The second point was demonstrated starkly in what seemed like a radical difference in the vision of what the arts are in the contributions of broadcaster and novelist, Melvyn Bragg, and the poet Seamus Heaney in the session entitled: "Democracy and the Arts: access, excellence - and or versus".

Having painted a picture of a world in which more people than ever have an opportunity to participate in the arts, he concluded that no, the arts do not need democracy, but yes, it can nurture art; cinema, he said, was the great art of democracy.

His most radical and most welcomed suggestion was that all the funds which now support "stagnant companies who would surely find funding elsewhere" should be channelled into schools to provide education in appreciation and basic tools like musical instruments.

Heaney described himself as a product of the free education system, and drew laughs when he recalled trying to get a book of poetry in the public library of Magherafelt during his childhood. But he continued that it was "time to go on the offence again for inherited cultural memory" in times when there was a knee-jerk suspicion of it, fed by deconstruction, and applications of Marxism and French philosophy. When Bragg referred to the fact that we will have 200 TV channels within the year, he just wasn't speaking about the same culture. It is interesting that they disagreed on the corollary between art and religion.

Heaney said: "Previously the use of religion held it all together. Religion no longer holds that value, the arts have to do it on their own", while Bragg countered that the difference between an artistic ritual and a religious one was that during a religious ritual, people were meant to be thinking the same thing.