Abstract

On 17 – 18 May 2014 year a team of Research Laboratory of Polish Measurement of Attitudes and Values under the direction of prof. S.H. Zaręba conducted a research of participants of the European Night of Museums 2014 in Warsaw. The research was conducted on a random sample (N = 1272) of respondents with diverse socio-demographic features. Interviewers were seconded to 20 cultural centers where they invited randomly selected visitors to participate in the survey. The research included multiple aspects of the participation in culture. The main problem was participation in this special cultural event – opinions of participants: their experience, motivations, expectations and evaluation. But the other important problem was their participation in culture generally understood – interest in culture, visiting places connected with culture (such as theater, gallery, cinema, opera, etc.), knowledge of culture, and their opinion about cultural activities. The research brought interesting results. For 37% visitors it was the first time they participated in such an event, approximately 63% had participated in it also in the past. The main base of information about offer of cultural institutions involved ENM is Internet - 79.3% of respondents drew from it knowledge of the subject. Respondents expected first of all interesting exhibitions and they planned to visit more than one place. They were with friends and family. For most people participating in ENM it was primarily cultural experience (53%), and it was motivated by personal interests (44%). Respondents declared that within the last 12 months they often visited cinema (over 80%), watched films and programs devoted to arts (60%); more than half of them visited a museum several times and was at a concert, about 43% sometimes went to the theater. Walking to the gallery had worse evaluations, and the worst rated was book reading. Respondents evaluated fairly low their knowledge in the area of art and culture. Only their knowledge of music and cinema was evaluated as good. The worst was that of opera and operetta. However, most of respondents think that they are active participants in culture (64%) and highly appreciate the organization of the European Night of Museums 2014.