Maltese People Are More Artistic Than Other Europeans, According To A New Study
Cover photo: Clemens Hasengschwandtner
A recently released Eurostat survey about cultural participation in European countries has shown that Maltese people practise art at the third highest rate from the EU countries surveyed.
Only people in Germany and Finland were found to practice art more often than the Maltese on a daily basis or at least once a week.
The reasons for the differences between people practicing some form of art in different countries were also interesting.
In Malta, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden and Croatia money seems not to have had a big impact on cultural participation – in these countries financial reasons accounted for less than 9% of responses for all three cultural activities.
How close people were to places like the cinema or the theatre was also a big factor in the differences between countries. Unsurprisingly, less than 1% of Maltese participants said that lack of proximity was a problem for them, compared with 29% of Romanians who specifically said distance stopped them from participating in cultural events.
Countries like Belgium, Cyprus, Luxembourg and the Netherlands also said they had no problems with proximity.
The figures also indicated that almost a third of people (28-30%) in Malta, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands pursued various activities weekly (or even daily).
The best-performing EU country here was Finland, with 38% of people devoting their time to artistic activities at least once in the week. Once again, Romania suffered in this respect, with 1% of people saying they pursued an activity weekly and 6 % monthly.
These results are in line with the Art Council Malta’s own findings. In their Cultural Participation Survey from last year they found an overall increase in participation across artistic and cultural activities.
They found the most attended cultural event in Malta was for parish feasts, with 67% of people attending them. Cinemas registered an attendance of 42%, with 35% of people then saying they visited historical sites and 30% saying they visited museums.
In 2016, theatre attendance stood at 32%, with most people saying comedy registered was their favourite genre, and concert-going was registered with an attendance of 32%. The lowest participation was for dance-related events, with a 12% attendance in Maltese respondents.
Did you expect these results for Malta’s artists?
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