How many Art Societies are you a member of? (Poll results)

Of those who responded to the June Making A Mark Poll about membership of art societies:

• 36% did not belong to an art society
• 20% belonged to only one art society
• 44% belonged to more than one art society
• a small proportion of people seem to "collect" national art societies belonging to five or more 
  

The chart below shows how people responded in terms of the number of art societies they belonged to.  This is followed by more charts showing membership at the national, regional and local levels.

June Making A Mark Poll: Number of respondents - 50

Multiple membership favoured local art societies most.  Around two thirds of those who belonged to local art societies belonged to more than one.

Number of respondents = 29

Conversely, in terms of membership of a national society or a regional branch of a national society the emphasis was the other way round with the majority of those having membership of a national society only belonging to one and around two thirds of those belonging to regional branches only belonging to one.

Number of responses = 23

Number of responses = 11

Interestingly more people belonged to a national society (23 respondents) than belonged to a regional branch of that society (11 respondents).

Analysis

These results seem to support what I know about people who belong to art societies.

• People tend to be "joiners" or not.  
• There are a lot of people who don't "join" an art society - and there are a number who leave and don't join another.  
• If you belong to an art society, you're more likely to belong to more than one in due course.
• Local art societies tend to be more open to new people joining than national art societies and hence attract more members
• However most people still tend to favour one society over others for a variety of reasons.  Some of these are because:
• People have limited time - hence prefer commitments closer to home
• Some people have limited budgets - which limits activity
• They regard their preferred society of more worthy of support
• They just like the other members better!
• In time this can often lead to some rationalisation of membership - often when the fees increase!

Tomorrow I'll be posting the Making A Mark Poll for July which is about how much you spend on art societies. This is a topic which has been raised with me of late by more than a few people.

Maybe we also need another poll about WHY people belong to art societies?