from the University of Maryland indicates that those who participated in K-12 music education are more likely to continue to be involved with the arts as adults.
The study, based on data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, found adults who had studied music as children were more than three times more likely to play an instrument and more than twice as likely to have sung in the past year.
Other arts fields showed similar patterns. Drama students were nearly 3.7 times more likely to have participated in a theater production in the last year, and visual-arts students were more likely to create art beyond photographs as adults.