ABSTRACT

Last week I spent two days in Windsor Great Park, hot-housing and think-tanking in a formiable thicket of arts professionals, social philosophers, critics, educators and deep thinkers (no, I am none of these. I was the hack chairperson). From lofty BBC gods to the magnificently quarrelsome arts editor of The Scotsman, they were attempting to define and discuss the role of the arts in society. What’s it all for, then? Music, theatre, fine art, literature, film, television, Internet, everything? Why do we bother?