culture and class

8/11/2019 Culture and Class

1/32

Contents

About this b ookPrefaceAcknowledgements1. Introduction2. The b asic c oncepts3. Culture a nd class t ogether4. Ill-used by culture5. A new direction of travel6. Culture and social justice7. Finding a better ap proach8. ConclusionReferences

About this b ookCounterpoint is t he think tank of the British Council.We carry out research and promote

debate around the most pressing issue of our time: how to live together well in aninterdependent world.

This p amphlet is ava ilable to download and re-use undera by-nc-sa C reative C ommonslicense ported to UK law.This m eans t hat you are free to copy, distribute, display a nd performthe work, and make derivative works, in a non-commercial context, as long as yo u creditCounterpoint and the author, and share the resulting works u nder an equivalent license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/


2/32

Counterpoint 2010.Some rights reserved

British Council,10 Spring GardensLondon SW1A 2BNUnited Kingdom

www.counterpoint-online.org

ISBN 978-086355-649-4Copy e dited by Ju lie PickardSeries d esign by m odernactivity

PrefaceThe inuential French sociologist of culture, Pierre Bourdieu, famously referred to an

economy of cultural goods. Inequalities in that type of economy, he argued, affect people andtheir life chances a s m uch as the inequalities o f income we are more used to reecting upon.And as Wilkinson a nd Pickett argue in their book The S pirit Level , the ways in which classand taste and snobbery work to constrain peoples o pportunities a nd well-being are, in reality,painful and pervasive. 1 Yet, shamefully, at a time when we know that the gap between richand poor is a t its w idest, worldwide, and likely to widen as t he economic r ecession deepens,we are entirely failing to address the direct role played by culture in perpetuating thesedistinctions. Culture is a nemancipatory tool. We know that cultural production,access and funare among the most effective tools w e can use to eradicate inequalities o f all types yet thedebate about the potential of culture is d eafening by its a bsence. This d ouble failure weknow and yet fail to act is a t the heart of the matter.

The way cu lture operates a s a factor both in liberation and constraint is u niquelycongured in different societies a round the world. This p amphlet revisits t he issue of cultureand class in the UK. Here, the deeply e stablished role of culture and the popular identicationwith class despite growing economic freedoms for most, suggests our story will lack neitherparadox nor co ntradiction. And it doesnt. John Holdens exploration highlights Britainsfailures as well as its strengths. Ours is still a political, social and cultural system dened by


3/32

distinctions of class (Kate Foxs Watching the English 2is a sobering reminder of the power ofclass markers in our society). But, Britain isalso a hub of cultural creativity and opportunity.Indeedone o f the m ost uncomfortable facts ab out the UK is the so mewhat disconcertingrelationship between the deep-seatedness of its c lass structure and the vibrancy of itscreative sector. There is a n unpalatable paradox here of a society that might, to many, seem

more ruthless in its l abour market but more capable of reinventing itself; more ungratefultowards i ts w orkers, but also more understanding of risk-taking; more immobile and yet moreopen and innovative. What this pa mphlet proposes i s that we m ove beyond this pa radox andsearch for ways i n which we might instead of snatching creativity from the teeth ofruthlessness and threat support our cultural sectors, increase access to cultural arenas,sustain and nurture our creative industries i n a concerted and systematic way in order toguarantee the equal access a nd participation that can drive real social progress a nd maintainthe vibrancy o f its c ultural production.

In their controversial 2009 book The Death of French Culture ,3Donald Morrison and

Antoine C ompagnon report from the cultural front lines o n the asphyxiation of French cultureby its o wn elite its r eluctance to open up to the world, its b ureaucratic a nd protectionisttendencies, in other words i ts o bsessive navel-gazing that spells, according to the authors, thedeath of France as a cultural power. Culture in the UK, as p ointed out by Jo hn Holden in thispamphlet, doesnt suffer from this yet. It thrives on its openness, on its multiplicity and onthe curiosity a nd willingness o f the new cosmopolitans to mix o ld and new, homegrown andexotic, popular and high-brow. Culture in the UK, in other words, is s till a reection of thereality of Britain in the twenty-rst century. Yet, alarmingly, and as pointed out by Gunnell andBright in their 2010 Arts C ouncil England report, Creative Survival in Hard Times , employmentin thecreative industries i s i n danger of becoming the preserveof a certain, exclusive class.This p amphlet outlines w hy it is c rucial that we avoid this a nd why the future of the UKdepends o n our committing to forging a new relationship between culture and class.

The temptation, in light of new and urgent divisions ( generational, environmental,geographical) is to move beyond class as an interpretative lens partly out of laziness, partlyout of misplaced idealism. Yet attendingto these new divisions, embedded as t hey are inourcultural frameworks, requires a collective commitment that can emerge only from sharedunderstanding through shared channels o f communication cultural access i s t heunderpinning p rinciple t o addressing every other global challenge we face.

Catherine FieschiDirector Counterpoint, British Council

Acknowledgements


4/32

My thanks g o to Counterpoint and the British Council,and in particular to CatherineFieschi and NickWadham-Smith, for giving me the opportunity to writeabout Culture andClass. I would also like to thankRobert Hewison for commenting on the text, andJulie Pickardfor doing such an excellent job of editing.

John HoldenSeptember 2010

1. IntroductionThat country is t he richest, which nourishes t he greatest number of noble and happy

human beings.4 uskin, Unto this L ast, 1860

During his sp eech at the nal Labour Party Conferenceof the twentieth century, TonyBlair told his a udience:My friends, the class w ar is o ver. It is w orth asking whowon. Blairhimself was ce rtainly a winner he is n ow reputedly worth 30 million a nd ten years o nfrom his s peech, atavistic a ttitudes t o class are starting toappear. When David Cameronarrived in Number Ten asBritains n ew Prime Minister, a headline in the LondonEveningStandard blithely s tated: Born and Bred to Rule.5

The class war may o r may n ot be over, but last year London Mayor Boris Jo hnson toldus t hat we are denitely caught up in another conict a culture war.Coincidently u sing similarphraseology to Tony Blair, hewrote in the Daily Telegraph : We are in a kulturkampf my friends,and the barbarians a re winning.6He isright, though deciding who the barbarians a re is n otsosimple as h e thinks.

In this c ulture war, battles a re raging on two fronts: the rst concerns w ho has a ccessto what has t raditionally b een dened as culture, and the second is a bout who gets t o decidewhat culture is i n the rst place. These are not mere disputes o ver aesthetics and artisticquality; questions a bout culture are questions a bout power and freedom. Culture and classare intimately b ound together, and both are highly p oliticised: Boriss n ewspaper article wastitled Heres a really right-wing idea: learn poetry a contention that will surprise many poetsand their readers.

This e ssay examines t he relationship between culture and c lass i n todays B ritain anddiscovers a paradox: the possession of cultural capital enhances a n individuals s ocialmobility, but cultural capital is itself predicated on culture as a marker of social difference. Asthe Japanese academic Nobuko Kawashima notes: It is a ctually one of the functions o fculture to legitimise and enhance social inequality. 7 Does culture then increase social


5/32

mobility o r reinforce class division? The answer to that conundrum lies i n the changing natureof cultural capital and in the ways that culture itself is changing.

Status, education, wealth and culture march together, so one way of helping thedisadvantaged is t o increase their cultural capital. However, cultural capital no longer residesin a cultural canon, but instead is found in a set of cultural capacities. In other words, cultural

capital these days i s n ot so much about appreciating a Leonardo, or feeling comfortable at aMahler concert, it is m ore about having an interest in, and feeling relaxed with, all sorts o fculture and cultures. But instead of being a re-invention of old-style cosmopolitanism wherea detached and independently wealthy neur was co ntent to observe life going on around him the new cosmopolitanism involves a ction, production and participation. Whereas t he oldcosmopolitan felt at home in the elite cultures of different cities, the new cosmopolitan is atease with different cultures in her own city.

Globalisation, the internet, and the proliferation of media e ncourage the understandingand enjoyment of a broader culture, and it follows t hat, as m ore and more people join this

movement, the idea of what constitutes c ulture expands, so that it travels b eyond Mahler andinto jazz, Indian raga, pop and so on. But more signicantly, as m ore people start to produceand consume culture, their activity b ecomes a mass democratic p roject.Culture is c reated bymillions of individual and collectivedecisions, rather than owing from the tastes andpreferences o f only o ne part of society.

In order to examine the relationship between culture and class, this e ssay will thereforeneed to address what is h appening in high or legitimateculture, and look a t who decideswhat that type of cultureis a nd who has a ccess t o it. But the scope will have to be much wideras w ell, examining how what we now regard as cu lture is increasingly being created in themarketplace and in the practices o f everyday life.

Although this e ssay co ncentrates o n what is h appening in the UK, many o f thearguments a pply e lsewhere. There are n o easily co mparable data covering the UK, the rest ofEurope, North America, Australia a nd beyond, but in s ome instances researchers h avefoundthat similar patterns a pply. For example, US and European studies sh ow lower-income groupsor manual workers a ttending theatre and opera less frequently than higher-income groups; theimportance of education as a predictive factor in attendance of high cultural events iscommon though not universal. Where p ossible, international comparisons will be u sed to helpelucidate the relationship between culture and class, with the cautionary note that although welive in a globalised world, differences a bound between nations a nd groups w ithin them andof course, culture is o ne of the ways in which we recognise and e xpress t hose differences.

Governments and cultural institutions help set the termsfor the interplay b etweenculture and class, and this e ssay co ncludes w ith some suggestions a bout what they can do tohelp people create a culture that is m ore open and inclusive, more democratically c reated anddened, and where all classes can meet on more equal terms.

Why now?


6/32

The words cu lture and class a re difficult, each of them caught in a tangle ofcontemporary confusion and carrying a great deal of historical baggage. Moreover,manygiants, from Theodor Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu to Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams h avetrodden the ground already.

But the relationship between culture and class i s a lways on the move, and so needs

regular re-examination. There are compelling reasons to attempt the task now: class conicthas r e-emerged as a blight on British society, the gap between rich and poor has r eachedlevels l ast seen in the 1850s, and the most disadvantaged are ill-served by a culture that canabuse, exploit, patronise, exclude and ignore them.

Britains c urrent economic woes p rovide additional reasons t o give the topic o f cultureand class another airing, for a number of reasons. First, the cultural and creative economy ispredicted to grow faster than the rest of the economy.8This is a reason to be cheerful, but itbegs t he question of who reaps t he benet, as i t is d ifficult for the poor to nd routes i ntoemployment in the creative industries, as a recent report from New Deal of the Mind has

found: Employment in the creative industries i s b ecoming the prerogative of the privileged.9Second, when recessions o ccur, and public s ector cuts follow, there is g enerally a

retreat into small-c c onservative culture. As a result, the public g et cultural comfort food, andelites re-establish their economic, social and cultural dominance. There is a distinct dangerthat there will be less interesting work d one in both the public a nd commercial cultural sectors,and that the audiences f or that work will narrow.

But the problem is n ot simply a bout what culture gets p roduced and who gets t o see itor hear it. No one should be excluded from any s ort of cultural activity, but more importantly,as a matter of social justice, nor should they be excluded from helping to dene what culturemeans.

Culture is a shared endeavour: a new understanding built on the cultures o f the pastand created by the p eople of today to hand on to those of tomorrow. When one part of societycannot take part in that collective project, they s uffer, and so does t he rest of society.

Conversely, cultural inclusion has a positive effect. It generates social capital despitethe fact that individual cultural acts o r movements c an have socially d estructiveconsequences. In turn, as D r David Halpern, the former chief analyst in the Prime MinistersStrategy Unit, argues i n The Hidden Wealthof Nations , social capital produces b oth economicprosperity a nd wellbeing.10In the United States, the author and journalist Dick Stanley h asnoted a similar iterative relationship between the cultural citizen and society: An individualscultural participation inuences h ow she behaves t oward others i n society, and their culturalparticipation inuences how they t reat her. Culture permeates social, economic and politicalaction.11

Cultural inclusion creates n on-nancial bonds a nd transactions b etween people, andthese are just as si gnicant as m onetary e xchange to the way that a society functions. Beingpart of a culture strengthens s ocial ties a nd builds h uman capital, and the Nobel Prizewinning


7/32

economist Joseph Stiglitz a nd his co lleagues h ave recently su ggested that governments n eedto take more account of such non-market produced goods in national accounts. 12

Culture is t hus e merging, not as a subset of politics and the economy, but as o ne ofthedetermining factors o f how politics and the economy function. It is i mportant, therefore, thatin a democraticsociety e veryone should be able to contribute to what culture is a nd what it

means, because cultural inclusion in both senses familiarity with existing culture, and beingpart of the project to create contemporary culture alters the prospects both for individualsand for society.

2. The b asic c onceptsThere a re in fact no masses, only ways of seeing people a s m asses. 13Raymond

Williams, Culture is o rdinary, 1958

ClassAfter many ye ars in the wilderness, the discussion of class a s a divisive and malign

inuence in British society is r mly back o n the agenda. For many years i t seemed to havegone away. In the run-up to the 1964 general election, Harold Wilson toured the countrypromoting his v ision of a classless society. Later prime ministers were to echo the theme:John Major wrote in 1990 that we will continue to make changes which will make thewholeof this c ountry a genuinely c lassless society.14

During those decades, it seemed as i f Britains e nfeebling obsession with class, andthe corrosive reality o f a divided society, were on the wane. Not any more. Class has r eturned,rmly placed on the agenda both by the media in the run-up to the General Election, and inGordon Browns P rime Ministerial New Year message for 2010, which referred darkly to theprivileged few.

The phrase harks back t o a 1950s Britain where power, advantage a nd money wereclosely guarded: the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was e ducated at Eton and Oxford,married to the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, and connected by family o r marriage toseven members o f his ow n Cabinet. Thirty-ve men in his g overnment were old Etonians.

Some things h ave changed. Class divisions a re no longer between fairly homogenousgroups o f upper, middle and working class. Instead, there are nancial divisions between thesuper-rich, who have incomes a nd a ssets b eyond the d reams o f most of the p opulation; theprosperous m iddle class; the aspirant middle class; the working class; and the non-workingpoor, sometimes r eferred to as the underclass.

Instead of class distribution being conceived as a triangle, with the working class at thebase and upper class at the peak, it has n ow become, in nancial terms, an ovoid, with thesuper-rich at one end, and the underclass a t the other. Both ends o f the ovoid are alienatedfrom society. At the top end, many of the super-rich believe they s hould pay no tax, and they


8/32

opt out of public se rvices b y ch oice; at the bottom end, the underclass a re alienated from apolity that has failedthem. This e xplains w hy much recent commentary a bout class h asfocused on the middle the people who were and are most likely to vote. 15

The middle classes a re becoming increasingly resentful of the super-rich, partlybecause b oardroom rewards a re now disconnected from performance a nd are therefore seen

as greedy a nd undeserved, and partly be cause, as t he super-rich soar ahead, they d amagethe prospects of middle-class children being able to achieve the material standards of theirparents.

The consequences o f a divided society a re clear. As a recent report from the NationalEqualities P anel put it, wide inequalities e rode the bonds o f common citizenship and therecognition of human dignity across economic d ivides.16Polly Toynbee and David Walkerhave meticulously s et out in Unjust Rewards how the rich know very little about the poor, andthe level of ignorance is u ndoubtedly mutual. 17 In this r espect, nothing has ch anged sincethe public scho ol and Cambridge-educated Tom Harrison and Charles Madge set off for

Bolton in 1937, to nd out how the working classes lived in their anthropological MassObservation project.

In some ways t hings h ave got worse since the 1950s: Britain is a n unequal country,more so than many other industrialised countries a nd more s o than it was a generation a go.18 A recent crop of books b y a cademics, including Tony Judts Ill Fares the Land , 19 RichardWilkinson and Kate Picketts The S pirit Level , 20 and Daniel Dorlings Injustice: Why s ocialinequality p ersists , 21 provide overwhelming evidence that Britain is p rofoundly unequal.According to the UN, we rank fourth among industrialised countries in terms o f incomeinequality, and London is s aid to be the most unequal city in the developed world. 22

The question of whether inequality c auses o r merely c orrelates w ith social problemshas n ot been nally s ettled, but what does s eem certain is t hat, in spite of strong evidence ofa causal link, many people will never be persuaded. As D aniel Dorling, Professor of HumanGeography a t Sheffield, says: Britain is addicted to inequality.23

This c ountrys a ttitude to inequality conforms t o the observation of Nancy Krieger, fromthe Harvard School of Public H ealth, that for injustice to ourish, inequality m ust appear asnatural, normal, innate and inevitable.24 To many, inequality d oes a ppear natural, and as aresult, injustice does ourish.

But while a lot of attention is b eing paid to income inequality a nd its c onsequences,there is less discussion about the cultural aspects of inequality. Class, which determines anddescribes o nes p osition in the hierarchies o f society, is b oth an economic a nd a culturalphenomenon, and as w ill be seen in section 3, our addiction to inequality is e xpressed andbecomes a pparent partly through our culture.

CultureMany writers a nd commentators h ave noted that theword culture is u sed both in a n

anthropological sense, toencompass all of the practices a nd behaviours t hat give shared


9/32

meaning to the lives o f a distinct group, and also as a synonym for the arts. The problem ofthese two muddled meanings i s f urther complicated by the fact that within one culture theremay be many subcultures, with individuals i dentifying simultaneously with a number ofdifferent groups for example as both Jewish and Punk, or Japanese and Rockabilly. Havingone word to describe different things ca uses p roblems, to such a degree that Bill Ivey, the

former head of the National Endowment for the Arts i n the United States h as su ggested weshould ditch the word culture altogether.25But it continues t o be used, and while the elisionof culture as anthropology a nd culture as the arts is regrettable, it is unavoidable.

In Democratic Culture , a 2008 Demos p ublication, I tried to describe what culturemeans today, and suggested that one way that it can be understood is a s a group o f threedistinct but highly integrated spheres of activity. 26 These three spheres are publicly fundedculture, commercial culture and homemade culture.

The rst two, funded culture and commercialculture, have lived in historic o pposition,and throughout the twentieth century a series o f writers, including TS Eliot, FR Leavis a nd

Kingsley Amis co ntrasted the glories o f high culture on the one hand and the debased formsof popular culture on the other. In shorthand, as Jo hn Maynard Keynes p ut it in 1945 whenannouncing the establishment of the Arts C ouncil of Great Britain: Death to Hollywood. 27

However, as a new and more a ffluent society em erged in the p ostwar period, the artcritic Lawrence Alloway began to argue that the contrast between high and popular culturewas becoming increasingly untenable:

Our denition of culture is b eing stretched beyond the ne art limits i mposed on it byRenaissance theory, and refers n ow, increasingly, to the whole complex of human activities.Within this d enition, rejection of the mass-produced arts i s n ot, as c ritics think, a defence of

culture but an attack on it.28Publicly funded culture a nd commercial culture in fact have much in common. They a re

both dened bythe decisions o f gatekeepers: access to the marketplace is c ontrolled in theformer case by public se rvants a nd bureaucrats, and by co mmercial producers, editors,publishers and the like in the latter. Publicly funded and commercial culture often employ thesame artists a nd technicians, and to some degree each creates a n audience for the other.

The third sphere, homemade culture, is e ntwinedwith the other two types o f culture, butdiffers fromthem in s ignicant ways. In homemade c ulturethere a re n o gatekeepers, especiallynow that cultural product can easily b e distributed on the internet. Moreover, the barriers t oentry a nd collaboration in homemade culture have been lowered. It is m uch easier to produceyour own culture because cheap and easy-to-use musical instruments a nd cameras areavailable, and they have become more integrated into everyday life. There are also moreperformance spaces t han there were, thanks to an extensive lottery-funded buildingprogramme over the last 15 years, and more ways o f forming and organising groups such aschoirs a nd reading c lubs via websites a nd e mails.


10/32

The Voluntary Arts N etwork e stimates t hat over half the UK population is n ow involvedin some form of art or craft; there are 50,000 formal amateur arts g roups i n the UK with ninemillion members.29The phenomenon is infact global, from the casas d e cultura of SouthAmerica to theculture clubs o f South Korea via the chitalishta of Bulgaria.

In the US there is a trend away from simply watching or listening, and towards t aking

part:Tens o f millions o f people attend concerts, plays, opera, and museum exhibitions, yet

the percentage of the US population attending these arts e vents i s s hrinking, and the declineis n oticeable. On the increase, however, is t he percentage of the American public p ersonallycreating art (e.g. music m aking, and drawing). Technology is ch anging how Americansexperience the arts a nd consumption via technology a nd social media is a lso up. 30

But homemade c ulture h as n ot just increased in scale in the last two decades, it haschanged in character . Now, almost everyone has t he ability to communicate what theyproduce, to attain professional standards, and to be rewarded, whether they label themselves

as a rtists o r musicians o r not.The very recent change in the cultural landscape brought about by homemade culture

has h ad a profound effect. It has cr eated more demand and therefore more activity in thecommercial and funded spheres. The rise of the creative and cultural industries h asencouraged more people especially the young to believe that they can make a living fromculture, and the homemade sphere is w here they st art.

But the r ise of homemade culture has a lso changed the political and social importanceof culture. Now, instead of each of the three spheres o f culture being marginal to life and topolitics with high culture dismissed as elitist recreation, commercial culture condemned as

entertainment, and homemade c ulture p atronised a s amateur when taken together theyhave become what Jordi Marti, Head of Culture in Barcelona, has ca lled the s econdecosystem of humankind.

Being part of this c ultural world has t hus b ecome of much greater signicance foreveryone. Our individual identities a re formed in large part by what we choose to listen to,read, watch, sing and play. Our social bonds a re now formed by cu ltural choices a s m uch asby work or geography o r religion. In turn, just as c ulture shapes u s i ndividually, so we shapeculture collectively through our interests, decisions, purchases and activities. In this sense, inthe postwar era, culture has b ecome an increasingly d emocratic p roject.

That sense of a dynamic relationship between the individual and culture, with eachinuencing the other, is r eected in another idea found in the root of the word culture: thenotion of cultivation and growth.

In the nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold described the improving effects o fprogressing fromdarkness to sweetness and light, where the cultivated person becomesmorally better through being initiatedinto particular forms and examples o f culture.31


11/32

Nowadays, cultivation needs t o be thought of differently, as a progressive growth inlearning and condence that results i n an individual being able to contribute to thedevelopment of culture, rather than merely appreciating what already e xists.

Finally, one further aspect of culture should be noted at this stage, and that is theblurring of the division between cultural consumers a nd producers, between audiences a nd

artists that has taken place recently. In the last century the public and the artist were twodifferent parts o f the c ultural community, separated by the p roscenium arch and the TVscreen. Artists a nd arts a dministrators i ncreased the distance by b ecoming increasinglyprofessionalised, and some went so far as t o dene their artistry in terms o f their opposition tothe general public. Technology e mphasised the division by h elping to turn the vast majority o fthe population into passive consumers o f lm, radio and TV.

But the s tark divide b etween c ultural producer and consumer was a lways false. Culturehas a t all times been created in the space where the two meet; when the knowledge,prejudices a nd world views o f the audience confront those of the artist, and the artist

responds. In the new homemade-culture world of mass creativity a nd instant feedback, therealisation that culture is b rought about through interaction is b ecoming increasingly a pparent.

This u nderstanding of culture as so mething constantly cr eated and reinvented throughdialectic has implications for how governments treat culture. Culture is not something thatgovernments c an deliver. It is n ot like a road-building programme or an unemploymentbenet. Just as t he Department for Health does n ot deliver health, so the DepartmentforCulture, Olympics, Media and Sport does n ot deliver culture. Both health and culture areformed throughdecisions a nd choices m ade by individuals in the contextof what the privateand public s ector make available.Governments ca n partially se t the terms for howculturedevelops t hrough a policy framework of commercial regulation, town planning, artsfunding, personal taxation, property rights, curriculum content and so on. In turn those policiesaffect institutional and business c hoices, which then provide the raw materials f rom whichpeople make their culture.

3. Culture and class t ogetherThe era of different classes h aving easily identiable and separate cultures i s l ong

gone. Working classculture, as u nderstood in the twentieth century, arosefrom a particularcombination of circumstances: towns w here there was o ne dominant industry a nd a footballteam with players t aken from the backstreets, a mutual building society b earing the townsname, a local brewery, bakery and newspaper owned by prominent families w hom everyoneknew. Even the buscolours a dopted by local authorities g ave a s ense of distinctiveness, prideand solidarity. All of these have gone. One of the fathers of Cultural Studies, RichardHoggart,was mourning their decline as long ago as 1957in his b ook The Uses o f Literacy ,32but since


12/32

then theyhave entirely disappeared, taking with them the pillars of working-class cultural self-help such as r eading rooms, and non-vocational adult education. In Mind the Gap , the writerand columnist Ferdinand Mount provides a detailed account of how working-class institutionswere attacked by writers a nd intellectuals t hroughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.33 They have also been destroyed by globalisation, nancial markets a nd changes i n local

government.But more positively, a distinctive working-class culture disappeared because increasing

wealth and improvements in production and distribution meant that what had been luxuryconsumption becamedemocratised. The affluent teenagers of the 1950s an d1960s g rew up todemand the range and qualityof goods and the experiences that their social superiorshad enjoyed. In doing so, they g ained not just in material ways, but in self-assurance. Classdeference became m uch less p revalent partly because o f the c ultural condence g ained bywalking into shops, colleges a nd theatres t hat had previously been out of bounds.

Just as t here is n o longer an easily denable working-class culture, it is equally t rue to

say that what was t hought of as high culture is n either the mark o f, nor the exclusivepreserve of the wealthiest echelons o f society. There are plenty o f multi-millionaires w ho dontgive a g for drama or dance, and plenty more who happily listen to hip-hop and s ome o fthem made their millions f rom hip-hop. Although social groups a nd peer approval are stillimportant in forming our cultural choices, what we read, watch and listen to is m uch moreindividualised than it used to be, and there is m uch less cultural determinism owing from thegeography of where people live, what they do for a living, or where they went to school.

One response to the increasing complexity of the links b etween culture and c lass h asbeen to adopt sophisticated ways o f segmenting the population. Instead o f concentrating oneconomic inequality, or attempting to nd out where the lines ca n be drawn between working,middle and upper classes, analysts in both private sector market research and in publiclyfunded arts au dience research h ave p roduced new methods to categorise u s as co nsumers.

Arts C ouncil Englands Arts Audiences: Insight report of 2008 comes u p with 13categories o f cultural consumer, ranging from urban arts e clectic to limited means, nothingfancy. In the p rivate a nd public se ctors there a re m any g eodemographic se gmentationsystems with sna ppy names like ACORN, CAMEO and MOSAIC the latter divides thepopulation into an amazing 67 different types. 34

Should we conclude from all this t hat there is n ow no difference between the cultureenjoyed by the aristocrat and the teenager on a sink e state? Are we all so free-wheeling in ourability to choose from the wide range of cultural offerings t hat class makes n o difference to ourchoices? C learly not. There may b e long-term-unemployed gallery-lovers, and the Q ueen mayenjoy Dads Army on the TV, but as P rofessor Tony Bennett and his co lleagues p oint out inthe m ost comprehensive a nd co mpelling a cademic as sessment of the su bject, published thisyear:


13/32

Our multiple correspondence analysis d emonstrates, and other statistical techniquesconrm, that cultural preferences track lines of social cleavage. This d oes not howeverassume a highly unied a nd uniform shape The testimony o f individual intervieweessuggests that nuanced personal differences oscillate around core class patterns.35

Class c ertainly remains a factor when making c ultural choices, in commercial culture

as w ell as inpublicly funded culture. Data from Arts C ouncil England show that what used tobe called high culture is s till disproportionately e njoyed by the better off and better educated(see Table 1).

Table 1 Attendance and participation in at least one arts e vent by demographicsubgroup.

Source: Oskala and Bunting, 200936

The differences a re stark, and over the last decade they h ave not been changing to anysignicant degree. The data continue to point to big class differences w hen it comes t oculture. As B ennett concludes:

The working class in Britain is, in general, not engaged with high culture: it neither likesnor is interested in the items and genres of legitimate culture. Most notably, its members do

not go extensively t o art galleries, museums, theatre, classical concerts and the like.37Although there are no directly comparable data, similar differences i n cultural

attendance between higher and lower socio-economic g roups are noticeable across E uropeand in the US. Figures from the EU for example show 58 per cent of managers going to thetheatre, but only 24 per cent of manual workers.38In the US, those earning less t hat $10,000a year are about a third as l ikely to attend the arts a s so meone earning more than $75,000.39 But there a re d ifferences b etween countries. As a E urope-wide s urvey co ncludes:

Data on households expenditure can be analysed taking into account the socio-economic si tuation of households. This i nformation conrms t he commonly h eld perceptionthat cultural consumption is i nuenced by income. Nevertheless, it is i nteresting to see towhich extent this i mpact can be observed in different countries. In some countries, culturalconsumption grows st eadily a s i ncome increases, while in others a big jump is o bserved forhouseholds w ith the highest income. 40

Just as c lass m atters w hen it comes t o cultural choices, so too do cultural choicesaffect class. AsKawashima says, museums o r theatres have n ot causedpoverty, but by beingculturally exclusive, they have helped to institutionalise the socially excluded in apernicious


14/32


15/32

the audience to loathe and fear the (non-)working classes. Another way of dealing withthelower orders i s t hrough sentimentality, from Upstairs, Downstairs on TV, to Blood Brothers onthe West End stage. Other commercial approaches t o the poor include intrusion and mockeryin many T V reality shows, commercial exploitation through recording contracts, and bigbusinesses r ipping off street fashion and individual designers.

The poor are also patronised and treated as fools, although, as R ichard Hoggart said:Some of us have been saying for many ye ars t hat we, the audiences, the customers, thevoters, are not as d aft as those who s eek our support often seem to assume. 45

Worst of all, middle-class, not to mention extraordinarily r ich, pop musicians h aveoffered the poor the message that there is n o point in going to school. In the 1970s P ink Floydsang We d ont need no e ducation hey, teachers, leave them kids a lone, and in 2008 theKaiser Chiefs came up with the lyric Its cool to know nothing. But its not cool to knownothing. Its stupid. For individuals, being uneducated reduces their chances in life, and enmasse , a population that knows n othing isnt capable of being a functioning democracy,

however cool it may b e.One of the most pernicious a spects o f popular culture has b een to offer the poor a

vision of success a nd happiness b ased on celebrity, material goods a nd money, in the form ofreality TV and talent shows. Another has b een to portray the poor as i ntractably other. AsLibby Brooks r ecently wrote in the Guardian :

Of course, decent television requires a strong narrative arc be that the bampotbehaviour of protagonists o n The Scheme, a local campaign for youth club funding on SecretMillionaire, or an MPs q ueasy s tint in a rotting council at in Tower Block o f Commons. Butwhats missing from these primetime parables is the context for social dysfunction, the

structural reasons why poverty persists, and any understanding that long-embedded lifechances ca nnot be changed by the momentary intervention of a minor celebrity. 46

Publicly funded cultureThe poor face many disadvantages in relation topubliclyfunded culture. First, they

suffer from a kind ofregressivetaxation, in the form of lottery m oney b eing used topay forpleasures in which they dont take part. Moneymoves from the poor to the rich, and from theregions t oLondon. As t he novelist and blogger Stewart Home said in 2000, to say that thecurrent system of funding the arts i s i nequitable is t o state the obvious.47

Second, they nd it difficult to enter the cultural workforce, since they a re unable to takeunpaidinternships a nd are not connected to the social networks t hat provide routes i ntoemployment.

Third, they are invited to subscribe to, rather than shape, the culture that is on offer. Butmost of all, they a re alienated. Arts e vents a nd arts i nstitutions a re uncomfortable places t o beif you dont know the rules. The sociologist Richard Sennett argues that individuals cannotsustain a sense of their own worth if institutions n eglect them, but how many a rts i nstitutionstruly respect the disadvantaged?48 Much attention has b een paid to users and audiences


16/32


17/32

will require a fair wind of politicalwill, anaccurate reading of the guiding stars t hroughintellectual inquiry, and a strong and capable crew.

5. A new direction of travelOh it was a complicated business, loving art. It involved a lot more ill-will than one

might have suspected. 54Nick H ornby, Juliet Naked, 2009

If the situation of the poor in relation to culture is to improve, then a twin-track approachis n eeded. On an individual basis p eople must be allowed and encouraged to increase theircultural capital, which helps their social mobility. But on a collective basis, culture needs to becreated by e veryone rather than dened by a narrow elite. This m ight seem contradictory, for

surely increasing the cultural capital of one person, however much it might help the individualthemselves, merely e nlarges t he elite and reinforces t he existing order? The answer is,however, that if the overall culture is b ecoming more uidly a nd liberally d ened, then theexisting cultural and social order will itself change. This is why cultural inclusion and exclusionon the one hand, and cultural denition and creation on the other, need to be considered inparallel. Taken together, both can be plotted on an axis b etween oligarchy a nd democracy.

The diagram in Figure 1 may h elp to explain the argument.Figure 1 Culture: from oligarchy to democracy

Cultural inclusion and exclusionThe left side of the diagram shows h ow three differentgroups a ffect the ability o f people

in general to takepart in the established culture of the arts and heritage, whether that cultureexists w ithin the publicly funded or commercial spheres.

Cultural snobs The cultural snobs, a small but still inuential group, aretypied not onlyby their allegiance to certain art forms a nd periods, but by their insistence that only thealreadyeducated should enjoy them, an attitude typied byLondon-based art critic BrianSewell who reportedly sa id:

A new exhibition by post-war artthe capital. By the very n ature of the audience in London it is e xposed to very m uch more artand culture and is therefore more sophisticated. There is no doubt about it. 55

In his e ssay The good enough visitor Mark ONeill,the former Head of Arts a ndMuseums i n Glasgow, charts the critical response to a number of exhibitions p ut on in the late1990s t hat tried to open up the works i n a gallery to a new audience. He maintains t hat the


18/32


19/32


20/32

Isfahan, Benin and Kyoto. They would recognise signicant artists a nd writers w orking inwhatever age, in whatever medium. As the author Tony S ewell says: What about jazz? Thereis so much to learn from Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane and Miles D avis. What about theclassical folk c ulture of the Caribbean?65

To provide children with an education only in traditional, received culture does them a

disservice. This i s w here the neo-mandarins f ail. Children need to know about Shakespeareand Wordsworth, but they also need to know about hip-hop and manga comics. It is limitingand patronising to think that they n eed only o ne or the other. Old and new cultures, familiarand unfamiliar, high and popular, are all part of the mix if you want to understand the worldthat we live in and to operate with ease as a local or a global citizen.

In terms o f class, this m atters b ecause an omnivorous a pproach to culture has n owbecome the mark of cultural capital, and hence an inuence on social mobility. As B ennettsays: Arguably it is l ess t he selection of cultural content (as w ith legitimatecultural items) andmore the orientation towards c ultural consumption that delineates c lass d ivisions in the UK.66

In the e xclusion/inclusion battle, the neo-mandarins a re keen to encourage access,whichessentially s uggests t hat there is s omething of universalvalue that everyone is e ntitledto and should benetfrom. They believe that culture should and can be madeaccessible to allpeople and that if only we remove all the barriers t o culture be they p hysical, geographical,economic, or psychological culture will become accessible and currently u nder-representedsegments of the public will have proportionate representation in the audience.67This is aworthy project, which helps individual social mobility in todays society.

But the new cosmopolitans ha ve a much more radical agenda a nd this is the seconddifference b etween them and the neo-mandarins t o open up the denition of whatconstitutes c ulture, and thereby to make the institutions o f culture more socially inclusive bychanging what they d o, rather than simply c hanging the way that they do it. It is a bout makinginstitutions w ork for all people, not about making more people conform to a mould thatfocuses on an institutionally dened product.

The new cosmopolitans, then, are in one sense the new cultural middle classes,classied as s uch by their omnivorous a pproach to culture. But whereas t he old culturalmiddle class sought to dene culture, to control it and to arbitrate it, the new cosmopolitansare comfortable with culture being uid and eclectic, and emerging from the cut and thrust ofcontemporary life.

Cultural denition and creationThe major difference between the neo-mandarins and the new cosmopolitans is n ot

that the latter simply add to the list of acceptable artists, artforms or objects; more than that,they se e cu lture a s op en-ended, dynamic an d dened by reference t o people rather thancultural product. As t he p hilosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah stresses:


21/32

Cosmopolitanism shouldnt be seen as so me exalted attainment: it begins w ith thesimple idea that in the human community, as in n ational communities, we need to develophabits of coexistence: conversation in its o lder meaning, of living together, association.68

The right side of the diagram in Figure 1 follows a similar trajectory t o that on the leftside, moving from the denition of culture by a social elite to the creation of culture through

mass participation and interaction; in other words f rom oligarchy to democracy. In terms o f theKulturkampf, or culture war, the big question is this: Is the meaning of culture determined by asmall group in society, or is i t an open question that everyone contributes t o?

Over recent years, the g atekeepers o f publicly funded a nd commercial culture h avebroadened their and our ideas o f what counts a s cu lture, and they are also increasinglyopening their decisions t o inuence from outside. In funded culture, more-or-less liberalattitudes h ave over the years e xpanded the denition of culture so that, for example, jazz andpuppetry a re now funded as w ell as o pera and ballet. In commercial culture, market forcesinuence the professional gatekeepers si milarly to expand the range of cultural forms a nd

cultural expression. In both cases, however, the point is that culture is something that isultimately dened by bureaucracies or corporations.

In homemade culture by co ntrast, culture is cr eated among people by the interaction ofaudiences a nd artists, producers an d consumers. And this em ergent property of homemadeculture is b eginning to have an increasinglypowerful effect in publicly funded and commercialculture, encouraging institutions and corporations to work with their publics rather than simplyseeing them as co nsumers o f product.

This inexorable shift away from rigid and exclusivist denitions of what constitutesculture, towards a more democratic idea that culture is c reated together, also alters t heposition of culture from being something that exists a part from politics and society, to onewhere it is a forcefor democratic c hange.

As E ilean Hooper-Greenhill, Emeritus P rofessor of Museums S tudies, puts it:Culture is n ot an autonomous r ealm of words, things, beliefs, andvalues. It is n ot an

objective body of facts to be transmitted topassive receivers. It is l ived and experienced; it isabout producing representations, creating versions, taking a position, and arguingapoint ofview.69

Viewed in this l ight, how culture gets t o bedened, and who has a voice, enters i nto theterritory ofsocial justice. Not only that, but the question of social justice reects back on thequality of the culture itself.In The Common Reader , Virginia Woolf wrote that [i]t isfrom themiddle class that writers spring, because it is in the middle class only that the practice ofwritingis natural and habitual, and she argued that this n arrowness led to literary failure,because those writers c ould not truly represent the other classes i n society. She nished heressay by a sking the question: The art of a truly democratic a ge will be what? 70


22/32


23/32

The problem of course is t hat cultural choices a re not being made from an equalstarting point, and since cultural capital is a factor i n social mobility, that matters.Governments, arts institutions a nd commercial companies ca nnot force people to drink a t thecultural water trough, but there are things t hat they c an do to inuence, assist and enable botha more democraticcreation of culture, and a wider access t o existing culture.

The UK starts w ith a number of advantages. First, we already have a strong base, bothin terms o f infrastructure and talent. To take London as a n example, the capital city h as m oremuseums, music ve nues, arts h igher education colleges, theatre and concert halls,nightclubs, music p erformances, World Heritage sites a nd festivals t han New York, Paris,Tokyo or Shanghai, often by a considerable margin. 76

We ve ry much need to guard a gainst the s mugnotion that the UK is the worldscreative hub theworlddoes n ot, and never will have one but nonetheless w e are good atculture. We have a rich cultural heritage, a strong creative sector that accounts f or around sixpercent of GDP, and a large number of world-class c ultural gures. We should be culturally

condent without being culturally a rrogant.Second, achieving cultural social justice would not be a costly p roject. Governments in

OECD countries sp end very little on culture and creativity. What they do spend is o ftenmatched by vo luntary co ntributions from private supporters. Together, the money thatgovernments a nd sponsors p ut in is d warfed by the publics a ppetite to pay for its e njoymentof culture. Governments get a huge nancial return on their investment in culture, and if therewas g reater social justice in culture, with more people able to increase their cultural capitaland exercise their creativity, there is every reason to suppose that this would have anoticeable effect on the UKs n ational accounts.

7. Finding a b etter ap proachThere are many ways that governments a nd institutions ca n encourage a direction of

travel from oligarchic t o democratic c ulture. Because people live theircultural and social liveswell beyond the connes of what governments traditionally see as culture, those interventionsneed to take place across a broad canvas.

In fact such interventions a re already happening, but they are not acknowledged ascultural matters. Intellectual property law, for example, is d iscussed in terms of property rights,commercial success a nd economic effects, not in terms o f personal creativity, pleasure andenjoyment, and rights o f access t o common cu lture.

Commercial cultureCommercial culture offers o pportunities t o creativemusicians, artists, writers a nd the

like. It also producesa plural and dynamic c ulture offering a wide range of choice. At its b est itgives u s a w idely sh ared co mmon ground of creative e xcellence in pop music,


24/32

fashion,broadcasting and beyond. At the margins, governmentsattempt to place limits o n freespeech and expression in commercial as w ell as in other spheres o f culture.Governmentsneed to e nsure that commercial culture isheterogeneous a nd a vailable.

The policy prescriptions are straightforward:Ensure that public se rvice broadcasting is st rong enough to provide a benchmark of

quality for the commercial world to live up to and exceed.Regulate commercial distribution networks so as t o keep plural networks and a lot of

choice on radio and TV.Protect small-scale bookshops, publishers a nd music co mpanies from predatory

competition.Invest in training and education so that the disadvantaged can enter the creative and

cultural industries.Regulate the copyright protection of commercial archives. As B ill Ivey p oints o ut, the

ownership of much of our common culture is i n private hands, and we need rights in relation

to that culture.77Homemade cultureThe barriers to entry to homemade culture are similar to those that exist in other parts

of the cultural world: having the money, time and condence to get involved. But there is a nadditional barrier gaining access t o the means o f production and communication, and theskills t o use them. Overcoming that problem involves b ridging the digital divide, and makingchanges in the education system.

There is a revolution going on in homemade culture led by the younger generation, andgovernments sh ould be ensuring that everyone has a ccess t o the tools, spaces a nd p laces,and education that they n eed. This w ill be vital for the economic future of large numbers o fpeople. In the UK, according to the last Labour governments S ecretary o f State for Culture,Media a nd Sport, the part of the economy cove red by his Department amounts to 10 per centof GDP a claim echoed in Labours p re-election a rts m anifesto.78

The creative industries c ontinue to provide not justmore jobs a nd more prosperity, butmore expansion of the human spirit: making music is g ood work in e very se nse. Creativeability, like intelligence, is not inherited; nor does i t respect class. But there are many factorsthat inhibit the realisation of the creativity of the disadvantaged, and in some ways, thebarriers are getting higher. Some of the structural factors that encouraged the creativity of thepoor such as s tudent grants f or poor kids t o attend art school, and the earlycareers o f bandsbeing funded by record companies arestarting to disappear either due to market forces o rgovernment decisions.

The US economist Richard Florida has cha rted the growing income gap between whathe terms the creative classes and the rest of the workforce.79 Compared with other OECDcountries, the UK has a particularly s trong creative sector, accounting for a greater proportionof GDP than its p eers.


25/32

This p resents t wo equally troubling q uestions, both of which need detailed researchbeyond the scope of this essay. Britain is unequal and Britain is creative. To conclude thatinequality is therefore creative is a syllogism, but nonetheless the relationship between thetwo warrants i nvestigation. In a famous s cene in the lm The Third Man , Orson Wellescharacter Harry Lime sa ys:

You know what the fellow said in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias t hey hadwarfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they p roduced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinciand the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had ve hundred years o fdemocracy a nd peace a nd what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.80

The second issue is that if the ability to become part of the creative class is restrictedby background or class and getting into employment in the creative industries i s o ften asmuch about who you know as w hat you know a nd if earnings within the creative se ctorgrowmore rapidly than in other sectors, then society will become more, rather than less, unequal.

The exercise of creativity is i mportant economically, and can help individual people out

of poverty, but there is another reason why c reative expression is important: creative workmakes p eople feel good about themselves. Life satisfaction surveys s how that, after threedecades of economic g rowth, we are no more satised with our lives t han we were in the mid1970s. The link between increasing GDP and increasing happiness has b een well and trulybroken. Cultural inclusion and the exercise of creativity p rovide important routes t owards t hegoal of making life more enjoyable and fullling:

The contrast between the material success and social failure of many r ich countries i san important signpost. It suggests t hat, if we are to gain further improvements i n the realquality o f life, we need to shift attention from material standards a nd economicgrowth to ways

of improving the psychological and social wellbeing of whole societies.81The economist Richard Layard, in his b ook Happiness: Lessons from a ne w science ,

argues t hat happiness is b rought about by s tatus, meaning, fairness, helping others, respect,trust and adaptability.82A happy so ciety needs a culture that increases t hese goods, but aswe have seen, our cultural system too often reinforces low status, is patently unfair, and failsto respect i ndividuals.

Publicly funded cultureAt the most basic level, governments s hould shift the focus o f cultural policy away from

institutional efdoms a nd cultural forms, and focus i nstead on people. Historically, the culturalpolicies o f all British governments h ave been concerned not with artists o r audiences b utoverwhelmingly with institutions. Legislation has c oncerned itself with institutionalgovernance,but not with cultural rights. Cultural fundinghas s imilarly b een directed towards t hemaintenanceof organisations either that, or to the achievement of targets where people aretreated not as i ndividuals w ith cultural rights, but as c lay to be worked on.

Policy should instead be attempting to produce culturally co ndent individuals w ithcreative capabilities. Education is crucial. Matthew Arnold was surely right to say that


26/32


27/32

The second change needed in institutional practice ows f rom evidence that, in thewords o f the Department for Culture, Media and Sport report Culture on Demand , family a ndsocial networks a re the most important drivers o f demand, 88 and that a great deal of culturalparticipation is d riven by a desire for social connection. Our cultural choices a re heavilyinuenced by our peers, and we often rely on their judgements a nd recommendations. The

American commentator Diane Ragsdale points o ut that a New Zealand arts sur vey in 2006discovered that the low attendance segment of the population, more than any other group,needed to be encouraged by their own social networks, and sheconcludes in order tofacilitate social behaviour, art spaces n eed to be places w here people can commune witheach other and with artists.89

Social networks are clearly important, but an understanding of how they work is i n itsinfancy. In their book Connected: The amazing power of social networks and how they sh apeour lives , the authors N icholas C hristakis a nd James F owler have discovered that differentbehaviours a nd moods, much like different viruses, spread a ccording to different

patterns.90More work is needed on the detail of how cultural participation is a ffected bynetworks.

Another thing that arts o rganisations c ould do is t o examine their employmentpractices, especially in relation to internships. They need to ask themselves whether theyrecruit from all sections of society, or whether there are class barriers in the way of entry andadvancement.

8. ConclusionNo culture can live if it attempts t o be exclusive.Mahatma Gandhi

Tim OReilly, the editor of Wired , says that A true web 2.0 application is o ne that getsbetter the more people use it.91Culture works in the same way. Culture is not a list of pastachievements. It is a dynamic renegotiationand reinterpretation of what we are heirs to, plusthe constant creation of new work an d new meanings.

In an open and democratic so ciety, it should be possible for everyone, from whateverbackground or viewpoint, to take part fully in cultural life. If that is n ot happening, then thatsociety is b oth selling some of its c itizens s hort, and also operating inefficiently, because it isfailing to draw on the talents of all its people. This means that arts policy, and p olicies thatinuence culture m ore b roadly in the commercial world and policies t hat affect peoplescapacity to create culture for themselves, are inextricably linked with issues of social justice.

In Britain today, part of the population is culturally and creatively disenfranchised. Butsocial justice and cultural enfranchisement cannot be achieved simply by increasing access t o


28/32

an already-determined legitimate culture. In addition, the culture of the nation whichincludes m any c ultures must itself be open to contestation and to adaptation from all partsof society.

This i s a long-term project, but not a hopeless one. Almost the entire population takepart in some form of cultural activity, even if that mostly falls o utside the commonly a dopted

criteria for measuring participation in the arts and heritage. Pretty much everyone listens,reads, watches, dances a nd sings. As t he novelist and poet Clive James sa ys: There is somuch to appreciate and it is a ll available for peanuts.92There even seems t o be a wish to joinin more with legitimate culture, if only it was m ore welcoming: The arts d ebate found astrong se nse among many members of the public of being excluded from something theywould like to be able to access93

In a modern democratic society, the ability to understand and engage with the richvariety of cultures that everyone encounters is a precondition to being able to play a full part incontemporary life. A lack of cultural condence places l imits o n social mobility. But more

importantly, the capacity to express oneself culturally is a mark o f freedom, and an exercise ofpower. If culture is t o help break d own class d ivisions a nd inequalities, rather than reinforcethem, then culture itself must be created by e veryone and for everyone.

ReferencesR Wilkinson and K Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why e quality i s b etter for everyone ,

London, Penguin, 2009, p. 165K Fox, Watching the E nglish: The h idden rules o f English behaviour , London, Hodder &

Stoughton, 2004D Morrison and A Compagnon, The Death of French Culture , Cambridge, Polity P ress,

2009J R uskin, The Complete Works o f John Ruskin (Library E dition) , ET Cook and A

Wedderburn (eds), 39 vols, London, G Allen, 190312, vol. 17, p. 105S Sands, David Cameron: Born a nd bred to rule, London EveningStandard , 12 May

2010B Johnson, Heres a really r ight-wing idea: learn poetry, Telegraph.co.uk , 17 March

2009, at www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/5004215/Heres-a-really-Right-wing-idea-learn-poetry.html (last accessed 1 July 2010)

N Kawashima, Audience development and social inclusion in Britain: tensions,contradictions a nd paradoxes i n policy a nd their implications f or culturalmanagement, International Journal of Cultural Policy , vol. 12, no. 1, 2006, p. 66


29/32

J Meadway and J Mateos-Garcia, Demanding Growth: Why the UK needs a r ecovery plan based on growth , London, National Endowment for Science, Technology

and the Arts, 2009B Gunnell and M Bright, Creative Survival in Hard Times , London, Arts C ouncil

England, 2010, p. 5

D Halpern, The Hidden Wealth o f Nations , Cambridge, Polity P ress, 2009Dick S tanley, quoted in Organisation for Economic C o-operation and Development,

National Accounts a nd Financial Statistics:International measurement of the economic a ndsocial importance of culture , Paris, OECD, 2007, p. 33

See X Timbeau and T Melonio, Learning from the SenStiglitzFitoussiCommission:HDI 2.0? Paris, Agence Franaise d e Dveloppement, 2009, p. 7

R Williams, Culture is ordinary, in Resources of Hope , R Gable (ed.), London, Verso,1989 [1958], p. 1

J Major, Today , 24 Nov 1990

See, for example, A McElvoy, Political notes, Prospect , Jan 2010, p. 10J H ill, M Brewer, S Jenkins e t al, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report

of the N ational Equality P anel , London, Government Equalities Office, 2010, p. 3P Toynbee and D Walker, Unjust Rewards: Ending the greed that is b ankrupting Britain ,

London, Granta, 2009Hill et al, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK , p. 2T Judt, Ill Fares the Land , Penguin Press, 2010Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit LevelD Dorling, Injustice: Why inequality p ersists , Bristol, Policy Press, 2010R Ramesh, Londons r ichest people worth 273 times m ore than the p oorest, Guardian ,

21 Apr 2 010, at w ww.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/21/wealth-social-divide-health-inequality(last accessed 28 June 2 010)

D Dorling, Interview, Thinking allowed, BBC Radio 4, 21 Apr 2010N Krieger commenting on Dorling, Injustice , see www.amazon.co.uk/Injustice-Why-

Social-Inequality-Persists/dp/1847424260#reader_1847424260 (last accessed 18 July 2010)B Ivey, arts, inc. , Berkley a nd Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2008J H olden, Democratic Culture , London, Demos, 2008JM Keynes, The Arts C ouncil: its p olicy and hopes, The Listener , vol. 34, no. 861, 12

July 1945, p. 32Lawrence Alloway cited in R Hewison, Culture and C onsensus: England, art and

politics , London, Methuen, 1997, p. 135Voluntary Arts N etwork, 2010, see www.voluntaryarts.org (last accessed 28 June

2010)National Arts Index , Washington DC, Americans for the Arts, 2009, p. 5


30/32

M Arnold, Culture a nd Anarchy , J D over Wilson (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1961 [1869]

R Hoggart, The Uses o f Literacy , London, Penguin, 1990 [1957]F Mount, Mind the Gap , revised edn, London, Short Books, 2010 [2004]Arts C ouncil England, Arts Audiences: Insight , London, Arts C ouncil England, 2008

T Bennett, M Savage, E Silva et al, Culture, Class, Distinction , Abingdon, Routledge,2010, pp. 25152

See Tables 4 and 5 in A Oskala a nd C Bunting, Arts Engagement in England from 2005/06 to 2007/08: , London, Arts

Council England, 2009Bennett et al, Culture, Class, Distinction , p. 252Eurostat, Cultural Statistics Handbook , Brussels, European Commission, 2007, p. 138National Endowment for the Arts, 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts ,

Research Division Report No. 54, Washington DC, NEA, 2002, p. 19

Eurostat, Cultural Statistics Handbook , p. 127Kawashima, Audience development and social inclusion in Britain, p. 67R Crompton, Class and Stratication , Cambridge, Polity P ress, 2008P Bourdieu, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste , London, Routledge,

1984 [1979]Bennett et al, Culture, Class, Distinction , p. 259R Hoggart, Why treat us l ike dimwits?, Independent on Sunday , 19 Feb 1995L Brooks, Exotic, extreme, engrossing tune in to channel poverty, Guardian , 28 May

2010In M Wallinger and M Warnock (eds), Art for All? Their politics and our culture , London,

Peer, 2000, p. 125R Sennett, Respect: The formation of character in an age of inequality , London,

Penguin, 2003C Bunting, TW Chan, J G oldthorpe e t al, From Indifference to E nthusiasm: Patterns o f

arts a ttendance in England , London, Arts C ouncil England, 2008Ibid, p. 65B Rogers, Only c onnect, Guardian , 1 May 2010R Godwin, Baby boomers h ave a smug grip on the arts, Evening Standard , 28 Apr

2010Q Letts, The real thing: how philandering can leave you oundering, MailOnline , 23

Apr 2010, at www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1268178/How-philandering-leave-oundering.html#ixzz0sAEAh7Hb (last accessed 28 June 2010)

N Hornby, Juliet Naked , London, Penguin 2009, p. 32


31/32

B Sewell, quoted in BBC, Are London art audiences m ore sophisticated?, BBC News ,16 Jan 2003, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2658785.stm (last accessed 28 June2010)

M ONeill, The good enough visitor, in R Sandell (ed.), Museums, Society, Inequality ,London, Routledge, 2002, p. 34

Letts, The real thingF Leavis, Mass Civilisation, Minority Culture , London, Minority P ress, 1930, p. 3Greater London Authority, Cultural Metropolis: The Mayors p riorities f or culture 2009

12 , London, GLA, 2008, p. 19Williams, Culture is ordinary, p. 12D Hill, Boris and the Kulturkampf, at Dave Hills L ondon Blog , 17 Mar 2009, at

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2009/mar/17/blogpost (last accessed 28 J une 2 010)Bennett et al, Culture, Class, Distinction , p. 253Hewison, Culture a nd Consensus , p. 16

Greater London Authority, The Mayors C ultural Strategy: 2012 a nd beyond , Draft 1,London, GLA, Feb 2010, p. 3

Tony Sewell, cited in Hill, Boris and the KulturkampfBennett et al, Culture, Class, Distinction , p. 254Kawashima, Audience development and social inclusion in Britain, p. 61K Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics i n a world o f strangers , London, Allen

Lane, 2006, p. xixE Hooper-Greenhill, Museums a nd the Interpretation of Visual Culture , London,

Routledge, 2000, p. 19V Woolf, The niece of an earl, in The Second Common Reader , US edn,Harvest, 1986

[1932], p. 215. Also available online as V Woolf, The CommonReader, Second series , athttp://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapter17.html (last accessed 13 J uly2010)

R Sandell, Museums a s a gents o f social inclusion, Museum Management andCuratorship , vol. 17, no. 4, 1998, p. 409

D Kynaston, Austerity Britain 194551 , London, Bloomsbury, 2007, pp. 17576The C ultural State, BBC Radio 4, 6 Sep 2004Buntinget al, From Indifference to Enthusiasm , p. 10Public Accounts C ommittee, Promoting Participation with the Historic E nvironment ,

Public Accounts C ommittee 2010, atwww.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmpubacc/189/18906.htm (lastaccessed 28 June 2010)

Greater London Authority, The Mayors C ultural StrategyIvey, arts, inc.


32/32

Labour Party, Creative Britain: Labours cultural manifesto , London, Labour Party, 2010,p. 1

R Florida, Creative class w ar, Washington Post , Jan/Feb 2004The Third Man , lm, directed by Carol Reed, London, British Lion Films, 1949Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level , p. 4

R Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a n ew science , London, Penguin, 2005Arnold, Culture a nd Anarchy , p. 209National Arts Index , p. 19M Gove, Academic r igour is t he answer not an A-level in dance, Evening Standard ,

17 Aug 2009C Antrobus, From audiences t o users: changing art galleries a nd museums t ogether,

London, National Endowment for Science Technology an d the Arts,2010, p. 5, atwww.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/ClaireAntrobus.pdf(last accessed 22 July 2010)

D Ragsdale, Surviving the culture change, keynote address t o the AustraliaCouncil

Arts Marketing S ummit, Melbourne, 34 July 2008, atwww.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/speeches/speech_items/diane_ragsdale_address_to_australia_council_arts_marketing_summit (last accessed 13 Ju ly2010)

Prepared for DCMS by FreshMinds, Culture on Demand: Ways to engage a b roaderaudience , Department for Culture, Media and S port, Crown Copyright, July 2007, atwww.culture.gov.uk/images/research/CultureOnDemand.pdf (last accessed 13 Ju ly 2010)

Ragsdale, Surviving the culture changeN Christakis a nd J F owler, Connected: The amazing power of social networks and how

they shape our lives , London, Harper Press, 2009Quoted in M Knight, What is t he leadership role in driving user-led and open innovation

in the sector?, 2010, p. 1, at www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/MichelleKnight.pdf (lastaccessed 22 July 2010)

C James, Cultural Amnesia , London, Picador, 2007, p. xxiiBuntinget al, From Indifference to Enthusiasm

culture and class

Documents