The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Mackenzie of Sherwood) (Lab) (Maiden Speech)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing forward this Bill, which raises vital issues on widening access to creative education, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. We have heard a really stimulating and rich discussion this morning, for which I am so grateful.

I am honoured that my first speech in your Lordships’ House should be on such an important topic, which has been a lifelong passion for me. I start by thanking my supporting noble friends Lady Nye and Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch—apologies in advance to my noble friend. I must also thank Garter King of Arms, Black Rod and his team, our excellent doorkeepers, catering staff, the Whips’ Office of the Government, my noble friends on the Front Bench and noble Lords across your Lordships’ House for their generous and kind welcome.

I understand it is customary to introduce myself briefly. My parents, Kenneth Mackenzie and Myrna Blumberg, were South African journalists, writers and activists fighting for the abolition of apartheid. After the massacre at Sharpeville, when a state of emergency was announced, my mother, along with many other activists, was imprisoned without charge or trial. As a journalist, she was luckier than many others, and her newspaper helped secure her release. As a result, we fled to London, where I was brought up. In London, as a child, I spent what felt like every Sunday with my parents protesting in Trafalgar Square outside the South African embassy: I realise that this embedded in me the values of equality and the tenacity needed to make change happen.

My London childhood also gave me access to the outstanding free music education of the Inner London Education Authority, so that I could learn several musical instruments, play and sing in the ILEA choir and orchestra, as well as developing practical creative skills across the arts. As a result, my first job was in a professional touring theatre company, working with young people in youth clubs, community centres, sometimes parks, offering practical theatre and music workshops to young people, intensive residencies, and performances. Our principle was that young people decided what skills they wanted to learn, the subjects they wanted to tackle, and our job was to serve them and provide the training and support they needed. We were led by the young people, the specific priorities they had in their local communities, and their ambitions.

This place-based, community-led approach guided me throughout my career, running theatres, cultural organisations and festivals in Bradford, Nottingham, Glasgow, Chichester, Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Paris and, most recently, Adelaide, South Australia. Please do not panic, your Lordships—I will mention only two places in my career which were particularly crucial for my creative education. Nottingham Playhouse was the first large theatre I led, supported by outstanding leadership from the City of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Education Authority, who encouraged us to become a teaching theatre, like a teaching hospital, where we not only had a dedicated theatre company working in every school, offering creative skills workshops and performances, but where we also set up two full-time, two-year courses for age 16-plus and 18-plus young people to develop their theatre skills and creative talents.

The communities of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire pushed us to work with them on an ambitious programme of world-class international theatre and dance, encouraging international stars from around the world, established and emerging UK artists and, above all, local talent. I lived in Sherwood at the time, and I celebrate my time in Nottingham through the name I have taken in your Lordships’ House.

My recent work in South Australia gave me the chance to work extensively with brilliant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and communities, including the Nharrangha artistic leader Jacob Boehme, his creative team and, above all, his elders, on a large-scale creation. This was based on the stories in their 65,000-year continuous cultural history and on the country in which they lived and worked. It opened at the Adelaide International Festival, and it is still touring internationally. My understanding of how place shapes culture and creative education, how innovation springs from deep roots in your community and the land on which you live, has been transformed by these artists and these elders, who, exceptionally and generously, made me an honorary elder. I feel confident I am the only person in this noble House who can say that.

The Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, includes a vision of creative partnerships to support young people to develop their creative skills, with the support of their local arts and cultural organisations—from libraries to museums, from music venues to youth centres.

Our Prime Minister is challenging us to achieve growth in every postcode. Our ambition is to activate in every postcode the creative partners to support young people, to find their talent, to develop their skills and to contribute to the growth of our creative industries.

The UK’s creative industries, as many of my noble colleagues have mentioned already, are in the top eight priorities of the UK industrial strategy. We have heard many figures for what they contribute; mine is £145.8 billion in GVA to the UK economy in 2024. However, as we have heard, opportunities are currently unequally distributed across postcodes and across socioeconomic groups. In 2024, 55% of the creative workforce was from an advantaged background, compared to 45% for the economy as a whole. Post-16, economically disadvantaged students are less likely to choose creative paths, as we have heard, and the underrepresentation of students from lower socioeconomic and culturally diverse backgrounds continues at higher education level.

Starting with the power of place, the strength of communities in each postcode, the advantages of growing up in the place you know with the support to experiment, innovate and risk—which, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, is one of the key elements in the process of creation—is, for me, a vision that can allow our next generation of creative workers and creative start-ups to flourish in every postcode.

The Government are committed to effective place-based delivery of creative opportunities for all young people, building growth in every postcode, supported by partners at regional and national level. Some important starting points at national level, many of which have been referred to today, include revitalising arts education through our new curriculum; scrapping the EBacc performance measures; removing unnecessary constraints on subject choice for young people; launching a new national centre for arts and music education; publishing the new enrichment framework for schools and colleges; and investing £132.5 million of dormant asset funding through the Every Child Can programme to increase young people’s access to enrichment opportunities.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for allowing me to play a small part in the presentation of her Bill. While I must express reservations about the Bill on behalf of the Government, I hope I have outlined that we share the values and the intention behind it, and that we are working to ensure that the Government deliver better creative education for all our young people. I join the noble Baroness in her commitment to empowering our young people to lead the future of creative growth in every postcode.

I hope that I have covered in my speech many of the points noble Lords have raised. I have just a few other points to refer to, and if I leave anyone out then I hope noble Lords will excuse me. I will be very happy later on to pick up anything I omit.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, raised an important point about neurodivergent students and the need for research. That is something I would like to reflect on and take up with colleagues in government.

I wish to make a quick point about the wonderful contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. When he kindly referred to Nottingham Playhouse and his time working with me and with Phelim McDermott, he omitted to say that he was performing Mephistopheles in “Doctor Faustus”. Of course he cannot say, but I can, that he was absolutely outstanding. To pick up on the serious point the noble Lord made about failure, I refer him to the famous line of Samuel Beckett: “Fail again, fail better”.

I make the point to the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, that I will commit to reading the Teaching Commission’s report, Curriculum and Assessment for All? I was very interested in those points and would like to follow them up—once I know what I am talking about. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lord Doyle, that the national centre for arts and education will be launched later this year, and we will all know more at that point.

I would also like to refer to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, made in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Hodge for the excellent and outstanding work she has done on the Hodge report for the Arts Council. As many of your Lordships know, we have accepted and welcomed the Hodge report and its recommendations. We, alongside colleagues in the Department for Education, where I will be having a meeting next week, and with the Arts Council, are now working through the many excellent ideas that she has proposed.

I finish by picking up a couple of general points, in particular a point the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, raised, but which several other noble colleagues also referred to: AI and how it poses both dangers and opportunities. It is, of course, a topic whose dangers and opportunities this House is debating under many headings; but I stress that, for all of us who believe in the power of art and our artists and creators, as in many areas, many of them are doing exceptional work themselves. They are using and adapting AI, finding ways to make it a force for good. Without being over-optimistic about the 90% chance that we are not eliminated by AI, I suggest that we put our faith—as we should always—in the creativity of our creative industries and artistic sectors, and hope that they will help us to continue to have life-changing moments in a positive sense, as so many of your Lordships have referred to in relation to this topic.