This document discusses contemporary British culture and society, focusing on how people spend their leisure time. It explores factors like gender, work, education, class and age that influence leisure activities. Popular pastimes include watching television, listening to music, reading, and puzzles at home. Outside the home, activities range from pub visits, restaurants, cinema, museums to various sports. Gender and class differences exist in leisure choices.

1. Contemporary British Culture &
Society

2.  How do the British relax?
 What do people do with their free
time, both inside and outside the
home, as participants and spectators
 How do gender, work, education, class
and age afffect this?
 GO ON READING!!

3. Focal Questions
 Why do you think people in Britain today have more
leisure time than ever before?
 Where and how do most British people choose to spend
their spare time? Why?
 Can you give some reasons why the traditional working-
class and established middle-class families take different
attitudes toward their homes?
 What, to your knowledge, are among the most popular
leisure activities away from home among adults in Great
Britain?
 What factors affect people‟s choice of different leisure
activities in Britain today?

4. A 1 Introduction
 Leisure – freely chosen activities pursued
during non-working time, related to financial
security provided by work
 Leisure -- free time during which somebody
has no obligations or work responsibilities,
and therefore is free to engage in enjoyable
activities

5. A 1 Introduction cont.
 Increase in available leisure time since 20th
century
 Shorter working week – 40 hrs per week, 38
hrs for non-manual workers
 Fewer weeks to work per year
 Full-time workers entitled to 4-5 weeks paid
holiday each year
 More money to spend since WWII

6. A 2 Leisure at Home
 The most common leisure activities among people in
the United Kingdom are home-based, or social, such
as entertaining or visiting relatives and friends
 Watching television is by far the most popular leisure
pastime; Britain's regular weekly dramas or 'soap
operas' such as 'Eastenders' and 'Coronation Street'
have more viewers than any other programme.
 Other regular pastimes include listening to the radio
and to recorded music, reading books, gardening, do-
it-yourself home improvements and doing puzzle.
 Pop and rock albums are the most common type of
music bought, and pop is by far the most popular form
of musical expression in Britain

7. A 2 Leisure at Home
 Nearly three quarters
of people in the UK
now do some sort of
puzzle, from
newspaper crosswords
and coffee-break
teasers to puzzles in
magazines and even
taking part at home in
TV shows.

8. A 2 Leisure at Home
British Soap Opera
 The storylines of Coronation
Street tend to concentrate on
 Coronation Street
relationships within and
between families rather than on
topical or social issues
 Coronation Street is imbued
with a definite feeling of
community. Through its account
of supposedly everyday life, the
programme shows a high
degree of social realism
 The Street, as it is affectionately
known, has been at the top of
the U.K. ratings for over thirty
years.

9. A 2 Leisure at Home
 All ethnic minority groups  Newspaper Readership
are, broadly, more likely to
read three of the four
broadsheets than would be
predicted from their socio-
economic profile. This
suggests something of a
preference for these
titles, possibly because of
the scope of their news
coverage or because of
their often more balanced
style.

10. A 2 Leisure at Home
 Leisure & Lifestyle

11. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Greater gender & class differences in patterns of leisure
activities outside the home
 Provision of leisure activities -- local government, private
companies, voluntary organizations
 The Pub – public bar & lounge bar, dartboards, snookers,
bar billiards, skittles, dominoes, electronic games, juke
boxes, TV, live music entertainment, local jazz group or
rock ‟n‟ roll band
 More money spend on drink in pubs, restaurants or wine
bars than on any other form of leisure activity
 Pubs are finding new role, filling social vacuum, central to
British life

12. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Bar

13. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Pub
 dominoes

14. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Dartboard  Lounge bar

15. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Wine bar

16. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Bar Billiards  Snookers

17. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Skittles  Ten-pin bowling

18. A 3 leisure outside the Home
 Jukebox  Country bar

19. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Meal in restaurants
 Library
 Cinema– still a staple part of British life & on rising trend
 Historic buildings
 Short break holiday
 Disco or night club
 Museum or art gallery
 Funfair
 Camping or caravanning
 Bingo
 Visiting betting shops
 Theatre, ballet, opera, minority pursuits yet giving Britain
high cultural profile

20. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Gambling
 Betting shop (Bookies)  Bets placed at Bookies
 Popular forms of
gambling in Britain
 Football pools
 Betting on horse racing
practised by working
rather than middle
class

21. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Gambling
 Since the first game on Saturday 19th
November 1994 more than 90% of the UK
population have played the National Lottery
games at sometime, with around 65% of the
population playing on a regular basis. The total
amount of £12 billion has been given to the
'good causes'.
 The good causes have already helped deprived
groups, saved buildings and national
treasures, enabled more people to enjoy sports
and the arts.

22. A 3 Leisure outside the Home Gambling
 Out of every £1 spent on  Where does the good
a Lottery ticket 28 pence causes money go?
goes towards the good
causes.
 How's the money
distributed:


23. National Lottery partners
The National Lottery is a partnership between Government, the Lottery
Commission, the National Lottery Operator and the Distribution Bodies to raise
money for the good causes in local communities.
GOVERNMENT THE
THE DEPARTMENT NATIONAL
OF CULTURE LOTTERY
MEDIA AND COMMISSION
SPORT
NATIONAL LOTTERY THE NATIONAL
DISTRIBUTION LOTTERY
BODIES OPERATOR
NLDBs CAMELOT
NLDBs
The Arts Council
National Lottery Charities Board
GOOD CAUSES
The Heritage Lottery Fund
The Millennium Commission
The New Opportunities Fund
Sports Council The

24. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
The National Lottery
 Five groups of beneficiaries were designated by the
Government to receive equal shares of funds from The
National Lottery:
 The Arts Councils of England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland
 The Sports Councils of England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland
 The National Lottery Charities Board
 The National Heritage Memorial Fund
 The Millennium Fund (A fund to celebrate the year 2000
and the beginning of the third millennium. )
 A sixth was added in 1998
 The New Opportunities Fund — for projects covering
education, health and the environment

25. A3 Leisure outside the Home
Gambling
 UK National Lottery
Winning Cards by
Week
 The first 20 winning
cards ...

26. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
national Lottery
 Tickets sold through
newsagents and post
offices -- where everybody
goes
 On Saturday nights the
weekly programme where
the draw is made has 12
million viewers
 The Lottery is about the
possibility of social change
 It has caused social
upheaval and division.

27. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
 Bingo hall  Bingo hall

29. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Of all sporting activities, walking is by far the
most popular for men and for women of all
ages. Whilst men tend to dominate golf and
cue sports such as snooker and billiards,
women generally prefer swimming, keep-fit
classes and yoga.
 Sport, when compared with other leisure
activities, has secured a more central place
in the national culture of contemporary
Britain.

30. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sports & the British Culture
 Precisely because it has become such a part and
parcel of British culture and society, sport is, not
unexpectedly, problematic .
 Sport has nowadays been related to the question
of drugs; it is no longer a leisure activity; it‟s a
business!‟, it is a potentially political issue‟ .,
 There also exists in the field a variation of social-
class membership with regard to active
participation in sports. It is noted that the better the
class, the greater the rate of the participation.

31. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport & the British Culture
 And we should remember that ―class consciousness is
fundamental to the British sense of national identity.
Differences of accent, dress, taste and life style all
serve as markers of class‖ (Raw and Walker, 1994, p.
5). Sport, of course, is of no exception.There are class
associations to all British sports
 Whilst fox hunting is traditionally considered an upper-
class pursuit, football is widely regarded as a hallmark
of the working class. Certain changes may have taken
place in the twentieth century, but divisions are still
there.
 Cricket has a rather upper class as well as rural
flavour; playing cricket is meant to be synonymous
with gentlemanly behaviour. – fair play. team
spirit, individual excellence, ―not cricket” (see p 109 for
more)

32. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport & the British Culture
 Main sports practised in winter:
rugby, soccer
 Soccer – „a gentlemen‟s game for roughs‟
 Rugby -- „a roughs‟ game for gentlemen
 Paradox – most public schools play rugby
but Eaton and Harrow have always played
soccer

33. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Soccer

34. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Cricket

35. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Cricket  Horse racing

36. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Netball

37. A 3 Leisure outside the Home
Sport
 Aroebics

38. A3 Leisure outside the Home
 Why participate?
 To know more people &
understand them better
 To learn how to get along
with others
 To get a feeling of
excitement & a sense of
success
 To have experience of
wearing popular &
fashionable sports clothes

39. A 3 leisure outside the Home
Fox Hunting

41. Language & Culture
 Variations in terminology used to describe people
watching leisure entertainment
 Soccer -- crowds, suggesting “amorphous”
 Rugby -- spectators, “dispassionate onlookers”
 Cinema --audiences, more sophisticated, listen
 TV -- viewers, denying passivity of TV ”couch
potato”
 Theatre -- theatre- goers, some form of
dynamism
 Opera -- opera buffs, uniform worn by smart
regiments

42. A 3 Leisure outside the home
Youth organizations
 Boys‟ scouts  Boys brigade

43. Conclusion
The Defining Factors of Identity
 Education, work, and leisure are defining aspects
of British cultural identity.
 Schools place a distinctive stamp on their pupils –
a past pupil will be defined both in society at large
and by the individual himself and herself as a
grammar school boy or girl e.g.as a product of
Shrewbury School or King Street primary.
 This pattern is repeated in the work arena. People
define themselves by their schools and their work
functions.

44. Conclusion
The Defining Factors of Identity
 The rhetorical question „How do you do?‟, on
being introduced to people is very shortly followed
by „What do you do?‟ and soon by „ Where did you
go to school?‟
 So education and work are significant defining
aspects of identity.
 As we have seen further, people will always try to
take control of their lives and define their own
identities through the exercise of individual choice
in their leisure activities.