Two million people flood the Cultural District each year. Thousands more attend arts events throughout the region. And the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council knows, pretty much, who they are.
Looking at a database of 175,000 households, GPAC finds arts ticket buyers are almost as likely to have a graduate degree as a high school degree. Nearly half of ticket buyers (48.5 percent) are between 48 and 65 years old. In every age group, women buy more tickets than men. White collar workers (21.7 percent) and medical professionals (17 percent) comprise the largest groups by occupation. And following a Pittsburgh trend, they’re more likely to call themselves Democrats (67.4 percent) than Republicans.
If you guess that well-heeled suburbanites and East End intellectuals are arts mavens, you’d be right. Over a quarter of residents of Fox Chapel, Squirrel Hill, Mt. Lebanon, Wexford and Upper St. Clair are ticket buyers, making those communities the arts’ best customers. As the Cultural District has lured new residents Downtown, ticket-buyers there have increased; 14 percent of households with a 15222 ZIP code are arts patrons. Overall, nearly 1,500 households (just 1.54 percent of the sample) qualify as superfans, having bought tickets from five different organizations.