CELEBRATED film director Ken Loach has hit out at swingeing cuts in arts funding on a visit to Quad.

"It's hugely important that we support all the arts," he said before a special Q&A event at the arts centre which has been celebrating his career with a season of selected works.

"The arts nourish our spirit," he said. "That's what gives us a perspective on how we live our lives.

"It's not just about going to work and paying the bills. People need space to reflect on life, music and paintings, theatre and what great writers have had to say about the world, our experience of it and what it's like to be human. We need that enrichment and we have known that for centuries.

"So to cut back and deny that ... well, how far do we want to retreat?"

The arts have been bearing a disproportionate share of the pain in the current economic downturn with Quad itself facing the lose of all its city council support by 2015.

"Even when politicians speak in favour of the arts they talk about how much money it earns, in the rankest terms," said Ken. "It's not about that but they don't seem to get it. It's about human exchange, of appreciating the value of everything we have in the world, our lives, relationship, ambitions, aspirations ... our sense of wonder."

Ken believes wider problems are to blame for the economic gloom.

"The real culprit is that we are in the grip of an economic system that can't satisfy our needs," he said. "We have made huge technological advances, we can produce enough food to feed the world, we could all live in prosperity from the knowledge we have. It's the economic system that binds us to this wheel of poverty, unemployment, alienation and the rest ... and the superabundance for some. That's what we have to challenge, not tighten our belts because the system won't provide what we need it to provide."

Best known for powerful social realist films such as Kes and Palme D'or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Ken Loach began his work with groundbreaking television plays like Cathy Come Home, and throughout his filmmaking career has always presented a searing view on the world and the UK in particular.

Quad's Mediatheque, a jukebox of archive film, now hosts a collection of some of that cutting edge work.

Ken said: "We have had quiet a few things banned over the years so I'm hoping the banned bits will be there as well. It would give me great pleasure to think that somebody is seeing something that was stopped."

Ken admits that he has quite enjoyed ruffling a few feathers with his work over his long career.

"Yes, but I hope it has not been gratuitous," he says. "There's no point in shocking the bourgeoisie for its own sake. You have to make some analysis of the world that makes sense and inevitably that's at odds with received wisdom."

The chances of another British film maker amassing such an influential and politically challenging body of work is becoming more and more unlikely, especially as screen space for such films diminishes.

Ken said: "The space for independent cinema is shrinking. The choice at the multiplexes gets narrower and narrower and the independent cinemas are increasingly being programmed by one group. So the outlets for world cinema, let alone just British film, is very narrow. If you think of the great richness of films that are made and the tiny percentage of them we can see, it's not good.

"Can you imagine going to an art gallery and seeing only contemporary commercial artists? It wouldn't be much of an art gallery. But that's what you have in cinema.

"There has been quite a burst of British films recently and I think it goes in waves. But the overarching thing is the States and the American commercial industry and its dominance of our screens. And most films that are made to be commercial have an eye on the American market."

So how did Ken manage to carve a niche in that closed market place?

"I have been lucky," he said. "I was lucky in the beginning to work within a good group of people which is a big support. It's hard to stay focussed because of the distractions and the insecurity is so great.

"But working in a group that shares the same political sense and aesthetic values means it's easier to keep a straight course and I had that in the 1960s and early 1970s."

Nevertheless, making films has been one long struggle.

He says: "It's always hard because the pervasive cinema culture is escapism, gloss Western values, wealth, film stars. Anything you do counter to that is not what distributors want. That's always been the case."