Top 66 Munira Mirza Quotes

There are people working in arts organizations who feel that in recent years there has been a sacrifice of quality and excellence in favor of ticking the right boxes and using the right buzz words because that’s what their masters tell them.

I think that there is a tendency to underestimate the public.

We want young people to get every opportunity to experience culture, to understand it and to think it is for them.

We’re very proud of our cultural life. Culture is to London what the sun is to Spain. It’s a major driver for our tourism.

Brewer Street Car Park as the host venue is a brilliant development for London Fashion Week. With its position in Soho, it is at the heart of an area that has long been associated with fashion and creativity in general.

We should get rid of ‘tick box’ measures that do nothing to address underlying inequality in areas like employment. And we should interrogate the claims of victimization made by some organizations to get their slice of pie.

As a transplanted northerner, London has always signified big-city glamour and cosmopolitanism. It’s part of what drew me here after university.

Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don’t need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero.

I don’t think a good education should be confined to a privileged few.

I have met people who have received E.U. funding and regretted it.

By appeasing the anti-racism lobby and affirming its culture of grievance, public institutions and business leaders are not making Britain a fairer place. In fact they are harming the very people they aspire to help.

Paradoxically, just at the point when racist attitudes were declining in society and many ethnic groups were integrating successfully, our political leaders became obsessed with racism.

I think that in the past there has been a kind of cultural resistance to Latin because it’s associated with elitism.

We are the most visited city in the world – and they’re not coming for the weather. Culture is one of things that’s made London hugely successful.

It’s important that we challenge the culture of low expectations. You need to believe every child can do well.

Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule.

London’s top colleges attract the best young talent from around the world; they’re truly a national asset.

For many there is a degree of constancy in our culture; London won’t let you down.

A civilised society ought to make ample provision for everyone, no matter their background, to enjoy the arts and culture.

The most anyone could reasonably say about institutional racism is that the ‘evidence is far from conclusive.

In cities across the world, directors of leading arts institutions, galleries and museums know that when it comes to attracting locals to their major exhibitions and shows, weekdays tend to be ‘cultural dead time’ for working people, who are simply too busy to enjoy what their city has to offer.

For so long, Arab culture has been misconceived by the western mindset as exotic, or more recently, as dangerous, so spaces like Mathaf are vital for asserting a sense of connectedness.

Throughout history, cities have been associated with incredible bursts of creative energy – the Renaissance in Florence, or modernism in Paris. London is the cultural metropolis of the early 21st century.

There has been a genuine willingness from many in the arts sector to try to understand people who are not within the arts elite.

The idea that Veronica Wadley has no artistic credibility is just crazy. She has a strong reputation and when she was editor of the ‘Evening Standard’ she was very highly regarded in the arts sector.

A school that believes in the power of knowledge and learning will have reading at its core.

Government policies to improve engagement with Muslims make things worse.

We want artists to stay in London. It’s very important culturally and economically, but there are lots of challenges in terms of finding space.

A hero usually rises above the ordinary because he or she exemplifies some virtue that everyone can recognize.

Boris isn’t known for his fashion credentials, but he knows what it represents – in London it’s about creativity. That’s why we invest in London Fashion Week each season.

There’s been a kind of inverse snobbery about culture. I get the feeling some people would look at Shakespeare and say, that’s a bit too intimidating for working-class people.

But everyone, including ethnic minorities, should be worried about how anti-racism is becoming weaponized across the political spectrum – how a lot of people in politics think it’s a good idea to exaggerate the problem of racism.

Oxford is a very special place. You really sensed the value of a good education there.

There is a large number of people who see immigration has been very positive and engaging with the world and cooperating is the future. It is the E.U. which stops us doing that sensibly and intelligently.

We need to keep telling people that London is great place to buy and to shop.

There’s a lot of concern that London is changing and artists are being forced to move to new areas.

A well-run, well-stocked library with access to great books as well as the Internet is essential.

Studying art history is actually one of the few ways of getting a good job in the arts sector. It’s hard to be a museum curator without it, work in any senior position in an auction house or gallery, or become a serious art critic.

I think Londoners welcome a spectacular event.

Of course, when people work together, there can be tension and disagreement. But policing informal behavior makes it hard for people to speak freely for fear they will say the wrong thing. Even self-aware individuals can doubt their judgement and start to rely on the diversity trainer to judge if something is offensive.

Most Muslims are well integrated, want to live under British law and prefer to send their children to mixed schools. They do not live in bleak ghettoes cut off from society. Their religion is not a barrier to integration and is very often perfectly reconciled with being – and feeling – British.

Perhaps inevitably, media stories focus on differences, which exacerbates tensions; yet Islamic radicalization is, in part, an acute expression of broader trends that affect us all.

Certainly, ‘creativity’ has been a vital plank of New Labour strategy. It not only hands out money with the enthusiasm of a Medici, but also invites the talented arts world into the very heart of government.

There is a sense of civic connection to the city when you light up iconic buildings or sites.

We need law enforcement as the ultimate deterrent to stop irresponsible and rash young people from making mistakes that will harm others and themselves. Put bluntly, we need them to be scared of getting caught and of getting punished.

Too many developers still treat cultural strategies as a fig leaf to get planning permission, rather than make a thoughtful, genuine commitment to the cultural life of their areas.

Differences in racial outcomes are not the same thing as institutional racism any more than the fact that far more men than women are locked up is evidence of institutional sexism.

The growth of race relations management, diversity training and ‘promoting good relations’ has come at a cost. We are more sensitized to racism, yet far less confident in talking to each other as human beings with similar hopes, problems and aspirations.

Too often, it is presumed that young people will only like art that they can immediately relate to. Working-class students may be steered towards popular culture like hip-hop, new media and film on the basis that they will find older art forms such as opera or ballet irrelevant.

Often, when art from the canon is brought in to fine art classes, it is used as a prop to inspire art-making projects but more rarely as something to study in-depth for itself.

The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s, which have emphasized difference at the expense of shared national identity.

Black artists are encouraged to explore their identity but are then pigeonholed according to their ethnicity. We may have seen the decline of old racism, but we are witnessing a new kind of racialising.

You’d be surprised. A number of developers recognize that having a cultural activity in their space brings kudos. People like the idea of being near to creatives.

Stop and search has a controversial history and has not always been carried out professionally by individual officers. Liberal-minded people are right to be wary about its overuse. However, it is also regarded by most people as a legitimate and necessary tactic.

Sectarian political festivals are not the way Londoners want their money to be spent. Most of us, I suspect, just want to be trusted to get on with other people and not be instructed by activists about the dangers of racism.