Arts venues are missing out – and even worse, scaring people off – by ignoring working-class culture, warns Mark Cousins.
In Edinburgh, where I live, the fringe and other festivals are turning this great city into a dressing-up box. The street life is heightened, as if everyone's waiting for their cue, their choreographed moment, the flash mob music to begin.
The arts are manifold these days, re-enchanting and rejuvenating cityscapes as best they can, which is great. The post-industrial world needed new reasons to get us out of the house and, when we noticed the stasis of online life, we again wanted to get out.
So I hate to rain on the parade, but there's a problem with this new cultureverse. As a filmmaker, I regularly tour around the major arts venues and cinemas in the UK and abroad and, despite their fighting the good fight and being run by lovely, committed people, too many of them feel exclusive. The taxi driver who drops you off at them has never been inside. They're too narrow, too defined by class... Keep reading on The Observer
In Edinburgh, where I live, the fringe and other festivals are turning this great city into a dressing-up box. The street life is heightened, as if everyone's waiting for their cue, their choreographed moment, the flash mob music to begin.
The arts are manifold these days, re-enchanting and rejuvenating cityscapes as best they can, which is great. The post-industrial world needed new reasons to get us out of the house and, when we noticed the stasis of online life, we again wanted to get out.
So I hate to rain on the parade, but there's a problem with this new cultureverse. As a filmmaker, I regularly tour around the major arts venues and cinemas in the UK and abroad and, despite their fighting the good fight and being run by lovely, committed people, too many of them feel exclusive. The taxi driver who drops you off at them has never been inside. They're too narrow, too defined by class... Keep reading on The Observer