STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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Changing the culture of privilege
MIKE QUILLE argues the case for a radical shift away from the few to the many in funding and support for the arts, recreation and the media
ELOQUENT ADVOCATE: Caleb Femi, Young People’s Laureate for London, speaking at the House of Commons last year about how learning through arts and culture improves educational standards
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
“CULTURE is ordinary — that is where we must start,” Marxist writer and critic Raymond Williams once wrote. This means that culture includes not just the arts but much more. It embraces all those learned human activities which give life purpose, meaning and value and in which we engage for enjoyment, entertainment and enlightenment.
As well as the arts, culture includes sport, religion, eating and drinking, fashion and clothing, education, the media and many other popular activities. Fundamentally, cultural activities are social, unifying and egalitarian. They assert our common humanity and solidarity against divisions of class, gender, race and other social divisions caused by capitalism.
And cultural activities, especially art, can directly inspire and support radical change in the real world.
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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
MIKE QUILLE relishes political theatre at its most entertaining, engaging and effective
MIKE QUILLE is impressed by the rigorous Marxist approach to be found in a new book on the dialectics of art
ADAM THERON-LEE RENSCH talks to Mike Quille about what it is to be a working-class writer in the US and patronising perceptions of class that abound left, right and centre
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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
Artists are frequently first in line when it comes to cuts, but society as a whole is left all the poorer – it’s time they were properly valued, says ZITA HOLBOURNE of Artists Union England
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