“Education is, before everything else, the process of giving to the ordinary members of society its full common meanings, and the skills that will enable them to amend these meanings, in the light of their personal and common experience.”
Raymond Williams, ‘Culture is Ordinary’
Culture is indeed ordinary, it includes most human activities: the arts, religion, sport, science and technology, TV/ radio and other media, the internet, eating and drinking, etc. etc. All of these topics have political dimensions involving struggles and negotiations over meanings and values. On this hub are articles on cultural activities apart from the arts, which are to be found on the arts hub, surprisingly enough.
Introduction by Fran Lock This story both is and isn’t about Birkbeck. On the one hand, it is absolutely particular to an iconic institution that recently celebrated... Continue reading
I’ve known journalist and lecturer Jan Goodey for many years and was shocked and saddened to learn he had been sentenced last November to a six-month jail... Continue reading
Keith Flett proposes some ways of taking back control of brewing and pubs, beyond the reach of ‘Big Beer’ in brewing and pubs. Image above: the former... Continue reading
Since the rise of early capitalism, the quest of working people for liberation, equality and peace for all – not only for the evolving bourgeois class –... Continue reading
Introduction The rapid spread of the science-based Enlightenment (c1687-c1804) across Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a cause of much dismay to the reigning monarchies... Continue reading
In the ancient world it tended to be the most trusted slaves who were put in charge of the care and service of the wine cellar. The... Continue reading
From Daleks to Strictly, Mark Perryman explores the meaning of the BBC at 100 For decades those of us of a certain age have been able to measure... Continue reading
What purpose do the arts serve today? The arts – Music, literature, painting, sculpture, dance etc. – represent vibrant aspects of human culture. They don’t provide us... Continue reading
The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how... Continue reading
the limits of (my) sympathy by Fran Lock, with image above by kennardphillips exhorted to remember her humanity, as if humanity itself were some vaguely miraculous quality,... Continue reading