Culture matters around the world. What a shame it has been toxically weaponised in the UK | Charlotte Higgins

There are so many examples of the arts being used to unite and galvanise people. Here it is being deployed as a tool of division

For most of my 25 years as a journalist, “the arts” have usually been seen as a calming antidote to life’s harsher moments. In newspapers and on websites, culture often functions as a way to introduce visual interest to – and tonal relief from – the parade of awfulness we know as “the news”.

This unspoken ideological assumption can be irritating if, like me, you happen to think that the arts and culture are a fundamental part of human existence. Then again, in the wider world too, they are generally understood to be bound up with human expression and fulfilment – but not thought to be the stuff of life or death.

Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer

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