Is doing 'just one thing' to give children a great cultural education enough?
First published on The Future Leaders Trust Insights blog on 13 November 2015 (no longer available). Generation Culture , a new campaign to improve creative and cultural education for pupil premium children in London is asking schools to “do just one thing” to boost their cultural offer. I’m not convinced that doing “just one thing” is enough. The Chair of A New Direction (AND), Maggie Atkinson argues, “cultural education is a right not a privilege”; but what exactly is cultural education and why is it important? The definition of cultural education proposed by Darren Henley, Chair of the Arts Council, is a shopping list covering everything from archives to the built environment to dance to museums to poetry to the visual arts (though missing food). The definition I prefer was offered by Smita Bora of Westminster Academy, who suggested it should be about “generating a love of unfamiliar experiences” (which might be as much about introducing Eton boys to street art as