DANE 101: Questions of Madison's Arts Survey Revealed

Originally posted at Dane 101 [1]. The post was written by Christian Neuhaus.

Last month I received email requests from three performing arts organizations asking me to respond to an arts consumer survey for a study commissioned by the City of Madison. I didn’t see documentation about the survey elsewhere, so I didn’t know if I was being an arts apostate when I drafted a post about it last week. But then I saw an Isthmus story announcing [2] the survey. The Isthmus link link took me to a survey with a different seven-digit identifier than the one I got by email, but the contents are the same.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1286096/City-of-Madison-Arts-Consumer-Survey-Community [3]

The survey is a set of detailed questions about theater, music, and dance events that respondents go to. Results will be aggregated and reported to the Madison Arts Commission [4]. Responding to the survey takes about ten minutes to complete depending on how much effort you put into following essay questions:

Which Madison-area venues do you find most enjoyable? Why?

What could Madison's performing arts groups do to make attending the arts more interesting or exciting for you?

This one’s also kind of interesting:

Suppose you are planning an outing to a live performance. There are two choices. One is sure to be enjoyable and straightforward in terms of subject matter, and the other is a riskier proposition in that the meaning of the work might be unclear, and you may love it or hate it, depending on how it goes. All else being equal, which one would you choose?