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

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

Britain has lots of celebrities who are well known and admired today, but we don't seem to have any heroes.

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

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.

But I do love working for Boris because he never stops. He's always fizzing with good ideas, and when you are looking after culture, that is important. He's quite ambitious for London.

The 'Shoreditchification' of certain areas, although it's seen as a negative by some, has actually been very positive for parts of London.

Why is London particularly attractive for artists? It's partly this incredible concentration of organizations that have a long history but also the spontaneous and informal culture and the opportunities in London.

Public art is a unique type of art. It's very different to gallery art because it is something that we pass by every day and it inevitably creates a lot of discussion in a way that gallery art does not.

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.

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.

We need to have a view that culture has a value in itself, not just in terms of a social and economic value.

I realized very quickly that the main thing that the left was not in favor of was free speech - that there was an intolerance about different ideas and opinions.

At the same time women are putting on the headscarf, they are also going to work, to education, increasingly vocal in the media - and this is the confusing thing about Muslim women in the West,. They are becoming Westernized at the same time as they are adopting their religious identity more strongly.

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

To challenge the dominance of identity politics, we need to champion an alternative universalist approach. This wouldn't mean bland similarity, with everybody talking and looking the same. Instead, it would help us challenge the imposition of formal, ethnic categories and allow us to develop richer differences based on character and interests.

Some Muslim lobby groups have argued that Christian groups already have public funding for their schools and services so they should too. In response, there are now Hindu and Sikh organisations demanding their own concessions lest they feel left out. The demand to wear the headscarf one day spurs the demand to wear the crucifix the next.

Some people think that culture is overhyped and peripheral. A season of opera is less important than the refurbishment of a school, they say. Leaving aside the poverty of imagination and aspiration implicit in such a sentiment, it also ignores hardheaded economic reality: Britain, and London in particular, makes big money from culture.

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

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.

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.

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

The people who fund the arts, provide the arts, and research the arts have all produced a consensus about the value of what they do, which hardly anyone challenges. But do the numbers add up? For all the claims made about the arts, how accurate are they?

It would, of course, be wrong to say that the arts have no social value. They have tremendous power and can often, indirectly, make our world a better place to live in.

Paradoxically, by insisting on engaging with Muslims as a separate group, the authorities make many of them feel even more excluded.

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.

In capitalist terms, art is a global marketplace and artistic labour is too.

Just as a city cannot protect its manufacturing base without keeping its factories, we cannot have a strong arts sector without studios, rehearsal space, and performance venues.

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.

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

I think Londoners welcome a spectacular event.

Religiosity amongst younger Muslims is not about following their parents' cultural traditions, but rather, their interest in religion is more politicized.

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

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.

We could all do with a little more courage, frankly.

At the start of the 21st century, Britain is caught in a confusing riptide of anxiety. Of course racism still exists, but things have improved to a point where many ethnic minority Britons do not experience it as a regular feature in their lives.

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.

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.

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.

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

It shouldn't be that people think the National Gallery is just for middle-class white people.

There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not.

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.

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

There needs to be more schemes to help young people build careers in fashion, like apprenticeships.

The government should stop emphasizing difference and engage with Muslims as citizens, not through their religious identity.

A contemporary artist like Grayson Perry is brilliant partly because of his expert knowledge of art history, not despite it.