Arts and Culture

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl for securing this important debate. I begin with a statistic: 15% of the population, 1% of the funding. Whether you find this as shocking as I do will depend on your attitude to the population group that it refers to, so let me tell you that the 15% refers to children up to the age of 12 and that 1% is their share of public funding for the arts. Perhaps now you find it shocking. This inequality was revealed at a conference held last month by the national charity, Action for Children’s Arts, of which I declare an interest as a patron.

The conference was called “Putting Children First”, and the finding was based on freedom of information requests made by the charity to the national arts funding bodies—the four UK arts councils and the BFI as well as 20 of the UK’s national arts organisations—asking what proportion of their budgets was spent on provision where children were the intended audience. It is our responsibility to make sure that there is enough cultural life to go around and that more than 1% of it is left for children when we have all had our share.

Ethel Merman said: “We spend the first three years of a child’s life teaching them to walk and talk, then spend the next 10 years telling them to sit down and shut up”. We should never forget how important the arts are in forming children’s minds and giving them insight into the world they live in. We adults give them artistic and cultural messages telling them, “This is what life is about”. They soak up that information. It stays with them for ever and in turn will encourage them to become creators themselves. We must get those messages right by giving them the highest-quality cultural stimulation so that they can use their imagination to be creative, which will allow them to live fulfilling lives free from the shackles of mediocrity and will redeem those who have taken the dangerous path to gang crime, drug culture and anti-social behaviour.

The Government’s long-term strategy for the arts and cultural sector must give children a higher priority. There must be incentives through the funding system of our great cultural organisations for them all to take their share of responsibility for our children’s right to culture and the arts. Children are not just the audiences of tomorrow; they are also the audiences of today in their own right and they deserve much more than 1% of the arts budget funding to give them the necessary food for their soul. Can my noble friend assure the House that the Government will encourage arts funding organisations to increase the percentage of funding they give to children’s arts and start putting children first?