by Anne Romans And I/O research
Midwesterners are known for taking our time with assembling zippers, saying goodbye or, as a recent study reveals, making up.
On the days 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.
This is a clear difference between the latest featuresAmerican Time Use Survey(ATUS) And this points to something important: In the Midwest, art is not an afterthought. They are something that people decide.
But there is a tension here too. Although Midwesterners are putting in the time, that effort isn’t always reflected in paid work.
Explore the Midwest’s deep commitment to creativity and opportunities to better support it
About this information
To understand how creativity manifests itself in everyday life, we looked at how people spend their time across the nine states of the Arts Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin).
The American Time Use Survey asks respondents (ages 15+) to account for what they did in a single 24-hour day.
That means arts participation can appear deceptively small at first glance—of course, most people don’t attend a concert or do art every day.
But this “person per minute per day” adds up quickly.
For example, 0.97 minutes per day translates into over 5.9 hours of volunteering for arts-related activities per year.
And 3.3 minutes per day are spent on creative hobbies, writing or making art with children2.9 million hours of artwork per daythroughout the Midwest.
How is industrial time tracked?
The American Time Use Survey tracks arts engagement in two key ways:
1. Narrow Arts Time
Unpaid art creation (such as crafts or writing), art attendance, art-related travel, and art-specific volunteering.
2. Broad cultural time
All of the above (during narrow arts) includes music,* plus watching TV/movies at home and reading for pleasure.
*ATUS tracks music time, but it doesn’t differentiate between listening vs making music. To be on the safe side, we’ve excluded music from our narrow art time calculations.
Because screen time can dominate total minutes, we track it separately—so it doesn’t exclude other forms of engagement. With that squared away, on to the results!
2.9 million hours of arts activity takes place across the Midwest every day.
Midwest manufacturers spend more time creating. . .
The data shows that the Midwest is pretty intense about industrial creation. But you wouldn’t know it from the average.
In 2023-2024, Midwest residents spent about 8 minutes per day on “narrow” arts, roughly in line with the rest of the country. Because only 4.9% of residents reported doing any of these activities on the specific day they were surveyed.
But those who are MidwesternersdidTake part in the creation of art in committed real time: a whopping 2 hours 20 minutes compared to just 1 hour 49 minutes outside the region.
That’s a whopping 31-minute difference in time spent on art activities!
. . . and participation in industry
When Midwesterners aren’t creating, we’re participating.
Arts Midwest states have extensive cultural time (which includes home TV/movies and reading for pleasure) averages about 3 hours and 9 minutes per day.
As expected, most of this total reflects screen time at home rather than attendance at arts venues (an average of 2 hours 41 minutes per day). Arts Only 2.1% (about 1 in 50) of Midwest residents recorded attending an arts event.
But of those who did attend, they spent about 2 hours 29 minutes that day — again highlighting how time-use averages can obscure meaningful engagement.
The chart below shows how Midwesterners didn’t spend less time with art than others in the country; If anything, they spendmore timeParticipating in the arts (locating, creating, reading, volunteering).
The urban-rural divide looks different for the arts in the Midwest
Where you live in the Midwest shapes how this weather looks.
Within the Midwest, nonmetro residents spend more time on arts-related travel and attendance, while metro residents spend more time creating (especially when music is involved).
These differences are not always statistically definite, but they suggest a distinct regional pattern.
Outside the Midwest, that pattern reverses: 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 particularly interesting.
- Midwest: 159 minutes (metro) vs. 168 minutes (nonmetro)
- Outside the Midwest: 154 minutes (metro) vs. 184 minutes (nonmetro)
In other words, the urban-rural divide looks different here in the Midwest. This has broader implications for art funders, who must avoid assuming that rural Midwest cultural life looks like national rural patterns.
To thrive in the arts and creativity, the Midwest needs place-specific investments that build on existing participation rather than treating nonmetro communities as arts-access deserts. For example:
1. Nonmetro
Nonmetro residents show stronger participation numbers, but access burdens are higher (longer travel times). These regions can benefit from regional travel, shared transportation, local presentation networks, smaller venues, and pop-up programming that reduce the distance and logistics required to participate.
2. Metro
Metro making rates are great, but could benefit from increased infrastructure like rehearsal rooms, maker spaces, affordable studio space, equipment libraries, and childcare-friendly creative programming.
Midwesterners who participated in the arts had a real time commitment: a whopping 2 hours 20 minutes compared to just 1 hour 49 minutes outside the Midwest.
Time spent in the arts varies from state to state
The Midwest is not a monolith. Even within regions, creative time varies by state. From 2023-2024:
- Residents of Michigan and Minnesota spent more time creating unpaid art
- Wisconsin and Ohio stand for reading for pleasure
A few snapshots:
- Michigan produced an average of 5.1 min/day of art vs. 1.0 min in Indiana
- Wisconsin averaged 23.5 minutes/day of reading vs. 15.2 minutes in Illinois
These distinctions should be read as indicative rather than definitive—but they reinforce the point: there is no single Midwest arts story.
| State | Average minute cost, unpaid art creation | Money spent minutes, for reading joy |
|---|---|---|
| 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 jobs appear slightly smaller in the Midwest
ATUS also provides a glimpse into paid industrial employment.
In the 2023–2024 data, about 0.8% of respondents in the 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 industrial workforce may be slightly smaller as a proportion of all workers.
Simply put: the Midwest is rich in creative times, but that prosperity isn’t fully reflected in the labor market.
Midwesterners did not spend less time with the arts than others in the country; If anything, they spend more time participating in the arts (locating, creating, reading, volunteering).
What’s next with this data?
So what do we do with the area of creativity that clearly shows up – and then has for a while – when it comes to creativity?
Our key takeaway isn’t just that Midwesterners value art. It’s the time they’re already putting in. Now the opportunity is to deliver the kind of support that makes sustainable creative practice possible: reliable space, shared tools and time that isn’t constantly overwhelmed by other demands.
It means designing for real life. Childcare-friendly programming, flexible schedules, and low-barrier ways to participate are nothing more than allowing more people to move from occasional creation to deeper, more regular creative work.
And when people do that, they need a place to go. Local venues, community platforms, and informal gatherings all play a role in helping creative practice feel visible, valued, and sustained.
In other words: The Midwest already has the habit. With the right investments, we can help turn that time into something more lasting: a creative ecosystem that is as enduring as it is vibrant.
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This story was originally published by Arts MidwestA Midwestern nonprofit fosters creativity Creative Commons License
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Photo credit: splash
