Alex Cunningham
Main Page: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I know that my right hon. and learned Friend is a bit of an angel herself, but does she recognise that the Angel of the North has not just become a world icon, but helped to drive tens of millions of pounds of investment in the north-east? Its legacy is now very much in danger.
Ms Harman
I absolutely agree. The Angel of the North is not just a proud landmark for the north; the whole country admires it. We wish we had an angel of similar height and scale in Peckham.
The truth is that if we want the arts to thrive in future, they need to survive now. It takes years to build them up, but they can be destroyed at the stroke of a pen. The situation is so difficult that we have to forge a survival strategy for the arts. That is work for a broad-ranging coalition, including the Arts Council, local government, the arts community and central Government—not just the Department for Culture, Media and Sport but, crucially, the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The Culture Secretary must take the lead and stand up for culture—the clue is in her title. That means not letting the Communities and Local Government Secretary squash arts in the regions, not letting the Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary slope off to Europe to water down copyright and not letting the Education Secretary sweep creativity out of the curriculum.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The people of north-east England hold a tremendous passion for the arts. Since the late 1990s, the region has developed a budding significance in the creative industries, spurred by finances made available under the last Labour Government, as well as from the EU and the national lottery.
The placing of the now-iconic Angel of the North welcomed in a new era for the region.
Ian Mearns
Does my hon. Friend recognise that we owe a debt of gratitude to the people of Hartlepool, where the Angel of the North was made? Last weekend marked the sculpture’s 15th birthday.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend is also an angel; I congratulate him and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—who personally constructed the angel, if we are to believe some of the stories that I have been hearing.
During the decade that followed the erection of the Angel of the North, some £350 million was invested in new and established arts venues, which saw the beginning of an under-recognised British success story. It has provided a major boost to the regional economy and resulted in the creation of not hundreds but thousands of jobs across the culture and tourism sectors. The result of that clever combination of investment and foresight is that the north-east, often one of Britain’s poorest and most deprived areas by many other measures, has established some of the finest creative arts infrastructure in the entire country.
We can boast of not only international attractions such as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead concert hall, both in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), but national and regional establishments such as the ARC in Stockton and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
Kelvin Hopkins
I am not from the north-east myself, but it strikes me that this is being driven by many visionary Labour councillors in the area.
Alex Cunningham
That is very much the case, none more so than in the work of the leader of Gateshead metropolitan borough council.
A huge variety of other events and festivals grace our region every year, such as the Stockton international riverside festival, and we celebrate some of the largest-scale street festivals in the world. The Billingham international folklore festival, which also takes place in my constituency, will mark its 50th anniversary in 2014.
It is a colossal failure that the Government do not grasp the importance of the sector to the regions. They are missing an opportunity to integrate cultural programmes into the agendas of multiple Departments to safeguard the legacy that previous investment has produced. Culture and the arts not only enhance our lives and promote the ability to achieve our potential; they also support a creative sector that was forecast to grow by 31% by 2020. The additional cuts to the DCMS budget will therefore come at a huge cost, threatening to kill growth stone dead and denying many the opportunity to access the artistic and cultural experiences that shape individuals and help define communities.
The basis for the severity of the cuts is framed in a simple economic argument—that spending on the arts is difficult to justify—yet last week the Arts Council published independent economic analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research that found that the sector currently makes up 0.4% of GDP compared with just 0.1% of investment. For every pound of subsidy provided to the arts and culture industry, the sector returned a £7 contribution to GDP. That is a higher return than that from the health and wholesale and retail industries, and it blows the economic viability argument out of the water.
Stockton, at the heart of my constituency, is renowned for delivering a host of arts and culture events with great success. Audiences at events such as the riverside festival and the Stockton Weekender continue to grow year on year. The riverside festival—which this year features “Prometheus Awakes”, a model that is almost as high as this Chamber, and various other performances by local, national and international participants—was central to bringing the Cultural Olympiad to the north-east. Some 80,000 people flocked to the town to experience the events.
It is important, however, to see beyond the obvious economic benefits. The impact of the sector can be seen in many ways, not least in the increased involvement in the arts. ARC arts centre in my constituency is a case in point. Since opening 13 years ago, ARC has developed into a flagship, multi-purpose cultural venue, hosting hundreds of events a year, from music and dance to theatre, film and comedy. As a direct result, engagement has increased substantially. ARC hosted 230 professional performances, as well as 80 community performances, last year alone and this attracted more than 100,000 visitors. It is of real benefit to our economy.
Similarly, more than 100 artists are employed to provide 1,000 creative learning opportunities, enjoyed by more than 14,000 people. That has provided professional development and training opportunities for more than 200 artists and practitioners. With evidence showing that emerging partnering between creative industries and schools has the potential to improve the productivity and learning and earning potential of young people, our future would be markedly bleaker without proper access to the arts.
Just across the River Tees, at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, 18,000 people took part in formal and informal programmes last year, and it delivered a series of creative workshops in conjunction with Teesside university occupational therapy students for dementia patients and their carers. That highlights perfectly the level of innovation that the creative industries can generate, ensuring significant benefits and stronger communities.
To hammer home the case for Stockton and everywhere else, and in case naysayers have any doubt, recent figures suggest that ARC now generates about £4.5 million annually for Stockton’s local economy. If that does not signify value added—both socially and culturally, as well as economically—I do not know what does.
The arts are a valuable commodity—this much is true. Their real value, however, lies in the wealth of other benefits that they bring. Support for our creative industries is key to encouraging and nurturing the talents and appreciation that were unearthed only relatively recently. Slashing funding to the Arts Council and local government while sidelining creative education is not the way to do that.