Economy: Creative Sector

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate secured by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, whose remarks I endorse—apart from the fact that actually we have masses of data about this issue, which has been campaigned on for 50 years. It is time for real action, again.

I do not wish to rehearse the facts of the contribution of the creative industries to the UK economy, although I will point out that if the fashion industry were a country, it would be seventh on the table of global GDP and about the same size as the economy of Canada. That is how big it is, so I am going to focus on the fashion industry again. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for taking this opportunity to shift the focus from some of the more established notions of skills training and gaps on to creative skills and sustainability. This is timely as we approach the first anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh on 24 April. It is perhaps also worth noting that we are in the final year of the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

Since the exposure of the realities of not only building collapses but issues such as landfill and other forms of environmental degradation, more and more people are calling for a fashion revolution. Yet my sense is that the training and education of those who design, produce and sell garments has not really kept up with that kind of movement. The more we think about the challenges in producing fashion that retains its sense of fun, enables us to present our sense of identity, et cetera, the more important it becomes to make values and ethics explicit components of the training and education of creatives and makers in the fashion industry. Just as we train and teach our students and apprentices how to develop their craft and skills to produce high-quality creative content, so we should be teaching innovative approaches to internal and external threats, problems and opportunities, such as the environment and sustainability.

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion is, along with MADE-BY, among the leaders of the drive to ensure that students develop their creative skills and innovative talents in conjunction with an understanding of the need to develop different ways of working which emphasise that good fashion should also be sustainable. The centre’s staff provide the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, which I chair—my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is also a member of that group.

As the world faces environmental and social challenges, there is a greater need for innovation and creativity based not on single disciplines but on inter- and multidisciplinarity. Future creative graduates are going to need the skills to address sustainability and ethical challenges, which means that they must have the opportunity to engage with these issues throughout their education. I have used fashion as an example but the arts, cultural and creative sector as a whole has to develop much more sustainable practices and much more rapidly.

Currently the creative industries are not leading the charge on sustainability, which I feel is a missed trick, especially given the ability of the sector to engage with such a wide range of people in a fun and interesting way. Given the ability of these sectors to generate debate, joy, contemplation, reflection and so on, and given their highly developed creativity, I hope that the creative skills training bodies will make a decisive push in this direction, encouraged by leadership from the Government. Creative practitioners have the potential to make a real difference in the way that society as a whole faces these issues.