Leisure, Culture and the Environment

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Abstract
Leisure cannot be considered as unrelated to work. A person’s work experience affects his or her leisure experience. Leisure policies must therefore form part of cultural policies concerned with man in all his activities. Leisure experiences are of many different kinds. Some Leisure opportunities relate to high or formal culture, some to open space and the countryside, some to sport and popular culture, some to private or group activities. In the past cultural and open space policies of governments have mostly been concerned with ‘quality’ -- standards of excellence for high culture and the preservation and enhancement of special environmental characteristics in parks and other reserves — and ‘access’ — opportunity to participate in high culture and physical access to open space. Popular culture, the everyday leisure experience of people, has been profoundly changed by the leisure industries. The leisure industries have brought many significant benefits but there are also serious problems. Alternative attempts to develop a greater sense of involvement in community have been limited in their success. There is therefore a need for new cultural and leisure policies, that is, to reformulate cultural policies to move, from the objective of democratising high culture to the objective of cultural democracy, full cultural participation for the whole community. There is also a need to manage cultural industries more effectively to make better use of the opportunities created by the new technology and to regulate the excesses of commercialism. This should lead to: • explicit cultural policies adopted by governments within which leisure policies and programs should operate; • people-related physical planning; • programs which involve people in developing skills and confidence in themselves and in their own culture.

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