Cultural Accessibility Quotes

I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.'

He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.

In England, unless I am mistaken, I think some of the politicians who love classical music and opera are a bit loath to be seen there in case people think it is elitist. That is a real shame because it also means we are not allowing our politicians a hinterland that an earlier generation, a Denis Healey, would have taken for granted.

Museums, free libraries, and art galleries have this in common: that they are each expected to fulfill two purposes which are somewhat incongruous, and require to be pursued by different methods and with different appliances. Each of these institutions is expected to minister to the wants both of trained students and of the untrained and ignorant public; and the demands of these two classes of persons are so diverse that they must be provided for separately

I was thrilled that Sadiq Khan was so in support of the idea of culture being at the centre of a city and the idea that it is everyone's right. It can't be a matter of privilege or chance. It should be something everyone can have in their life, and that means knowing what it is.

I believe that we have a responsibility to make culture available for all people, not only those who can afford to go to the movies.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?

The audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events—I’m thinking particularly of the Proms [traditional patriotic promenade concerts]—is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can.

Less money for public media means less access to the arts.

I think Korean barbecue is very accessible to Americans because it's sort of similar to something we know, but with different flavours.

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.

Where I came from, people couldn't afford to go to the theatre.

The humanities don't belong to some elitist group... knowledge as a whole should be embraced.

Culture should be shared, not hoarded.

The film culture has no room for ideas. The literary culture has some room, but not less than they should, and the academic culture has a lot, but there's no way to communicate it in a wide way.

I've been cheered by the reaction to what I've done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I've received in pursuing it.

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously.

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.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

In Latin America, cinema has always been a bourgeois activity, I guess, as it is everywhere. It's just a stupidly expensive art form, and there is nothing you can do about it.

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically.

Undoubtedly there is a difference between people with money having access to the arts that people from working-class backgrounds don't have, but that's not their fault. I'm not taking anything away from these brilliant actors who are doing great stuff in Hollywood. A lot of them are my friends.

Even though education was key in my family, I had no access to museums or art where we lived. I was a bit starved.

I'm a great candidate for why arts funding shouldn't be cut, because I had no experience other than what was at school, I'm from a working-class town, there were no theaters, and the cinema closed when I was a kid. Anything that gave me a voice or a way to express myself I went running headlong toward.