A Creative PEC State of the Nations Report
Who works in Scotland’s arts, culture and heritage sectors? How does engagement and participation vary across different communities and places?
Drawing on Scottish census data, the report provides new insights into audiences and workforces in the arts, culture and heritage sectors across Scotland. The report is authored by Professor Mark Taylor & Dr Ruoxi Wang (University of Sheffield) and Professor Dave O’Brien (University of Manchester).
The report is accompanied by new data dashboards and interactive maps enabling users to explore arts, culture and heritage workforce and engagement data at council area level, providing a valuable evidence base to support policy development, place-based cultural interventions and strategic decision-making.
Three dashboards have been released with the report, enabling you to explore the data yourself. Click the expansion arrow icon to view full-screen.
Dashboard 1:
Dashboard 2:
Dashboard 3:
Key findings:
- Overall engagement with culture in Scotland is high. For example, 62% of people report reading for pleasure and 50% report going to the cinema.
- However, across all art and culture activities in Scotland there is a significant difference in attendance between those from the wealthiest areas and the most economically disadvantaged areas. In the most deprived areas people are 25% less likely to have been to the cinema than in the wealthiest areas.
- Other notable differences include visiting an art gallery at 31% (most wealthy) compared with 14% (least wealthy), for classical music it is 10% compared with 2%, and for live music it is 49% compared with 16%.
- In some areas there are challenges that are even more pertinent in Scotland, such as disabled people in Scotland being 14% less likely to have visited the cinema than disabled people in England.
- In terms of ethnicity, 31% of white people have attended the theatre compared with 11% of people from a minoritised ethnic background.
- Edinburgh and Glasgow have the highest concentrations of Arts and Culture workers, however several rural and island areas also show strong concentrations of cultural employment. Na h-Eileanan Siar, for example, has one of the highest proportions of artists in all of Scotland.
- The report challenges assumptions that cultural production is concentrated within large urban centres: Scotland’s cultural workforce is distributed across a diverse range of places, including islands, rural communities and smaller towns.
Watch the launch event
The report officially launches at midday, 24 June 2026.
The launch event can be watched live by registering here. A recording will be available after the event.
Citation: If the information in this report is used in any subsequent research and/or publications, please cite as follows: O’Brien, D., Taylor, M. and Wang, R.
(2026) Audiences and workforce in arts, culture and heritage sectors: Recent trends and new evidence for Scotland. Creative PEC State of the Nations Research Series. doi:10.5281/zenodo.20627681.
About State of the Nations
The Creative PEC’s ‘State of the Nations’ series analyses the latest data across four thematic areas to inform the development of policies relating to the creative industries. Their scope is the whole of the United Kingdom, and wherever possible data is presented for all the nations and regions. Regular reports on each area will be published biannually over the five years of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding. The themes and corresponding Research Partners are:
- R&D, Innovation and Clusters (University of Sussex)
- Internationalisation (Newcastle University)
- Arts, Culture and Heritage Sectors (The University of Sheffield)
- Education, Skills and Talent (Work Advance).
