Heritage Participation

Taking Part is a comprehensive survey of attendance, participation and attitudes in the main cultural, leisure, sports sectors covered by the Department for Culture Media and Sport and its Non Departmental Public Bodies. Initial results from the first year of the survey have recently been released based on responses from 29,000 people aged over 16 resident in households in England.

The key objectives of the Taking Part survey are as follows:

• Provide a robust measurement of the Departmental Public Service Agreement (PSA) target 3 for participation by target groups,
• Meet the key data requirements of stakeholders around the general theme of participation, attendance and attitudes amongst individual DCMS targets at a national level, and
• Provide data comparable across different sectors

Until now there has been no single survey providing the required detail of data on participation and attendance across the DCMS’s sectors. Instead, the Department and its partners have relied on a patchwork of research drawn together from various sources. In addition to information on levels of participation and attendance across our sectors, the survey collects vital information on what helps or hinders people from taking part in cultural activities.

Headline figures for the heritage sector are that 70% of adults attended at least one heritage site in the previous 12 months. Attendance rates vary by background of the respondent, for example the average attendance rate for adults from a black and minority ethnic background is 51%, by age (lowest for those over 75 and highest in the 45 to 64 age band) and by region of residence (lowest in London and highest in the South East). Other interesting outputs of the survey include the number of volunteers in the heritage sector (about 400,000) and for the first time forthcoming figures on attendance by young people (aged 11 to 15). More detailed results are in Heritage Counts 2008.

Details about the survey and results for other sectors are on the DCMS website at http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Research/taking_part_survey/

British Market Research Bureau http://www.bmrb.co.uk/gw_social.asp?r=946.2456

Sport England http://www.sportengland.org

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council http://ww.mla.gov.uk

Arts Council England http://ww.artscouncil.org.uk