The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

the vitality of artistic traditions. Raymond Williams describesthree levels in the general definition of culture. These beardirectly on the idea of the cultural 'heritage'."There is the lived culture of a particular time and place,only fully accessible to those living in that time andplace. There is the recorded culture of every kind of artto the most everyday facts: the culture of a period. Thereis also, as the factor connecting lived culture and periodcultures, the culture of the selective tradition.' (Williams,1971,p66)54 The We live in a perpetual present tense. Our knowledge ofselective other periods can never match their vast complexity astradition they were experienced and understood at the time. Ourevaluation and perception of them is both partial and highlyselective. As Williams points out, most specialists in a periodknow only a part even of its written records.'One can say with confidence for example that nobodyreally knows the nineteenth century novel: nobody hasread, or could read, all its examples over the whole rangefrom printed volumes to penny serials. The real specialistmay know some hundreds . . . (but) a selective process ofa quite drastic kind is at once evident and this is true ofevery field of activity.' (Williams, 1971, p66)The selective tradition in this way rejects 'considerableareas of what was once a living culture'. (Williams, 1971, p68)Consequently what we include and acknowledge in thetradition is always open to change and revision. This isnot only because of the discovery of new information or newworks, it is also often because of changes in our contemporaryvalues. Individuals long forgotten or overlooked may bere-interpreted as key agents of cultural progress because ofa shift in current fashion or political outlook. The strongsentiment and self-assurance of Raphael, for example, endearedhim to many Victorians as the central figure in theRenaissance. There are those today who think more ofMichaelangelo — for his restless self-doubt — and buildtheir image of the period around him. In these ways thecultural tradition in all areas of social life can be seen as a'continual selection and re-selection of ancestors'. Andevery selection from the past is also an interpretation of it.55 The arts Education needs to take account of this important diversityand of cultures, of their organic patterns of growth and of theculturaleducationrestlessness of their traditions. A cultural education, there-fore, is one which39