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Talking class and culture
MIKE QUILL reports on a lively conference in Barnsley that took stock of working-class access to culture and proposed strategies to embed culture within the trade union movement
ESSENTIAL FIRST STEP: The conference at NUM HQ, Barnsley
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AROUND 60 people gathered last Saturday in Barnsley for the Communist Party’s first-ever conference on culture. Called “Class and Culture,” the conference was held in the inspiring surroundings of the NUM headquarters in Barnsley, and was chaired by Ron Brown, co-convener of the party’s Culture Commission.
The aim of the event was to bring together party members, supporters, cultural activists and performers, to look at ways in which the cultural struggle, and the drive to promote cultural democracy, could be ramped up and integrated more closely with our economic and political struggles for a better world.
Communist Party chair Ruth Styles opened the event by sketching out some key problems which we faced in the struggle for cultural democracy. Firstly, problems of access of working-class people to cultural experiences of all kinds, because of cost, location and the increasing lack of cultural education in schools.
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