Kinderen en amateurkunstcursus-deelname

Children and amateur artcourse-participation This Master thesis discusses the factors which are of importance for participating in amateur art courses for children between the 10 and 12 years old. The reasearch took place in Rotterdam, one of the biggest cities in Holland, in 2009. It was in combination with the SKVR, an organisation which, among other things teaches amateur artcourses in the common six artdisciplines. The research question was posed as followed: Which are the factors that causes children to take amateur art courses. In the research construct 4 questions with each a different theme were posed to answer these question. An enquete was made for two different groups of children. One for course participants from the SKVR and one for children of the two highest classes of primary school. There is tried to make sure of a representative sample of the Rotterdam population of children. The first group contained 82 respondents, the second group 113. The results were as followed. First of all the opinion of the course participants was tested on the course they take. Besides that, the factors time and money, which are of great importance in leisure participation, (Ganzeboom 1989; De Haan, Van den Broek, Huysmans, 2009) were tested. The only significant result was that the social aspect of the course was of influence. For non-participants, motivation and time were the tresholds of participation. The second subject was the image of art and amateurart of children. A positive image of art and knowing what amateurart really is, are of positive influence on participation. Besides that, children with more cultural knowhow have a more positive view on art. The third subject was build around the theme cultural capital, a word Bourdieu (1989) gives for the cultural attitude, experiences and knowing how to behave. It follows that the educational level of the father of a child has most positive influence on the change of being a course participant, far more than the mothers’ educational level has. Next to that, practicing individual artforms (as painting), watching almost non television or only public channels, and having a acquintance who participates in amateurart all have a significant positive influence. Owning a lot of cultural goods, as books and encyclopedias only had a small effect, in contrary tot what Bourdieu said. The last subject was the leisure participation of children themselves. It followed that course participants have a different pattern of leisure activities than non-participants. Participants also go more out culturally and go out more highbrow than does the other group. The change of being a courseparticipant, however, is being influenced positively the most by having a middlebrow cultural outgoing pattern. With the Leisure Motivation Scale of Beard and Ragheb (1983) it could be seen that participants have slightly different patterns of motives for their course than do non-participants have for their leisure activities. The three motives of the first group (intellectual, stimulus avoiding and competence) all contain a social motive. Than, social-demographic influences are also present. Being older and being a girl gives a bigger change of being a course participant. A last interesting note is that an intellectual motives pattern creates a bigger change of taking a more traditional artcourse instead of a modern artform. Further research is needed for a more representative sample in which the educational level of the parents could be measured better, while in this research a (too) big group of children didn’t know this important variable. Besides that, it’s interesting to see in a multicultural society, of what influence the country of birth of both parents is on amateur artcourse participation.