This chapter discusses the significant challenge of British Cultural Studies (BCS) to previous elitist notions of culture. Led by Raymond Williams, BCS scholars develop a more democratised and relativist understanding of culture which, while not rejecting the hegemony of ruling class ideas, recognises the potential for resistance and subversion (as well as production) within practices of cultural consumption. This is highlighted with both reference to the continuance of ‘authentic’ working classcultural practices (for example, local sports, folk music, community film making and so on), as well as Stuart Hall’s reception theory which importantly gives the audience agency in being able to ‘decode’ top-down cultural texts in different ways (from the encoded hegemonic form, to a fully oppositional deconstruction of the text). The chapter engages with a host of contemporary examples in demonstrating the potential for active audience production and consumption of culture in the twenty-first century. What is particularly emphasised here is that while the BCS certainly gave more agency to the audience, they were also cautious in their assessment of texts that originated from the cultural industry on the grounds that most were ideologically-fuelled propaganda from the ruling classes of little value (an assessment not so far from that of the Frankfurt School).