Australians are known to be sports-mad but it seems we are also a nation of art lovers.
About 16 million people engaged with the arts last year, a new survey by the Australia Council for the Arts shows.
And 40 per cent of those creatively participated in activities like painting and photography.
The findings are part of a survey of 3,000 people that covered visual arts and crafts, music, theatre, dance, reading, writing and music.
Reading and writing were the most popular art forms.
Novels topped the list of reading material, but 20 per cent of people preferred to read poetry.
Seven per cent also penned a novel or short story themselves, and five per cent, almost 900,000 people, wrote poetry.
Music was also popular. Most people listened to recorded music and fifty per cent attended a live music gig in 2009.
A quarter of Australians also went to the theatre.
The survey also looked at how people access the arts and showed the internet was growing in popularity as a way to view, create and review art.
People also use the web to post their own artworks and write blogs.
Interest in indigenous art is also on the rise. About 15 per cent of people participated in art created or performed by indigenous artists.
About 28 per cent of Australians did not embrace the arts over the past year, the survey showed.
Most put it down to a lack of interest, time or money.
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