As a part of a larger project, this study focused primarily on Finland-Swedish ninth-graders' "productive" arts experiences (involving music-making, acting, writing, painting/drawing, dancing), as these had been reported when the pupils had been asked to write down descriptions of "strong" experiences in arts areas (music, dramatic art, literature etc.). Two main objectives were to study participants' subjectively felt "strength" of the experiences, and to examine qualitative characteristics of the experiences, with a particular attention directed to aspects related to self-esteem. Pupils' reported productive experiences mostly represented the music area, and they were much less frequent than the reported "receptive" arts experiences (involving music listening, watching films/plays, reading, etc.). The productive experiences were, on the average, rated as remarkably strong, and clearly stronger than the receptive experiences. Regarding qualitative characteristics, they were quite often accompanied by such elements related to self-esteem, which indicated satisfaction with one's performances or creations, noting signs of progress, feeling proud or self-confident, receiving approval from others, and the like; such "ego-enhancing" elements occurred only rarely among receptive experiences. More tentative qualitative comparisons revealed no drastic differences between productive and receptive experiences regarding the occurrence of "therapeutic", "flow-related" and "strangeness" elements. Compared to the generally rather activity-focused productive experiences, the receptive experiences seemed to focus more often on the "art object" itself and its various characteristics, and, probably as a consequence of this, they also more often contained associative reactions, acquisition of various kinds of new knowledge or insights, and a wider spectrum of affective reactions. Some subgroup differences were observed, related to arts areas, to situational factors (private vs. collective activities) and, most clearly, to gender. Data are also presented concerning pupils' artistic leisure activities, school-related productive experiences, and correlations between variables. The discussion of the educational implications of the results underlined, among other things, that productive arts experiences and activities should be encouraged through learner-centered approaches which, besides developing artistic skills, also consider the importance of learners' experiences. (Contains 2 tables and 1 footnote.)