YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

282 8.1  INTEREST IN ARTS AND CULTURE Young people’s interest in arts and culture has been on the rise for the past 20 years. With a slight decline ten years ago, in 2020 young people show increased interest, the highest in the last 20 years, with 42.5% be- ing interested or very interested (Figure 8.1). Figure 8.1: Young people’s interest in arts and culture, 2000-2020. 30% 50% 80% 90% 20% 10% 70% 60% 40% Not at all interested 2 3 4 Very interested 2000 2010 2020 6.5 11.3 7.6 21.2 28.7 31.7 10.8 31.7 33.7 16.7 6.5 24.2 40.5 19.9 8.8 0% 100% Sources: Mladina 2000, Mladina 2010, Mladina 2020. Interest in arts and culture is related to various factors in young people’s lives. Socio-demographically speaking, education and gender play im- portant role, with significantly higher interest among more educated young people (r = 0.16, p < 0.01) 1 and women (M = 3.46; SD = 1.03) than among men (M = 2.92; SD = 1.13). Other factors that often contribute to young people’s interest in arts and culture are related to some character- istics of the immediate environment in which they grow up, for example to their cultural capital. According to Bourdieu (1979; 1986), a person’s cultural capital is a multi-dimensional concept that can be operational- ized in various ways. Measures of young people’s cultural capital usually include specific aspects of parental cultural capital (e.g. their education- al level and their degree of cultural participation), as well as some envi- ronmental characteristics and cultural practices of young people (see, for example Willekens and Lievens, 2014; Sieben and Lechner, 2019). In the study we measured cultural capital with two dimensions – institu-