JERSEY people, like their counterparts in other communities around the world, focus a great deal of attention on the essentials of existence such as earning a living, ensuring that they have a roof over their head and seeing that their children are properly educated.

Many other issues can also capture our interest, but the everyday struggle often blinds us to high-flown concepts such as the place of culture in Island life.

On Saturday, Jersey’s first Council for Culture Conference helped to shift the balance in the direction of higher things. Yet the conference was not aimed at an elite audience and did not focus on pursuits or attitudes calculated to appeal solely to the more intellectually inclined members of society. It was, in fact, designed to make the idea of culture relevant to Islanders in all walks of life.

As Assistant Education Minister Carolyn Labey, who has special responsibility for the arts and heritage, said at the conference, the rich and complex mixture that is Island culture does not belong to any single States department or to any particular group of people. It is for everyone to appreciate and enjoy.

But as well as stressing that access to culture in all its forms should be open to all, Deputy Labey has registered disappointment that so few States Members chose to attend the conference. A handful did turn up, but the vast majority stayed away.

This was perhaps because the preoccupations which stand between the mass of Islanders and cultural matters are mirrored in the primary concerns of our politicians. It is probable that the business of wrestling with issues such as public finance, transport and housing feature more prominently on most Members’ agendas than the arts, heritage or history.

We would not, of course, want the States to take their collective eye off any of the nuts and bolts problems of government, but an awareness of the issues highlighted by Saturday’s conference is also very much to be desired.

If, however, as Kate Clark, one of the speakers at the event suggested, the Channel Islands have a legitimate claim to World Heritage Site status, the relevance of the cultural dimension and its contribution to what is now called the Island’s international personality is likely to become more apparent.