“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.