Leisure and Participation in Britain Modesto Gayo-Cal This article presents an in-depth description of patterns of consumption of out-of-the-home leisure activities. The focus is on participation in different sorts of leisure activities. It is assumed that leisure has to be related to some sort of activity, and is not equivalent to free time. Bourdieu’s ideas about social class as the main factor structuring cultural practices are engaged with. In order to do this, the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (CCSE) survey data are analysed, following three steps. First, frequency of participation in different leisure activities is described and these results are compared with those produced by the Arts Council of England’s 2001 attendance, participation and attitudes survey. Second, the relationship among the different leisure items is studied using a three-factor solution, as a result of a principal component analysis. Third, regressions are run on the factor scores in order to provide an explanation of the identified dimensions. Attention is paid to occupational class, gender, ethnic origin, education, and age as explanatory variables. The results show that all of these have some effects, though to a different extent and for different factors, the most important being level of education, age and gender. Keywords: Bourdieu; Cultural capital; Leisure; Culture; Participation Introduction It is well known in the British context that leisure is traditionally related to social class and other demographic determinants such as age and gender (Parker, 1976; and more recently Roberts, 1999, 2004). Stanley Parker argued that people’s leisure practices are rooted in their experiences of paid work, as people in intense work situations socialize with their colleagues, or where people seek refuge in leisure from the dangers or frus- trations of work. Yet we should also recognize that there are now many writers who claim that this relationship is breaking down as leisure practices themselves proliferate, and as the nature of work itself changes (e.g. Rojek, 1995). In particular, it has been argued that the kind of workplace sociability that used to spill over into leisure activi- ties is being undermined by the decline of ‘occupational communities’ (where workers Cultural Trends Vol. 15, No. 2/3, June/September 2006, pp. 175–192 Correspondence to: Modesto Gayo-Cal, CRESC, The University of Manchester, 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: Modesto.gayo-cal@manchester.ac.uk ISSN 0954-8963 (print)/ISSN 1469-3690 (online) # 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09548960600713015