The arts are still a sideshow for too many people

Call me old-fashioned, but since when was clubbing a part of the arts?

The public loves the arts. I know, because the Arts Council says so. Indeed, it trumpets the fact in a new booklet detailing an extensive survey it and the museums body, Resource, commissioned from the Social Survey Division of the Office for National Statistics Audit Commission. The survey of 6,000 people finds that over a third of the public (35 per cent) has been to a museum or art gallery, almost half had visited a library, more than a quarter had been to a play. And a seemingly highly impressive 93 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds had participated in an arts event.

Gerry Robinson, the chairman of the Arts Council, described it as "important and robust information on how people are engaging with arts and culture". Matthew Evans, the chairman of Resource, said the survey "confirms that the arts play a very important role in our society".

I'm afraid I'm at a loss to see why these figures are as wonderful as Messrs Robinson and Evans would have us believe. Consider these same statistics from a different angle. One third of the public has visited a museum in the last year. That means that two thirds of the public hasn't so much as set foot in one. Ten per cent of people have gone to a classical music concert. Or, to put it another way, 90 per cent of people haven't. Is this really a cause for celebration?

The class breakdowns are even more disconcerting. Forty-one per cent of managerial and professional people had attended a play over the preceding 12 months; but only 14 per cent of what the survey terms "lower supervisory and technical". For classical music the figures were 18 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. So despite all the years of increasing access and outreach programmes, the arts are far from a class-free zone.

But if the country isn't going to watch arts events, it is at least participating in them. There must surely be great comfort in that stunning figure of 93 per cent of young people recorded as having participated in an arts event in the preceding 12 months. So, what is this art form that is bringing the youth of the nation out on the cold autumn nights – amateur dramatics, ballet classes, brass bands? No. According to the report, 69 per cent of 16-24 year olds went "clubbing".

Call me old fashioned, but since when was clubbing part of the arts? The aesthetic pleasures of drink, drugs, and chatting up the opposing gender, or indeed the same gender, weigh as heavily in the evening's enjoyment as extending the sensibilities through dance and contemporary music. That this overblown and self-congratulatory document can seriously claim that the nation has embraced the arts because a lot of young people go clubbing and even more listen to CDs (another of the report's arts activity) would be hilarious if it did not suggest that the Arts Council and Resource were sidestepping issues of real concern.

They have conveniently ignored the difficulties of the arts by making the definition of artistic activity ever more flexible. The real issue that Messrs Robinson and Evans should be addressing from what is, in my view, a disturbing rather than an impressive survey, is why so few people are engaged with the arts, why there still seem to be class barriers to the arts, why classical music concerts still attract the same few people. Failing that, they could next time add even more new definitions of "the arts" to surpass even CD listening and clubbing. Why, for example, is listening to piped music in a department store or on a telephone not an artistic activity? That would make the percentages even more healthy.

¿ My conviction that more young people will go to the theatre if theatre ticket prices were the same as cinema prices one day a week is so far being borne out by sales of tickets for the Lister Experiment. Paul Roberts, the West End producer who decided to try the experiment, and gave it its title, tells me that several hundred best available seats at the cinema price of £11.50 have already been sold for the two high-profile shows he is offering. The two West End shows are the Queen musical We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre (box office 020 7413 1713) and the Madness musical Our House at the Cambridge Theatre (box office 0870 890 1102). The dates that cinema-priced tickets will be on sale will be the 7.30 performance on Monday 2 December for We Will Rock You, and the 5pm performance on Friday 6 December for Our House. Callers to the box office should mention the Lister Experiment when asking for tickets.

¿ The Turner Prize, so castigated by Kim Howells, minister at the DCMS, was, of course, created to provoke debate about contemporary art . Yet Sir Nicholas Serota, chairman of the Turner Prize judges and overall head of the Tate, is keeping his silence. Why? Sir Nicholas is more than capable of mounting a convincing defence of the artists and of the prize. And debate does usually involve two sides. This is no time for the coy modesty from which Sir Nicholas so clearly suffers.

d.lister@independent.co.uk