By Anne Romens and I/O Research
Midwesterners are known for taking our time with zipper merging, saying goodbye, or, as a new time study reveals, creating.
On days when we choose to create, people in the Midwest spend an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes, a full 31 minutes longer than creators elsewhere in the country.
It’s one of the clearest differences featured in the latest American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and it points to something important: In the Midwest, the arts are not an afterthought. They’re something people settle into.
But there’s a tension here, too. While Midwesterners are putting in the time, that effort isn’t always reflected in paid work.
Dig into the findings to explore the Midwest’s deep commitment to creativity, and opportunities to better support it.
About This Data
To understand how creativity shows up in daily life, we looked at how people across Arts Midwest’s nine states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) spend their time.
The American Time Use Survey asks respondents (age 15+) to account for everything they did during a single 24-hour day.
That means arts participation can look deceptively small at first glance—after all, most people don’t attend a concert or make art every day.
But these “minutes per person per day” add up quickly.
For example, 0.97 minutes per day translates to more than 5.9 hours per year volunteering for arts-related activities.
And 3.3 minutes per day spent on creative hobbies, writing, or making art with kids adds up to 2.9 million hours of arts activity every day across the Midwest.
How Art Time Is Tracked
The American Time Use Survey tracks arts engagement in two key ways:
1. Narrow Arts Time
Unpaid arts creation (like crafts or writing), arts attendance, arts-related travel, and arts‑specific volunteering.
2. Broad Cultural Time
Everything above (narrow arts time) with music included,* plus watching TV/movies at home and reading for pleasure.
*The ATUS tracks music time, but it doesn’t make a distinction between listening vs. making music. To be on the safe side, we’ve excluded music from our narrow art time counts.
Because screen time can dominate total minutes, we track it separately—so it doesn’t drown out other forms of engagement. With that squared away, on to the findings!
2.9 million hours of arts activity take place every day across the Midwest.
Midwest Creators Spend More Time Creating . . .
Data shows that the Midwest is pretty intense about art creation. But you might not know it from the averages.
In 2023–2024, Midwest residents spent about 8 minutes per day on “narrow” arts activities, which is roughly in line with the rest of the country. That’s because only around 4.9% of residents reported doing any of these activities on the specific day they were surveyed.
But those Midwesterners who did take part in art creation committed real time: a whopping 2 hours 20 minutes, compared to just 1 hour 49 minutes outside of the region.
That’s a full 31-minute difference on time spent on arts activities!
. . . And Participating in Art
When Midwesterners aren’t creating, we’re participating.
Broad cultural time (which adds TV/movies at home and reading for pleasure) averaged about 3 hours 9 minutes per day in Arts Midwest states.
As expected, most of that total reflects screen time at home (2 hours 41 minutes per day on average) rather than attendance at arts venues. Only about 2.1% of Arts Midwest residents (roughly 1 in 50) recorded attending an art event.
But among those who did attend, they spent about 2 hours 29 minutes on that day—again highlighting how time‑use averages can obscure meaningful engagement.
The chart below shows how Midwesterners did not spend less time engaging with the arts than others in the country; if anything, they spend more time participating in the arts (attending, creating, reading, volunteering).
The Urban-Rural Divide Looks Different for Arts in the Midwest
Where you live in the Midwest shapes how this time shows up.
Within the Midwest, nonmetro residents tend to spend more time on arts-related travel and attendance, while metro residents spend more time creating (especially when music is included).
These differences aren’t always statistically definitive, but they suggest a distinct regional pattern.
Outside the Midwest, that pattern flips: metro residents report more attendance and travel, while nonmetro residents spend significantly more time watching TV and movies at home. That gap in screen time is especially striking.
- Midwest: 159 minutes (metro) vs. 168 minutes (nonmetro)
- Outside Midwest: 154 minutes (metro) vs. 184 minutes (nonmetro)
In other words, the urban-rural divide looks different here in the Midwest. This has broad implications for arts funders, who should avoid assuming that rural Midwest cultural life looks like the national rural pattern.
For arts and creativity to thrive, the Midwest needs place-specific investments that build on existing participation rather than treating nonmetro communities as arts-access deserts. For instance:
1. Nonmetro
Nonmetro residents show strong participation numbers, but the access burden is greater (more travel time). These areas may benefit from regional touring, shared transportation, local presenting networks, small venues, and pop-up programming that reduce the distance and logistics required to participate.
2. Metro
Metro creation rates are great, but could benefit from increased infrastructure like rehearsal rooms, maker spaces, affordable studio space, equipment libraries, and childcare-compatible creative programming.
Midwesterners who did participate in the arts, committed real time: a whopping 2 hours 20 minutes, compared to just an 1 hour 49 minutes outside of the Midwest.
Time Spent on Arts Varies per State
The Midwest is not a monolith. Even within the region, creative time varies by state. From 2023–2024:
- Michigan and Minnesota residents spent more time on unpaid arts creation
- Wisconsin and Ohio stood out for reading for pleasure
A few snapshots:
- Michigan averaged 5.1 minutes/day of arts creation vs. 1.0 minute in Indiana
- Wisconsin averaged 23.5 minutes/day reading vs. 15.2 minutes in Illinois
These differences should be read as directional rather than definitive—but they reinforce the point: there’s no single Midwest arts story.
| State | Mean Minutes Spent, Unpaid Art Creation | Mean Minutes Spent, Reading for Pleasure |
|---|---|---|
| Iowa | 2.74 | 14.90 |
| Illinois | 3.64 | 15.21 |
| Indiana | 1.01 | 16.43 |
| Michigan | 5.13 | 15.13 |
| Minnesota | 4.63 | 18.74 |
| North Dakota | 10.39 | 18.13 |
| Ohio | 2.01 | 19.11 |
| South Dakota | 1.60 | 17.24 |
| Wisconsin | 2.78 | 23.54 |
Paid Arts Work Looks Slightly Smaller in the Midwest
ATUS also offers a glimpse into paid arts employment.
In the 2023–2024 data, about 0.8% of respondents in Arts Midwest states reported working in a narrow set of artist occupations, compared to about 1.0% elsewhere. Broader definitions show a similar pattern.
These differences are small–mostly noise in the data–but they are consistent with the idea that the Midwest’s arts workforce may be slightly smaller as a proportion of all workers.
Put simply: the Midwest is rich in creative time, but that richness isn’t fully reflected in the labor market.
Midwesterners did not spend less time engaging with the arts than others in the country; if anything, they spend more time participating in the arts (attending, creating, reading, volunteering).
What’s Next with This Data?
So what do we do with a region that clearly shows up—and then stays awhile—when it comes to creativity?
Our key takeaway isn’t just that Midwesterners value the arts. It’s that they’re already putting in the time. The opportunity now is to meet that commitment with the kinds of supports that make sustained creative practice possible: reliable space, shared tools, and time that isn’t constantly squeezed by other demands.
That also means designing for real life. Childcare-friendly programming, flexible schedules, and low-barrier ways to participate aren’t extras, they’re what allow more people to move from occasional making to deeper, more regular creative work.
And when people do that work, they need places for it to go. Local venues, community platforms, and informal gatherings all play a role in helping creative practice feel visible, valued, and worth continuing.
In other words: the Midwest already has the habit. With the right investments, we can help turn that time into something even more lasting: a creative ecosystem that’s as enduring as it is vibrant.
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This story was originally published by Arts Midwest, a non-profit amplifying Midwestern creativity with Creative Commons License
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Photo credit: unsplash
