British children are culture starved, study says

BBC

Millions of British children are "culture starved" as they have never been to an art gallery, theatre or museum, a study has claimed.

The research, commissioned by Visit Birmingham, found four in 10 children had never been to an art gallery, while a quarter of parents had never taken their offspring to the theatre.

Read More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16986878

Too true, people on this islands are so glued to reality tv programs it's become the culture for many generations.

That and the theatre being ridiculously over-priced these days...Perhaps a symptom of the lack of interest but they're hardly going to get the crowds back with the amount their charge sometimes.

They should shut down the telly one afternoon a week during school holidays by law. Not only would it encourage people to 'get out more', it would also boost the economy i.e. train travel and theatre/cinema/museum admissions etc.

I don't know how the situation is in the UK, but I know how it is in Romania (my country).

There are only a handful of cities that have a more active cultural life (though still not much compared to cities from other countries, however, we're certainly not France, especially after years of insane Communism which at least didn't killed culture entirely, though most of it). There's also the huge capital city, Bucharest, which (as far as I can see, as I never ever been able to get there) has quite a lot of ventures, artists, opportunities, but is an insanely gray city and many people just don't try to help make it better...

However, the city where I live in, Constantza, is the death of culture. Being on the coast of the Black Sea, it obviously makes people care more about the sea-and-beach parts of life. Prostitutes and beggars (not to mention money lenders and political mafia) must make a lot more profit than the very few bookstores that exist (and believe me, those bookstores have few of the poetry books I'm interested in)... Even the local authorities, who should finance and support culture, have done in the last few years (with the excuse of financial crisis) all their best to fire most of the employees at cultural institutions or even kill some outright (like the only significant culture magazine that was, I am being subjective because I was among the contributors on their last issues, but they managed to run 46 years non-stop until the townhall withdrawn the funds (anyway, most of the money didn't go into the magazine, just a way of cleaning money, of course) and after a few "independent" issues, the magazine had to be closed), whilst most of the money goes into the vacation resort part of the city, with overpriced hotels and clubs..... All this while there is barely anything going on culturally, and the fact that one of my friends (who also happens to be a businessman, not only a poet) bothers to organize once at 2-3 months parties preceded by mixes of poetry (I participate too with poetry, I try to not bring overly pretentious poems, though I'm not the kind who writes about sex, prostitutes, beer and other stuff like that), collages and other stuff - obviously in clubs, as everything that's going on now happens in the club...

But who's to blame when, besides the excessively serious Museum of Art which only holds non-modernist paintings that I always found terribly boring (and I liked that one time when they made in one of the rooms a "workshop" with most of the paintings of some abstract painter, even my mother agrees that it was the least boring thing in the whole museum) and an art gallery that doesn't even exist anymore, there's only one so-called art gallery that is mostly a shop of (sometimes nice) kitschy art stuff?

Sometimes I wish I would live in the capital just for the more active cultural life, although even that will probably be not enough for me and even if somehow I prefer the sight of the sea...

/sorry for the long rant. It simply hit a soft spot in me. I just like to think that more young people like me would actually be involved into more cultural stuff (not just going in dull museums and pretend that I actually like some "masterpieces" which are utterly abysmal in my opinion - if you ask me what painters I like, I will answer Kandinsky, Miro and the Delaunay brothers, and you'll think I'm a snob who for some reason doesn't namedrop a Pollock or Picasso to think that's he cool, not thinking that maybe I actually like and understand those painters!) if that "cultural gene" would actually be promoted. But why would it be promoted? Individualities are dangerous and subversive! Being open-minded is dangerous! Let's just promote Rebecca Black and Selena Gomez, people will be busy trollololoing them on youtube, when they could have used that time maybe to find the most extraordinary music that they could resonate with and could never heard of if it wasn't for youtube?...

My family took me to museums, the theatre, the opera, symphonies, galleries etc all the time. The kids themed hands-on museums I always found to be the worst. They would be way over priced and filled with loud kids running around and normally would trigger a migraine attack. The kids themed science museum near where I grew up was one of the first in my area to get an imax which was always good at making me throw up repeatedly. Much worse than being drunk. I've never been as sick in my life as after having watched those "movies." Really rather preferred the quiet decorum of more traditional venues particularly since most of the time my grandparents were the ones taking me and my grandmother, being an artist herself always made it more interesting.

But I agree, for most kids it's going to be totally lost on them, and nothing is worse than having a bunch of bored kids during a performance because they'll start to get noisy & disruptive. Its worse than having cellphones going off.

I don't know how it works over there but over here it is easy to go to museums and galleries on the cheap [once you know your kid is ready for it & isn't going to drag down the experience for everyone around them]. Most places that aren't tourist traps [i.e. kids themed science museums] have days that are free or greatly discounted, and then you have venues that are normally free like local/small historical societies [who often have their own museums], smaller art galleries hoping to draw people in for free to make art sales, etc. There's no reason for not being able to take a child who is mature enough to these things.

But taking a child who is too immature to one is easily as bad as taking an immature undisciplined brat into an expensive high end formal restaurant.