Imagine someone young in Scotland - disadvantaged, disaffected - who is about as likely to become involved in classical music as Johann Sebastian Bach is to play for Rangers. Think of a person of any age anywhere in Britain who regards the statues in Trafalgar Square as a pigeon lavatory and would tend to walk fast past any art.
In the middle of this year, such artistic non-participants will be given the chance to become central to cultural activity. In late spring, the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela will take part in a series of events aimed at popularising here El Sistema, the pioneering music educational scheme which took the country's slumdogs and gave them hope and employment through participation in an orchestra: a Scottish version of the Sistema is being attempted near Stirling. And, in early summer, Antony Gormley's artwork One and Other will give 2,400 computer-selected Britons the chance to spend an hour on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square as a living statue.
These ventures address the traditional problem of persuading young people to become interested in culture: that a significant proportion of students find it too distancing and passive to look at a statue or listen to an orchestra. But, through One and Other and Sistema, they can become the statue or become the orchestra. In this way, the projects represent the apotheosis of a process that has dominated culture since the election of New Labour in 1997: a desire to tear down the perceived barrier between doers and viewers, between practitioners and public in the arts.
There have been three stages in this revolution of inclusivity. It began with cultural institutions being encouraged to find new ways of bringing people in or going out to people: locally or culturally relevant subject-matter, unconventional venues, outdoor theatre or art. Gormley, with his Angel of the North beside the A1 in Gateshead, created the most visible symbol of this artistic engagement with public spaces.
At the same time, cultural institutions were pushed to take down the "Do Not Touch" notices, physically and metaphorically. Revealingly, two of the contenders announced this week for the Art Fund museum of the year prize - the Sackler Centre at the V&A in London and the National Trust Museum of Childhood in Derbyshire - are heavily interactive, while a third shortlistee, the Museum of Reading, boxed up its exhibits and allowed them to be displayed in workplaces and public buildings.
The logical final phase in these attempts to turn the public on to art is to turn them in to art. Both Gormley's plinth and the Sistema scheme reflect this instinct, differing only in the length of involvement, with the Venezuelan idea representing probably the most direct attempt there has been to use creativity as a means of social engineering.
There's no doubt that high culture in Britain has excluded large sections of the population: through barriers of class, expense, physical access or a radiating elitism that repelled uncertain entrants. The question of access was further complicated because the most efficient mass cultural educator - television - became deranged by misguided populism, while a government that was preaching artistic reach to wider audiences also paradoxically presided over the cheapening and widespread closure of public libraries.
And the UK - in which the availability of musical instruments to state school children has been low and slow in recent years - should be deeply shamed by the fact that the example of best practice in musical education was forged in one of the poorest parts of the world.
There's also, though, a risk in accessibility becoming an unthinking mantra. For obvious practical reasons, participatory art of this kind must be a marginal activity: only a fraction of the applicants will be able to fit on to the plinth and it's not yet clear how translatable the concept of an orchestral welfare state is. And, as the artist has acknowledged, One and Only may attract people who are simply interested in making an exhibition of themselves without ever thinking of stepping in to the neighbouring national galleries of art.
The argument that the best way of stopping people being off-hand about culture is to allow them to become hands-on is a compelling one. But, though participation has a role in the arts and is a sensible marketing strategy when so many rival forms of entertainment centre on inter-activity, it's vital that the idea of doing it yourself does not become overdone.
Most art - and certainly the greatest examples - is private and exclusive, created by elite professionals for an audience of amateurs. Though touched by it, we cannot touch it. Schemes that physically involve the public in art or music are an important part of art, but should remain a small one, defined by the remaining novelty of involvement. If we are going to continue to have artists deserving of having statues raised to them, doing must not be seen as more important than viewing.
