Brian Eno

This year's 6 music John Peel lecture was delivered by one of the true innovators of the arts, Brian Eno. It was an inspiring and thought provoking discourse looking at why human beings make art.

Eno criticized Education Secretary Nicky Morgan's recent suggestion that students should be concentrating on science and maths based subjects rather than art and humanities by underlining just how important art is and how it affects everyone's lives, not just practicing artists.

He defined art as 'the things we don't have to do', going on to explain that everything in life that isn't a basic human need and requires creativity and embellishment should be seen as art. We need to eat but we don't need to create a baked alaska. We need to move but we don't need to dance the Rumba.

He ended the talk on a high note describing a future utopia where the role of art in the world becomes even more important and the accelerating progress of technology gives people more time to be creative - “I think there are going to be even more full-time artists than there are now. And I don’t just mean the professionals like me, I mean everybody, is going to have to be constantly involved in this activity of being able to resynchronise with each other, to connect things together, to be able to make adventurous mind games about different futures, to be able to understand things.”