We might, a moment after they’d seen the Imagine version of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner at he QEH last weekend. I never thought of that weird old totem of a pome as life affirming, rather the opposite, but this was. Imagine is the Southbank’s children’s festival, and the project had involved six London primary schools, 500 kids, the folk band Bellowhead, the poet and performer Lemn Sissay, the storyteller Jan Blake, the Southbank’s’ Pulse singers… tous le monde, and all put together by Shan Maclennan. It was a professional show, and not a little embarrassing for a flinty old hack who found himself at the end weeping silly buckets amidst a sea of bewildered but joyous juniors. And it wasn’t till later I discovered that this had been the brainchild of the writer and jazz musician Keith Shadwick who succumbed to cancer in the summer of 2008 so couldn’t see the final fruition of his brainwave. So if anyone wants an argument for not only preserving arts subsidy but ratcheting it up, this is all you need.