Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, on securing this debate.

The modern Olympic movement was created by Pierre de Coubertin, an amateur boxer, but also a part-time poet. The cornerstone to his vision in reviving the Olympics was to bring sport and culture together in one great festival. That, of course, was precisely what London did in 2012. Its Cultural Olympiad was a triumph, and here I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, who so brilliantly chaired the Cultural Olympiad board, Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad and Dame Tessa Jowell who was so pivotal in its original conception.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, I refer back to Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony—a beautiful, brilliant spectacular. It was complex, self-deprecating in its narrative, although not in its conception and execution, and deeply humorous. As well as a celebration of the entity that is the United Kingdom this was a showcase for our creativity and for our creative industries. Take James Bond, which is, first, the product of writer Ian Fleming; then of film makers, actors, special effects creators, costume and set designers, and those who make the costumes and sets. And finally, in Boyle’s dazzling tangle of fiction and fact, the fictional spy gets to meet the factual Queen and her corgis.

The ceremony also celebrated music, television and art, and how art and design come together in such wonderful creations as Thomas Heatherwick’s cauldron and, centre stage, literally, Tim Berners-Lee, the British creator of the world wide web. It was shot through with recognition of our creative accomplishments—and it was a huge accomplishment in its very self.

This debate invites us to take note of the role of communities. The Cultural Olympiad pledged to encompass thousands of local and regional events as part of our nationwide celebration—and it did. Martin Creed’s “Any Bell. Anyone. Anywhere.” was one of the Olympiad’s biggest community projects. At 8.12 pm on 27 July, almost 3 million people across the UK rang bells to celebrate the first day of the Games. They included individuals, communities and organisations; enthusiastic children; change-ringing experts; Big Ben; and the bells of the UK Parliaments and of British embassies across the world.

In all, 621 productions and projects resulted in 13,000 performances and events at 1,270 venues across the UK. There was street art and high art, hip hop and ballet. Everywhere, new audiences were introduced to the arts. LOCOG estimates that 19 million people participated in the Cultural Olympiad, and that 10 million people have been inspired to continue to take part in cultural activity. We are here to talk about legacy, and we must ensure that these people continue to do this. We must ensure that the fact that the strongest interest in the Olympiad came from younger audiences and ethnic minorities is not lost but built upon. We must ensure that the innovative new partnerships that creators forged online, and at local, regional and national level, continue.

We on these Benches welcome the Arts Council’s initiative of a creative employment programme of apprenticeships and paid internships in the cultural sector for unemployed 16 to 24 year-olds. We welcome the setting up of a creative people and places fund that will focus investment on parts of the country where people’s involvement in the arts is significantly below average. However, the most important thing is that we continue to create the creators. In this area we face not a jobs problem but a skills problem. The Next Gen. report published last year drew attention to the fact that our education system was not keeping up with the times, and in particular that the way ICT is taught in schools did not provide the appropriate skills. The good news is that the coalition Government listened. A draft programme of study for ICT, which from 2014 will include a computer programming option, has been developed, and last October the Secretary of State for Education announced bursaries of £20,000 for 50 top graduates to train as computer science teachers.

However central the understanding of technology has become to the creative industries, they are still underpinned by creativity itself. The creative economy needs creative employees—people who are skilled not just in computer science but also in art and other creative subjects. Darren Henley’s report on cultural education is another crucial element in delivering a lasting creative legacy. The Secretary of State for Education greeted the Henley review with huge enthusiasm. The government response to the review, published last February, stated that a national plan for cultural education would follow immediately. The last time I asked when this would happen—because despite the “immediately”, it still has not—I was told that it would be at the beginning of this year. Will the Minister assure me that this is still the case and therefore that publication is imminent?

There is concern about the lack of a sixth strand to the EBacc that would cover creative subjects. It was argued that this was not necessary and that there was plenty of room for them in the curriculum. But it is all about perception. Grayson Perry stated:

“If arts subjects aren’t included in the EBacc, schools won’t stop doing them overnight … By default, resources won’t go into them. With the best will in the world, schools will end up treating arts subjects differently”.

There is evidence that this is already happening. A participant at a recent Westminster Education Forum described how he had,

“spoken to many headteachers who are cutting subjects from their Key Stage 4 curriculum in order to feed into the EBacc … So … now the school is saying, geography is in the EBacc, drama isn't, we really, really recommend you do geography, or in some cases you have to”.

For us to continue to excel we must place creative subjects at the heart of our education system. If a sixth strand to the EBacc is not to be, I am sure that the Minister will agree that action must be taken to ensure that head teachers do not treat creative subjects as second-class. Grayson Perry’s prediction must not be allowed to come true.

Dame Tessa Jowell said in 2008 that the 2012 Olympics presented,

“a rare chance and a real opportunity: to deepen and widen engagement with culture in all its forms”.

The Cultural Olympiad delivered this. We must ensure that the Olympic legacy lasts.