Government Support for Artists

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, when I have spoken before in this House about the hugely positive role of the creative industries, I have focused on the crucial role of our higher education institutions in producing the creative artists and innovators who can contribute so much, both to the future success and well-being of the UK and to shaping the way in which other countries perceive us.

The UK is a world leader in this area, and universities and the smaller specialist institutions are the engine which generates the powerhouse of artists, musicians and wordsmiths to maintain that leadership. But the impressive 2014 strategy document of the Creative Industries Council, a body which has done a great deal to reinforce the importance of this sector, finds that access to finance has been one of the major challenges to future growth and maturity in the UK creative industries. It is ironic that we have hugely creative enterprises in this sector, but they are invariably small; employment and continuing funding are precarious; and many young artists or businesses struggle to grow and expand to make their work sustainable.

I know that a number of universities with creative industries or arts degree programmes have introduced employability programmes to equip graduates to set up in business on their own or handle freelance or portfolio working, recognising that this is a likely career path. One example will show how higher education institutions prepare their graduates for this exciting but uncertain world. Artquest, the principal intervention in career support at the University of the Arts London, is a project that supports all artists, not just its graduates, particularly in the first years of their careers. It connects them to the resources, opportunities and networks they need to develop their practices and careers. It supports them to keep making work as the pressures of day-to-day survival grow. It shares the experiences of artists and industry professionals.

That work is informed by ground-breaking research across 26 art and design universities, looking at early career patterns of their graduates. It is titled Creative Graduates Creative Futures, and a telling section in Will Hutton’s introduction reads:

“Many found the only entry into the industry was via unpaid internships, requiring parental support and middle class backgrounds. The relationship is close to exploitative, even though the young men and women trying to win a foothold in the industry do not see it that way. The creative industries should offer more paid internships, and take more care of its enthusiastic workforce”.

I would welcome the Minister’s views on this.

NESTA’s 2008 research on fine artists as innovators, still one of the best insights in this area, emphasises the desire of fine arts graduates to take up occupations where they can identify themselves as artists. It states that they have many of the skills needed for wider innovation, and see themselves as brokers across disciplines, taking insights and techniques from one field and translating them creatively into another. However, as I know from my past role at Universities UK, those transferable skills and aptitude for team working, creativity and independent learning are often dismissed.

NESTA’s work, and that more recently of the CBI, along with the work of the Creative Industries Council as well as the universities, shows unequivocally that the sector is a leading global hub for the creative industries but that for success to be sustained, all players must work together to support the sector and the individual artists in it. I hope that the Minister can tell us what the Government are doing to work in partnership with the industry to put creative industries at the heart of the growth agenda and build on what is already a true UK success story.