Research School Network: Cultural Capital

‘Should museums charge entrance fees?’ The words hung in the air whilst I scrabbled for a response. ​‘Err..of course not?’ I quite simply had no idea as I sat facing the interviewer. I was 20 and had applied to join the Civil Service. This was a generic interview where the applicant was expected to respond to questions about ​‘current affairs’ in a large government office in London. You were then allocated to the department that they felt you were most suited. The problem was that, despite a grammar school education and a degree in English and History, I had only been to two museums and both of those were free to enter. It had never crossed my mind that a museum might charge. In that moment, the girl from social housing emerged and I couldn’t think of a response. Needless to say, I was offered an admin job miles away from home and, thankfully, I chose the far more creative option of teaching.

Cultural capital is the stuff you need to know to navigate the world. This encompasses the experiences you have and the vocabulary you know, much of it implicit and unspoken. It is a clear indicator of social class and if you don’t have access to that knowledge, such as which fork to use, let alone how to make small talk about holiday experiences (a caravan in Wales compared to an exploration of art galleries in Florence) then having the confidence to express your views about a piece of music or visual art is hard. I found Art and Music at grammar school difficult and not for me. I believed (and still do inside) that I was ​‘no good at Art’. At school, the arts were presented as ​‘this is Art. Appreciate it.’ without the language or structures to respond without feeling insecure. I remember we had a game where we would squiggle on a piece of paper and call it modern art then have fits of giggles as a form of quiet rebellion.

Cultural capital is intrinsically linked to vocabulary and the development of concepts, or schemata, as a child grows. As children hear more words and gain more experiences, what they learn becomes embedded in a web of learning. Concepts become embedded in the long term memory, attitudes and ways of responding get taken for granted when interpreting the world around them until it becomes ingrained and normalised. The arts are a critical part of this conversation. All children have the right to a rich diet of arts experiences from the more exclusive ballet, opera, theatre, to dynamic immersive experiences. They need to know that even if you miss some reference or archaic word in a Shakespearean play you can still understand the overall meaning and emotion at play. Their responses are all valid and valuable. The power of story through drama allows children to learn a wide range of vocabulary and understand powerful emotions in which they can not only develop a deeper understanding of key concepts, such as how to be a good citizen, how to ask questions and listen to others but also how to navigate our complex world. Understanding the concept of cultural capital is an issue of social justice – most of us will not know which fork to use and it doesn’t matter – but we need to have the confidence to know that we are all creative thinkers and that the arts belong to us by right.