Question: What role does arts and culture policy play in fostering inclusion and social cohesion?

Baroness Blackstone: I think it plays an enormously important role, in that people can have a great sense of their own communities if they have a feeling for the culture that surrounds those communities, that is part of those communities. I also think that the performing arts, the historic environment and, indeed, our museums and galleries have a big role in bringing people in, involving them, giving them the chance to express themselves in a whole variety of different ways. One of the things I'm very keen on the arts doing generally is to interpret participation and access, not just in terms of audiences and in terms of visitors looking at things but in terms of people actually doing things. And, I have been talking to various organisations, including the Arts Council, about how we can encourage more of that.

So I do think they can have a very big role as far as the general aims of social inclusion are concerned.

But at the same time, I would very much want to underline, that the whole of this area isn't just about social inclusion, it's also about promoting excellence, about looking after our collections properly, about doing good research, about putting on wonderful concerts, plays, dance performances or whatever the art form might be.

Question: Does our heightened sensitivity to multiculturalism - especially after September 11 - mean we need to rethink what is meant by national culture or common cultural heritage?

Baroness Blackstone: What we want to do is make sure that young people have the cultural awareness to be able to understand, appreciate, and take part in culture - which in a sense is a response to the first question. I think the two things are linked because we are a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multicultural society and we're hugely enriched by that. It's terribly important in a post-September 11 world that we are particularly aware of that and particularly aware of it in relation to our very big Muslim community.

There is wonderful Islamic art and Islamic culture and I want our young communities from Bangladesh and from Pakistan, for example, to be able to feel that they have the opportunity of appreciating their own birthright and that other people in this country can also learn about it and appreciate its qualities.

Question: Is more being done in that area, around Islamic art?

Baroness Blackstone: Yes, I think it is. I think many of our museums and galleries are very aware of the importance of making sure that there are opportunities for people to appreciate Islamic art. Not all of them will have appropriate collections, some will, but one of the things I am very keen to do - quite outside this particular issue - is to make sure that there is much more sharing of collections, more loaning from the national galleries and national museums to local and regional ones. So there will be more opportunities in the future, but it takes time to fix all of that.

Question: Your predecessor, Mark Fisher, recently criticised government policy as being "hostile to the past". Did or does "new" Labour have a problem with "old" or traditional culture?

Baroness Blackstone: I'm really not quite sure what Mark means by that because I certainly don't and I don't believe new Labour, generally, has any kind of problem with celebrating many aspects of our history and our traditions, and helping young people or adults, through life-long learning programmes of various kinds to understand more about our history and to be able to look at beautiful pictures that were painted by Constable or Gainsborough and appreciate them.

Question: Sometimes when we think of English heritage we see country houses, castles, royalty and the Tower of London's beefeaters. Is that the big picture for heritage at the moment?

Baroness Blackstone: No. I don't in any way want to denigrate or be critical about all of that because they are all important, they are part of our history, and people hugely enjoy visiting the Tower of London, for example, and seeing beefeaters there and learning about what their role was in the past.

But I think heritage is about more than that. It is also about opportunities for archaeology. Archaeology is one the most popular subjects that are provided in extramural departments and in continuing education across the country. People really enjoy it and get a great deal out of it. Again it comes back to my earlier point about active participation. So I think that is terribly important, actually being able to make wonderful finds, take part in doing that and witness how the professionals do it, then being able to later see objects on display.

But I think our heritage is also about regeneration. I've just been to the opening of the Imperial War Museum in Salford, and visited the Lowry Centre on the Manchester/Salford border. They are themselves doing something for the rebuilding of those communities that had become very, very run down. All the work then that is done in turning old wharves by the side of canals into nice places for our creative industries to work, or into cafes and restaurants, opening up these old parts of our inner cities so people can walk in them. It's both making the quality of life better for people and it's regenerating those communities, making them more economically prosperous.

So I think that heritage is a bit broader than the way you were initially defining it.

Question: Looking at it more broadly then, in terms of identity, particularly the emphasis on the built and historic environment, is there a role there for discovering or reinforcing local, community or social histories?

Baroness Blackstone: Very much so. I think some of the best local museums are fantastically good at doing that. I've visited some of these museums which are very much about the history of their own communities and I do think they involve people, they give people a sense of pride and a better understanding of where their community has come from. And they can be both forward looking as well as backward looking. I also think, in terms of the built environment, it's enormously important that we have good design. Both because that will bring economic benefit, because it's aesthetically important in itself, and because it will be an asset to a community.

People will walk around in the public spaces where they live and see things that actually make them feel proud to live there. The Architecture Foundation is developing public forum debates, through things like the building exploratories like the one in Hackney, which can show both adults and children how their own borough has developed, why it is as it is now and how it might be improved in the future.

All of these, I think are tremendously positive changes from which the population will benefit.

Question: Is there a danger that national heritage or history can be elitist?

Baroness Blackstone: It depends, of course, on how you present things. If you present history just as the history of the powerful and of rulers then I think it can be a bit exclusive. One of the very interesting developments in modern history is that there is now a great deal of social history about the lives of ordinary people. There's a lot of industrial history and one of the things that has taken place quite recently is that our industrial heritage is now being celebrated. Last year three out of the four new UK World Heritage Sites were, in fact, industrial sites, Saltaire in Bradford, New Lanark in Scotland and the Derwent River Valley in Derbyshire, where Arkwright first developed his mills.

I think that kind of breadth is hugely to be welcomed and does mean that there is no need for it to be, in any sense, elitist.

Question: Should children be taught about Britain's cultural heritage as part of the citizenship agenda, and if so what should they learn? Are their competing versions?

Baroness Blackstone: Well, there are bound to be competing versions and the last thing a Minister should do is specify what children should learn. That really is up to the teaching profession, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and others to devise effective and appropriate curricula for different age groups. And I wouldn't ever want young people or children to be given any one view of all of this. What is really important is that young people should be able to see various different approaches, debate them, argue them through, understand that there often controversies, there is no one view of the world and make up their own minds when they have sufficient information to be able to do so.

Question: Is the government doing enough to back museums?

Baroness Blackstone: Well, I hope we will be able to do quite a bit more than has been done over the past 25 years. I'm going to be discussing with a representative group from the museums and galleries world what we should be doing.

I'm very, very cheered by the fantastic work that is being done by museums and galleries, both in terms of their traditional role of research and the very good work by curators. There are wonderful exhibitions, there is an amazing range and richness of what's being put on, not just in London but all over the country. I go to the openings of some of these things and I feel really proud about what they're doing.

But I also think they are doing a fantastic job in extending their educational programmes, things like providing museum boxes for primary and secondary schools so children can actually handle objects, can draw them, describe them, discuss with their teachers what they represent in terms of the history of the period.

All of that is a huge plus compared with what happened two or three decades ago when people went and looked at things in glass cases. I want to see that develop, of course, and be improved on all the time, as do the Directors of our museums.

The "Renaissance in the Regions" report, by Matthew Evans, an excellent report, will be implemented. It won't be possible to implement it quite as fast as I think the authors of it might hope, because we don't have quite enough money for that, but we will certainly make a very substantial start and that I think will be another big plus for the sector.

Question: Is their ever a tension between the role of museums as educators and as centres of scholarly learning and curatorship - a recent [Art newspaper] survey showed the five top museums had £4.8 million grant-in-aid for purchases 20 years ago, now it is £855,000?

Baroness Blackstone: I don't think there should be a tension between the two roles or functions of museums. In fact, I think they go together and they build on each other. It's out of really good curatorship that you can develop excellent educational programmes at all levels. And we're not just talking about educational programmes for children and young people, all of our big museums and galleries are now developing wonderful programmes for adults, really committed to lifelong learning. It's from interesting research findings that you can refresh programmes, keep bringing people in and encouraging them to go further with own learning. So I genuinely don't see a conflict.

As far as acquisitions are concerned, I know that in recent years it has been harder - it goes back over a period of a decade or more - for museums to spend a lot of money on new acquisitions but there are also new sources of funding. The Heritage Lottery Fund has been an enormous boost to museums and galleries in this respect. People are generous in terms of bequests and museums have been very successful in fund raising. If we look at what the Tate and the National, two of our great galleries managed to spend on acquisitions since 1998, it is £77 million. That is quite a lot of money. Then there are things like the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, where tax requirements are satisfied by donations. Again that has produced a huge amount of new acquisitions for museums and galleries all over the country.

Question: There has been some criticism and discussion about the way some museums present their exhibitions using new technology, is entertainment a valid part of the museum's role as a way of engaging an audience?

Baroness Blackstone: Yes, I think it is. Museums should be fun and enjoyable as well as interesting, stimulating and intellectually stretching. Again, you can do both. Of course it's important that there shouldn't be terrible dumbing down going on but I don't think the use of new technology in anyway needs to dumb down. It's another medium for showing things. Sometimes you have to reach out to people and you have to do it in a way that will bring people in, engage them, and then take them through to perhaps more demanding exhibits. So I think this is all part of different approaches to presentation and I want to see lots of diversity, not just one rule for everybody.

Question: Can the move to regions come at the expense of national museums?

Baroness Blackstone: Definitely not. We have to protect our great national museums and galleries but they have to work with the regions. So any development of what regional museums and galleries are doing has to go hand in hand with what's happening in the nationals. They are not two completely separate sectors. They need to co-operate with each other, they need to sometimes second staff to each other, they need to put on exhibitions which might be shown in one of the regions. Liverpool's Walker Gallery had a Romney exhibition which is now at the National Portrait Gallery. They don't need to start in the nationals, quite the contrary.

Question: Ahead of the 2004 Olympics pressure is growing for the return of the Elgin marbles - is the UK's answer still no?

Baroness Blackstone: Basically this is of course something the Trustees of the British Museum have to decide. Decisions on loans are entirely for them.

There are no plans to send the Parthenon sculptures back. The Government is, of course, prepared to go on having bi-lateral discussions with the Greek government under the guidance of UNESCO.