The case for cultural studies

The issue of cultural studies is beginning to re-emerge as people examine the space that surrounds the tight definitions of the skills strategy. Below is  a quote from the playwright, Lee Hall, that addresses this issue and reminds us that an understanding of culture, supported by education is not a marginal issue of leisure and recreation or something of importance only to an elite. Access to culture is a right and one that was won in much the same way as access to the Peak District was. Maximising access to serious cultural experiences is a sign of a tolerant and democratic society. We know that from the history of the alternatives.

"I believe a democracy can only work properly, and indeed a culture can only be deemed rich at all if it does not exclude people from it. Understanding the arts, history, the workings of our culture, including creative contributions for it are essential to the common good. To try and quantify these things on any economic grounds is clearly preposterous but it is clear how much “culture” contributes to our economy, but the point of education has never simply been the acquiring of skills. To know and understand the world around us is what makes us human and civilised. As a society it is what makes tolerant and able to grow. The right to an education, to access to the arts, to cultivating oneself beyond the immediate requirements for survival or the most basic diversions from this hard work, were won as a result of enormous struggle. It really wasn't long ago that the majority of people were excluded from any access to culture or education at all.

It seems crucially important at a time when the cultural education of everyone is vital for our economic development, let alone the need to stem the crassness of a globalised culture whose dissemination is in fewer and fewer hands, that we preserve and indeed extend this privilege to more and more people. The thought of restricting what people learn to immediately expedient skill sets simply misses what is valuable about this education both for the individual and the economy as a whole. Speaking as someone who creates work for hundreds of people by simply writing, and therefore relies on these people to be culturally educated, I know how important it is to allow people to learn and have a cultural knowledge beyond what obviously seems necessary skill for employment.

Without and understanding of the past and of a culture other than trite entertainment we can never aspire to something better. We will all be drones. The WEA is vital and unique in providing a place where people can extend themselves as well as extending the culture at the same time. We are all poorer for a culture where knowledge, education and creativity are reserved for only those that can afford it.

Lee Hall, writer and creator of 'Billy Eliot'

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