YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Creativity and culture  287 with teachers and parents, young people get to know culture and are edu- cated about it, which can contribute to their greater interest in culture in general and consequently to their higher cultural and arts participation. Several studies suggest that lack of interest for specific cultural activities is one of the most common obstacles for young people’s cultural partici- pation (Scherger, 2009; Eurobarometer 399, 2013; Milošević Đorđević and Pavlović, 2017). According to Eurobarometer 399 (2013), in Slovenia this was especially true for visiting theatres and museums. As noted by Keaney (2008), lack of interest is often related to understanding of such activities – because they are not familiar with them, it seems “risky”, which lowers their motivation to participate. Also in our study interest in arts and culture is significantly correlated to all cultural and arts activities. Thus those young people who are more in- terested in arts and culture also more frequently participate in the follow- ing cultural activities: engaging with music (r = 0.42; p < 0.01), attending arts classes (r = 0.36; p < 0.01), visiting cultural sites (r = 0.34; p < 0.01), reading (r = 0.29; p < 0.01), writing (r = 0.28; p < 0.01), visiting cinema, the- atre, concerts (r = 0.25; p < 0.01), and listening to music (r = 0.12; p < 0.01). Besides higher interest in culture and more frequent cultural engage- ment, some other indicators also show positive change in cultural par- ticipation of young people in the last decade. For example, in the period between 2014 to 2017 Slovenia’s share of young people enrolled in cultur- al organizations rose by 9% (Eurobarometer 455, 2018:11). Thus in 2017, 18% of young people in Slovenia were enrolled in cultural organizations, which is even slightly above the EU average (15%). Additionally, as de- picted in Figure 8.4, attendance at arts classes outside of formal educa- tion has similarly risen in the last 10 years. Although the majority of young people in 2020 still were not participating in such classes (67.3%), interest in them has risen considerably compared to 2010.