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A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

In this newsletter you will find a plethora of information about recent ABS statistics relevant to sport and culture, particularly in recent updates of our compendia publications Sport and Physical Recreation: A Statistical Overview and Arts and Culture in Australia: A Statistical Overview. These publications aim to provide a snapshot of all available ABS data relevant to sport, physical recreation, arts and cultural heritage - covering participation, employment, volunteering, industry statistics, and production, consumption and trade in relevant goods and services. We continue to regularly update these publications so that you can rely on these products to provide you with the most recent data. Where an update is pending, the publication will provide information about those data sources where more recent data is available.

While much of our energy in NCCRS is spent in publishing descriptive statistics, our small team does occasionally find time to undertake some further analysis of the data, to more thoroughly interpret its meaning. Several projects are underway to analyse sport and physical recreation data. One report is soon to be completed which looks more closely at changes in children's participation in organised sport over time. Another report will provide more detailed data on the barriers and motivators to sport participation for adults. The culture team has minimal capacity for additional analysis at this time, with a lot of effort being directed to data collections relevant to culture funding, and major cultural institutions. However, we may be able to improve research capacity through coordination of efforts with other researchers. The "Information Development Plan for Arts and Cultural Heritage" will assist us in driving culture research and analysis projects in collaboration with other researchers outside ABS.

By the end of this year, there will be two new releases coming out:

• Work in Selected Culture and Leisure Activities, Australia, April 2007 (cat no. 6281.0) presents data relating to paid and unpaid participation in the arts and culture, by adults aged 15 years and over. Activities include visual arts (e.g. painting, drawing, sculpture, photography); performing arts (e.g. singing, playing a musical instrument, live performance); craft activities (e.g. pottery, jewellery, furniture making and wood crafts); writing, design and a range of other arts and cultural heritage activities.

• Involvement in Organised Sport, Australia, April 2007 (cat no. 6285.0) presents data relating to paid and unpaid involvement in organised sport by adults aged 15 years and over. This includes paid and unpaid involvement in non playing roles, such as coaches and trainers, umpires or referees, committee members or administrators, and other forms of support.