Music and Dance Schools: Affordable Access

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

I send my warmest congratulations to my noble friend Lord Blackwell and my appreciation of his dedicated service at the Yehudi Menuhin School. It is always a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who was principal dancer at the Royal Opera House when I was Secretary of State in the mid-1990s. She is a wonderful advocate for dance; it is always so important to remember that dance matters quite as much as music.

It was a privilege to be Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but I am aware that whereas on the sport side there was a real commitment to investing in creating international excellence and successful Olympiads, on the music, dance and arts side, much went into restoring our wonderful institutions, doing what Sir Ernest Hall called creating the “national treasure houses”. As he said, the National Lottery did for the arts and culture what the Medicis did for the cultural treasure houses in Florence. We did not focus on the pipeline, however, and that is the critical issue now.

Talent is everywhere; regrettably, opportunity is not. The 2024 Sutton Trust report on social mobility and the creative industries is a call to action. Privately educated students represent more than half the students at the most prestigious conservatoires. At Oxford, Cambridge, King’s College and Bath, more than half the creative students came from upper middle-class backgrounds. At Hull, where I had the joy of being chancellor for 17 years and which has a top 10 music school and a very impressive dance school, it was better but not good enough. Among under-35s, there are four times as many individuals from middle-class backgrounds in the creative industries. We have to do better to extend opportunity. The Sutton Trust calls for an arts premium to fund arts opportunities. I ask the Government: what is their practical action?

Malcolm Gladwell refers in Outliers: The Story of Success to the 10,000 hour rule: to become an expert, an elite performer requires 10,000 hours of practice. How can the Government help us to ensure that for the young people of the future?