Performing Arts

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Featherstone]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to support the performing arts sectors throughout England.

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, I am certain that the Minister and Secretary of State are both fully aware that cultural recovery post Covid in the regions of England is well behind London. In this debate, I am expecting the Minister to list the things that the Government are doing in terms of the performing arts, such as tax reliefs, the culture recovery fund and culture places—they are indeed needed and most welcome. He may point to pots of money available for projects such as town funds, levelling-up funds and so on. However, as Eliza Easton of PEC and Nesta asked:

“How can levelling up funding (which requires competitive bids) make up for the huge decline in the day-in-day-out revenue funding which used to come through local authorities?”


Moreover, the funding pots that are available just do not touch the sides of the massive cuts to local government funding of 30%. Local authorities are, or were, the biggest funders of cultural activity across the whole of England, and they have been comprehensively kneecapped. They fulfil the most obvious of place-based actors, as they are in every place.

In its recent report, Cornerstones of Culture, the Local Government Association makes it clear that there is a vital need for a sustainable, multi-year funding settlement to enable local authorities to support the arts. The report reveals a £2.4 billion funding gap. It rightly argues that greater collaborative work between councils and cultural partners, combined with place-based funding from the Government, is crucial for sustaining the ecology of art and culture in the UK, and that a shift towards place-led approaches that enable a greater diversity of communities, cultural providers and practitioners to shape local decision-making is vital.

Absolutely nothing that the Government are doing slows or reverses the decline in teachers of dance, drama and music, or in teaching hours or position in the curriculum—nor does it solve the apprenticeship levy or the much-needed support for work-based training for young people and for people already in the industry and freelancers. It does not deal with the potential decimation of music hubs—out to consultation—nor is there support for our small music venues, which are closing down at the rate of one a week. That is where real people meet locally for real music. It is where Ed Sheeran and Adele started—it is where local talent begins. I understand that Minister Lopez is to meet the music industry about support for small venues, so let us hope that it is not just a meeting but a catalyst to actual support. Some government pressure would not go amiss on the industry itself to step up.

Mid-scale touring is also under pressure and threat. What are the Government doing about support for it? The whole touring ecosystem has been shaken. Yes, tax credits will help a bit, but they will not help most of the mid-scale touring. Then there is the scarlet pimpernel of promises—the eternally missing manifesto pledge of a £90 million arts premium, which is nowhere to be seen. We were told that it was to fund enriching activities for all pupils. Rishi Sunak, now Prime Minister, promised £25,000 on average for each secondary school to invest in arts activities in his March 2020 Budget. Then teachers were told that the funding would arrive in September 2021. When it did not, the Schools Minister said that the arts premium was subject to that year’s spending review. But—guess what?— when the spending review arrived, Rishi Sunak made no mention of the arts premium.

The performing arts are vital for all sorts of reasons, not just economically but in terms of well-being and community; they help with depression and anxiety and building bridges between cultures and worldviews. In other words, they are a vital part of the existence of a civilised society, which no one should be denied. Ministers can regularly be heard to chant that very same mantra, paying verbal homage but without willing the means and the action to achieve the ends.

We need a new deal to ensure the maintenance of performing arts in England, one that will ensure that we re-establish higher numbers of students taking and learning performing arts subjects across the country. At the heart of this diminution of the performing arts—I am sure the Minister will correct me on this—seems to be a systemic reductionist approach by the Government by deed and by word. We see it in the choice of EBacc subjects, the slashing of 50% of funding for university arts courses and the reduction in the number of our brilliant teachers of drama, dance and music, together with, as I mentioned before, a reduction in teaching hours of those subjects and their position in the curriculum. It is exacerbated by perpetual derogatory references to those vital subjects, describing dance and other creative subjects as “low value”, “non-priority”, “dead-end” and so on.

The government message that only a knowledge-based curriculum is valid has resulted in 66% of educators reporting a decline in the uptake of, for example, dance qualifications for students aged 14 and over. Music, dance, performing arts, art and design, as well as media studies, have seen their subsidy fall from £243 per full-time student per year in 2020-21 to £121.50 —more than halved. Drama teacher numbers have fallen by 20% and drama hours taught by 15%. There are 9% fewer music teachers, and one in seven music teachers have left the profession.

This Government’s school reforms have caused pupils to move away from subjects such as dance, music and art. We need both STEAM and STEM. I ask the Minister where it is that everyone, no matter what their background, can be enthused, imbued, uplifted, find talents, and enjoy and expand their horizons culturally? It is school. If it is not school, it will be who your parents are, what your parents earn and where your parents live—and that is not very levelling up, is it?

When it comes to apprenticeships—such a great way to bring young people into the working world of performing arts—the apprenticeship levy is not fit for purpose. Under the current system, firms have to set aside 0.5% of their payroll for apprenticeships. However, many employers say that they are unable to use the funds, which are taken by the Treasury if not used within two years, because the condition imposed is that businesses are not allowed to fund any courses that are shorter than one year in duration. This means that they are often unable to use the funds because many performing arts opportunities are of less than one year; they are much shorter. It is not fit for purpose, so please just change it.

Then there are the music hubs, where the proposition that they should be reduced from 116 to 43 is out to consultation until tomorrow. How can the Government go on about levelling up when these sorts of retractions are proposed? Chris Walters, the MU national organiser for education, has said, quite rightly, that

“the Government’s rationale for wanting fewer hubs has never been clear, and its updated rationale remains a list of untested assertions”

and that if the reduction goes ahead, it is

“likely to cause a great deal of disruption with no guarantee that children will receive better music education”.

All in all, it is quite a bleak picture for the performing arts across England.

I understand that there is to be a new cultural education plan, chaired by the superb noble Baroness, Lady Bull, but can the Minister confirm whether that review will enable actual curriculum changes? Will it outsource the cultural curriculum away from the school estate and timetable? I am really concerned about that, because if it is so, it will be a nail in the coffin of every child being able to take part in dance, drama and music—literally, a death knell.

There is also to be a music education plan in 2024—I wait more in hope than expectation—and, of course, the all-important creative industries sector vision. Given that the new Secretary of State highlighted the creative industries as a

“key growth sector for the UK economy”—

I could not agree more—at the opening of Creative UK’s Creative Coalition Festival this year, expectation is running high.

I have had very little time to present the case for so many parts of our performing arts under threat—I did not have time to touch opera and many others. It was literally a gallop through, when each deserves its own debate. I look forward to the Government’s response and hope that all the issues that I have raised will be fully addressed.