I agree with a lot of what has been said. Especially in regards to the comments made about ease of ingestion, intimidation and accessibility.

I think that a lot of those problems are caused by environment, major media and education.

If you grow up in a city surrounded by art you're much less likely to be intimidated by it and consequentially more likely to participate. The more public art the better! The number of cities where art is all over the place, however, is very limited. But there are other ways to keep it from being so mysterious and daunting.

Obviously education is one of them. I was lucky enough to go to a large High School with lots of art classes. But that is fairly rare. If art classes weren't thrown out the window so often and instead made a priority, less people would be scared away. And with an increase in jobs that require design and creativity skills I find this more important than ever.

I also think that major television and radio stations neglect the arts. With the exception of PBS (Art21, Art in America and other documentaries on artists) and NPR (Interviews with artists are pretty frequent) you hardly ever hear art mentioned in the media. Especially contemporary art. If there were more shows that featured contemporary artists or taught children how to draw (any Commander Mark fans out there?) art would become easier to ingest, less intimidating and more accessible for more people.