohemian Foundation
- Bonfils-Stanton Foundation
- Democracy Fund
- Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation
- Gates Family Foundation
- Membership Puzzle Project
