Ireland’s young are not going to arts events. Here’s what we can do about it

Last month, the director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly, sounded something of an alarm. The Arts Council released figures showing the largest decrease in attendance of Arts Council-supported events was among 16 to 24 year olds. In 2019, almost two-thirds of this age group had been to such an arts event; in 2022, only just over half had done so. Kennelly said that Ireland was at risk of “losing a generation of audiences”.

The pandemic interrupted live arts events for a sustained period. Many young people went into the pandemic never having gone to a club or a gig, and had to wait the guts of two years to do so. When habits aren’t formed, they’re hard to kick start. We need to look to other European countries to encourage people in this age group to attend a broader spectrum of cultural events.

Earlier this year in Berlin, the Jugendkulturkarte gave a €50 “cultural credit” to all people in Berlin aged between 18 and 23, redeemable at more than 200 cultural venues in the German capital: theatres, operas, exhibition spaces, nightclubs and cinemas. This is in tandem with the national KulturPass, worth €200, offered to all 18 year olds in Germany this summer, which can be spent locally on cultural events, records, books and instruments.

In 2016, Italy began offering €500 to 18 year olds for cultural activities. During the pandemic, France offered €300 to 18 year olds to spend on cultural events, books, French streaming platforms and instruments. Last year, Spain followed suit, with a €400 culture voucher. Where is Ireland’s initiative?

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This summer’s calendar of music festivals in Ireland demonstrated some interesting things in terms of audiences. First, the market is saturated, or at the very least, many festivals are attempting to extract ticket sales from broadly the same pool. There will be a lot of soul-searching this winter about how many smaller festivals can survive long term.

Many festival budgets are propped up by alcohol marketing through brand “activations” – sometimes sophisticated, often corny and blatant. While alcohol branding has been a part of music festivals for a long time, the recruitment of influencers to market alcohol brands at festivals and the wave of marketing Guinness has undertaken to convince summertime drinkers to stick to stout is notable.

Second, many festival attendees have remarked on an older age profile at music festivals. Outside of those festivals that target people in their late teens and early 20s, such as Longitude, it appears the “rite of passage” aspect of music festivals is, at least in part, waning.

The only significantly sized music festival that sold out quickly was Electric Picnic, which has very mainstream headliners. Are sluggish sales for other events about changing habits? About the pandemic denying younger audiences their first festival in their teenage years? Or are people less willing to sleep in tents, queue for toilets, and travel for entertainment? Perhaps also the vicariousness of socialising and connecting online is shaving off part of the demand for real-life experiences.

Third, under-25s are drinking less. When the National Drug and Alcohol Survey gathered data from people aged 15-24 between 2019 and 2020, it found alcohol-use had declined by 14 per cent since research in 2006-2007. The decline was greater among women than men.

The investment alcohol brands pump into festivals requires a payback through bar sales. Alcohol brands want to reach young audiences through brand loyalty, hence the recruitment of influencers and the brand activations that create aspirational links. If festival-goers’ ages are rising – as observed anecdotally, but this also chimes with what the Arts Council has found in the events it supports – will that brand spending continue at the current scale?

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Back to the broader arts offering. The Arts Council doesn’t just concern itself with audiences. It is hugely invested in practitioners. In the socialising and hospitality environment in Dublin, for example, pre-pandemic the general pivot in the capital was towards “going out” options for older people. The restaurant boom, the proliferation of wine bars, the closure of night clubs, and the cost of alcohol and food all had a suburbanising effect on the city centre. Corporate gentrification bulldozed venues. The housing crisis led to fewer young people living in the city. Licensing laws and operating costs squeezed out nightclubs.

Cultural events supported by local authorities, aimed in part at young people, mostly focus on “families”, which tends to mean small children and their parents. We need to do more for teenagers. Where are the packed calendars of cultural events for that age group? Where are our dedicated alcohol-free music and arts venues for teenagers?

To foster young arts audiences and practitioners, we need many more interventions, initiatives and supports for both audiences and emerging artists. Audiences gravitate towards cultural activity that is relevant to them, and where they see themselves reflected.

Arts festivals such as the brilliant Dublin Fringe Festival, which begins next month, should receive funding to expand. It’s at the Dublin Fringe that younger audiences often find theatre for the first time. If we want to increase young people’s engagement with live art, there needs to be more of it.

With the audience data the Arts Council now has, the State should increase targeted funding for young artists, many of whom have left the country, exiled by the housing crisis, to make their work elsewhere. Support young artists and young audiences will follow.