Culture is Bad for You – Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor
27th March 2025
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Blackwell’s welcome Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor to the shop to hear them discuss the revised and updated edition of CULTURE IS BAD FOR YOU; a powerful call to transform cultural and creative industries. The authors will be in conversation with Gabrielle de la Puente (Poor Artists, The White Pube).
*** Please note that this event will start earlier than usual due to author travel requirements. ***
Doors: 6.15pm, starts: 6.30pm
Tickets are £4. Admission is free when purchasing a copy of the book.
About the book:
Culture keeps you fit and healthy. Culture brings communities together. Culture improves your education.
This is the message endlessly repeated by the government and arts organisations. But as this ground-breaking book explains, we need to be cautious about culture. CULTURE IS BAD FOR YOU presents an unflinching portrait of the cultural landscape in the UK today. It reveals how women, people of colour and those from working-class backgrounds are systematically excluded, despite the claims of cultural institutions and businesses.
Updated to provide a report on the situation after COVID, this edition reveals that despite grand promises from those at the top, exclusion and precarity remain the norm. While inequalities of workforce and audience remain unaddressed, the positive contribution culture makes to society can never be fully realised.
About the authors:
Orian Brook is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh
Dave O’Brien is a Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester
Mark Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the University of Sheffield
About the host:
Gabrielle de la Puente is a writer from and based in Liverpool. She runs the art criticism website The White Pube [thewhitepube.co.uk] with Zarina Muhammad. The pair began publishing reviews online from their art school studios in 2015, and have since earned themselves an international cult following due to their willingness to challenge the art establishment. In 2024, they released their debut book Poor Artists, a fictional quest through the real art world.
