Cultural participation during the spring lockdown of 2020 in France

The lockdown due to the out-break of Covid-19 has changed the everyday life, modifying timetables, working patterns and schooling at the same time. For a while people have been deprived of ‘in-real-life’ cultural experiences: it was indeed impossible to visit a museum, or to go to a cinema as many premisses dedicated to culture, as well as many shops selling cultural goods, were temporarily closed. Spending more time at home meant one could allocate more time using digital resources on the other hand.The current study shows what cultural participation looked like during these weeks of lockdown in spring 2020 in France. It was carried out thanks to a special wave of a recurrent survey led by Credoc that coincided precisely with this moment in time in 2020 (the French institution Credoc – Centre de recherche pour l’etude et l’observation des conditions de vie – collects data on living conditions every quarter of the year from a sample of circa 3000 individuals aged 15 and above). The data from the 2018 survey on cultural participation have also been included in the analysis in order to put the 2020 lockdown situation in perspective with a recent and more usual situation.It appears that people seized the opportunity to stay at home to develop their own creativity and self expression playing music, drawing, painting, writing a diary or a novel for instance and those who did were younger and from less privileged social backgrounds than usual. On average, cultural participation kept steady and even became more prevalent in social groups which were previoulsy less accustomed to cultural experiences. This latter statement is particularly noticeable for playing videogames and watching online videos, but not for reading books nor for reading the newspapers. Social networks became more popular, especially among older people (people aged 60 and above). The environment in which people were living at that time also had an influence on their cultural behaviour.All in all, it seems that in spite of a tough economic situation which led to widening the gap between social groups in terms of social inequalities, the outcome is slightly different when it comes to cultural participation. The time spent home enable to somehow bridge the gap in terms of cultural participation and cultural habits between the young and the elderly and between social classes.