MK of the Mind

How do we define culture in modern cities? And does Milton Keynes have it?

What do we mean when we say culture? The word can be used to describe everything from fashion to art, literature to architecture, music to science and everything in between. The idea of culture is thoroughly embedded into our ideas about what makes for thriving interesting and successful communities both today and throughout history. Stuart Hall, formerly professor of sociology at the Open University, challenged the association of culture with elite arts and pointed instead to the cultural richness of everyday. But if there’s no objective metric for measuring the cultural value of a society why are some towns and cities perceived to have a greater cultural currency than others? In this short film The Open University’s Dr Liz McFall deconstructs conventional ideas of culture and argues that the new town of Milton Keynes, often viewed as a cultural desert, is in a perfect case for testing ideas about what culture is and what it has to do with economy.

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