Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's been a kind of inverse snobbery about culture. I get the feeling some people would look at Shakespeare and say, that's a bit too intimidating for working-class people.
Often, when art from the canon is brought in to fine art classes, it is used as a prop to inspire art-making projects but more rarely as something to study in-depth for itself.
Just as a city cannot protect its manufacturing base without keeping its factories, we cannot have a strong arts sector without studios, rehearsal space, and performance venues.
Too many developers still treat cultural strategies as a fig leaf to get planning permission, rather than make a thoughtful, genuine commitment to the cultural life of their areas.
Differences in racial outcomes are not the same thing as institutional racism any more than the fact that far more men than women are locked up is evidence of institutional sexism.
Perhaps inevitably, media stories focus on differences, which exacerbates tensions; yet Islamic radicalization is, in part, an acute expression of broader trends that affect us all.
A major step towards the universalist approach would be to dismantle the countless diversity policies that encourage people to see everything through the prism of racial difference.
But I do love working for Boris because he never stops. He's always fizzing with good ideas, and when you are looking after culture, that is important. He's quite ambitious for London.
Paradoxically, just at the point when racist attitudes were declining in society and many ethnic groups were integrating successfully, our political leaders became obsessed with racism.
For so long, Arab culture has been misconceived by the western mindset as exotic, or more recently, as dangerous, so spaces like Mathaf are vital for asserting a sense of connectedness.
A lot of my work involves criss-crossing London to visit the many hundreds of projects, theaters, galleries, museums and groups that comprise the capital's astonishingly rich cultural life.
No doubt many people working in race relations sincerely want to make things better. But by constantly drawing attention to race and policing ordinary behavior, they risk making things worse.
The idea that Veronica Wadley has no artistic credibility is just crazy. She has a strong reputation and when she was editor of the 'Evening Standard' she was very highly regarded in the arts sector.
Black artists are encouraged to explore their identity but are then pigeonholed according to their ethnicity. We may have seen the decline of old racism, but we are witnessing a new kind of racialising.
Public art is a unique type of art. It's very different to gallery art because it is something that we pass by every day and it inevitably creates a lot of discussion in a way that gallery art does not.
Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don't need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero.
There is a large number of people who see immigration has been very positive and engaging with the world and cooperating is the future. It is the E.U. which stops us doing that sensibly and intelligently.
Throughout history, cities have been associated with incredible bursts of creative energy - the Renaissance in Florence, or modernism in Paris. London is the cultural metropolis of the early 21st century.
The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s, which have emphasized difference at the expense of shared national identity.
Certainly, 'creativity' has been a vital plank of New Labour strategy. It not only hands out money with the enthusiasm of a Medici, but also invites the talented arts world into the very heart of government.
Why is London particularly attractive for artists? It's partly this incredible concentration of organizations that have a long history but also the spontaneous and informal culture and the opportunities in London.
By appeasing the anti-racism lobby and affirming its culture of grievance, public institutions and business leaders are not making Britain a fairer place. In fact they are harming the very people they aspire to help.
Brewer Street Car Park as the host venue is a brilliant development for London Fashion Week. With its position in Soho, it is at the heart of an area that has long been associated with fashion and creativity in general.
We should get rid of 'tick box' measures that do nothing to address underlying inequality in areas like employment. And we should interrogate the claims of victimization made by some organizations to get their slice of pie.
Sectarian political festivals are not the way Londoners want their money to be spent. Most of us, I suspect, just want to be trusted to get on with other people and not be instructed by activists about the dangers of racism.
Museums and galleries do recruit art historians, but they are overwhelmingly white and middle class, or else from abroad. They understandably fret about the lack of diversity in their curating departments, but is it any wonder?
But everyone, including ethnic minorities, should be worried about how anti-racism is becoming weaponized across the political spectrum - how a lot of people in politics think it's a good idea to exaggerate the problem of racism.
Studying art history is actually one of the few ways of getting a good job in the arts sector. It's hard to be a museum curator without it, work in any senior position in an auction house or gallery, or become a serious art critic.
We need law enforcement as the ultimate deterrent to stop irresponsible and rash young people from making mistakes that will harm others and themselves. Put bluntly, we need them to be scared of getting caught and of getting punished.
There are people working in arts organizations who feel that in recent years there has been a sacrifice of quality and excellence in favor of ticking the right boxes and using the right buzz words because that's what their masters tell them.
At the start of the 21st century, Britain is caught in a confusing riptide of anxiety. Of course racism still exists, but things have improved to a point where many ethnic minority Britons do not experience it as a regular feature in their lives.
If white people are constantly told how culturally different their Asian neighbors are, and if Asians are told to be vigilant against white racism, both groups might conclude that they have little in common and much to fear from their neighbours.
In times of stress, it is easy to look to one's weaknesses and fear the worst, but it is worth remembering that London's cultural strengths are not some ephemeral dot-com bubble; they are a real, tangible legacy of decades of investment in talent.
The growth of race relations management, diversity training and 'promoting good relations' has come at a cost. We are more sensitized to racism, yet far less confident in talking to each other as human beings with similar hopes, problems and aspirations.
The people who fund the arts, provide the arts, and research the arts have all produced a consensus about the value of what they do, which hardly anyone challenges. But do the numbers add up? For all the claims made about the arts, how accurate are they?
Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule.
Stop and search has a controversial history and has not always been carried out professionally by individual officers. Liberal-minded people are right to be wary about its overuse. However, it is also regarded by most people as a legitimate and necessary tactic.
Too often, it is presumed that young people will only like art that they can immediately relate to. Working-class students may be steered towards popular culture like hip-hop, new media and film on the basis that they will find older art forms such as opera or ballet irrelevant.
By importing into the U.K. the divisive politics of anti-racism from America, with its demented campus dramas and neuroses about 'safe spaces', 'micro-aggressions' and 'cultural appropriation,' they make it almost impossible for people of goodwill of all ethnicities to rub along together.
Most Muslims are well integrated, want to live under British law and prefer to send their children to mixed schools. They do not live in bleak ghettoes cut off from society. Their religion is not a barrier to integration and is very often perfectly reconciled with being - and feeling - British.
In cities across the world, directors of leading arts institutions, galleries and museums know that when it comes to attracting locals to their major exhibitions and shows, weekdays tend to be 'cultural dead time' for working people, who are simply too busy to enjoy what their city has to offer.
At the same time women are putting on the headscarf, they are also going to work, to education, increasingly vocal in the media - and this is the confusing thing about Muslim women in the West,. They are becoming Westernized at the same time as they are adopting their religious identity more strongly.
Of course, when people work together, there can be tension and disagreement. But policing informal behavior makes it hard for people to speak freely for fear they will say the wrong thing. Even self-aware individuals can doubt their judgement and start to rely on the diversity trainer to judge if something is offensive.
If black artists can win major commissions and international acclaim, why do we assume that to be black is always to be marginal, or in need of special support? We have to recognize how diversity initiatives can make black artists feel ghettoized and, as some cultural commentators have argued, bear 'the burden of representation.'
Some people think that culture is overhyped and peripheral. A season of opera is less important than the refurbishment of a school, they say. Leaving aside the poverty of imagination and aspiration implicit in such a sentiment, it also ignores hardheaded economic reality: Britain, and London in particular, makes big money from culture.
Some Muslim lobby groups have argued that Christian groups already have public funding for their schools and services so they should too. In response, there are now Hindu and Sikh organisations demanding their own concessions lest they feel left out. The demand to wear the headscarf one day spurs the demand to wear the crucifix the next.
To challenge the dominance of identity politics, we need to champion an alternative universalist approach. This wouldn't mean bland similarity, with everybody talking and looking the same. Instead, it would help us challenge the imposition of formal, ethnic categories and allow us to develop richer differences based on character and interests.