Skills for Theatre (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Gilbert of Panteg Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Gilbert of Panteg (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, and a privilege to succeed him as chair of your Lordships’ Communications Committee. He was a very effective chair of a highly experienced and expert committee. I know that noble Lords are very grateful to him for his chairmanship. It typifies his dedication to public service and to the House.

As we heard evidence about the breadth of talent in the UK creative industries and the contribution it makes to our lives and economy, I reflected on the extraordinary contributions in this field of a number of my committee colleagues. I was struck by the passion and commitment to using their own experience to improve the lives of others. It is the capacity of the theatre industry to improve well-being, provide opportunity and drive our economy forward that led us to this inquiry in the first place.

The theatre industry is more important than ever in our national lives. As we leave the EU and face the challenges of automation and the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the creative industries are rightly a critical part of government industrial strategy and are powerfully championed in government by Matt Hancock—the Secretary of State—and my noble friend.

Wherever you sit on the Brexit debate, we are all pretty much agreed that we want an open Britain, one that is welcoming of talent, vibrant and outward-looking. We want to play a confident role in the world, as we always have, not retreat into ourselves. There can be no doubt that our creative industries are at the heart of that vision. In these times, they are an increasingly important part of our economy, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined, employing 3 million people and growing at four times the rate of the wider economy. But it is the nature of these jobs that makes the industry so important and presents it with serious challenges.

As some jobs in our economy disappear, whole industries will fundamentally change and career paths vanish, but many of the roles in this sector will survive and flourish. The creative industries will provide some of the most satisfying, enriching and fulfilling work in our future economy. That is an exciting opportunity, but places more responsibility than ever on the industry to ensure that these jobs are open to all. At the same time, the industry faces challenges from Brexit. It is an industry dependent on global talent, often freelance and needed at short notice in this ever faster-moving, smaller world.

Looking at all these issues—projecting a global Britain, providing future-proof jobs in doing so fairly, enriching our lives as we have more free time—we come back time and again to people, talent and skills. The central role that data plays in the wider creative industries makes it an excellent focus for examining many of the issues facing the wider creative economy. Incidentally, our committee’s next inquiry was into the UK’s advertising industry—a hugely successful global industry. Looking at these two inquiries together, we saw the interdependence of the creative industries and the vital role played by theatre in providing a pipeline of talent, as well as many other shared issues.

Let us start with access to the industry. We were concerned with equality of access not just to performance roles, but to the wide range of non-performance roles too. To succeed in the future economy, young people will need a melding of skills. I am certain that a strong focus on STEM subjects is important and that the Government rightly emphasise the importance of digital and other technical skills that have been neglected, but it must not be exclusive. Resilience, self-confidence and adaptability are key attributes and the instilling of these soft skills, which come with a rounded education, is vital. The teaching of arts subjects is not just about—maybe not even mainly about—equipping talented young people to succeed as artists, performers and writers. It is about equipping all young people to work in multidisciplined teams and to open their horizons so that they see the opportunities that lie ahead in a broad range of careers. We should examine whether it is still appropriate for children to specialise so much at an early age.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Best, I was struck by the evidence suggesting how difficult the industry finds it to attract young people who have a good grounding in STEM subjects into roles in stage management, automation systems, carpentry and, as he said, even accounting. State schools need to do better at footpathing this career route to young people. Again in its report on the advertising industry, the committee called for government and industry to act. Given the interdependence of the creative industries, the highly successful advertising industry could take some greater responsibility for a wider campaigning approach that highlights the range of roles in the creative industries and to provide resources to help introduce pupils from all backgrounds, parents and teachers to roles in the wider sector.

In taking evidence we found enthusiasm for the principle of apprenticeships and the opportunity they offered to widen the pool of talent coming into the industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined. We found some success stories, but there was a widespread feeling that apprenticeships are not working well in the sector—that the scheme is not sufficiently flexible for the demands of the industry and not well suited to SMEs, which make up a big part of the industry. As the Government continue to review the apprenticeship scheme they need to address the peculiar demands of the creative industries in general and theatre in particular.

The theatre industry, like others in the sector, has much work to do to attract the widest range of people to work in it and to watch its performances. I have no doubt that the industry gets this and is working hard, particularly in the area of performers and audiences. The greatest creativity comes from drawing on the widest possible pool of talent and backgrounds so that theatre has an interest in constantly improving diversity. But there is a wider responsibility on the whole sector to be open, welcoming and proactive in attracting young people from a range of socially diverse backgrounds to the careers of the future, which cannot continue to be disproportionally open to a fairly narrow section of society.

However hard we work to teach the skills and attract young people to our global creative industries, often through the career pipeline of theatre, there will always be a need to attract workers from around the world. As Britain leaves the EU and meets the challenges of the rapidly changing economy, we need to be nimble and fast-moving as well as open and welcoming, so a visa regime that serves our national interest will have a focus on providing the skills needed in theatre and other similar industries speedily and with minimal bureaucracy. There needs to be a provision in the visa system for rapid project-based freelance visas. The Government should seek reciprocal arrangements for the industry with other countries.

I have not touched on resources. I know that other noble Lords will. There have been many calls for public spending and there was particular anxiety about funding from local government. Maybe it is time to uprate in line with inflation that old adage about public spending: a few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to serious money. There is an argument for more public funding of the subsidised theatre sector, which plays a vital role, as the report evidence suggests, in developing the pipeline of talent that feeds not only commercial theatre but our highly successful broadcast and TV industries, advertising, event production and many others. But there is a role for these commercially successful industries to contribute more to funding the development of skills in the theatre industry, from which they benefit, and a whole-sector approach is called for.

In committee, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, who knows a thing or two about this subject, admonished me when I often mistakenly referred to “creative” versus “non-creative” roles. She rightly told me that the distinction I was trying to make was between performing and non-performing roles, and that many of the off-stage roles I was talking about were highly creative. She was completely right.

We have great creative industries full of great creative people. They will drive our economy, improve our lives and strengthen society. As human beings, we are blessed with different talents and skills but—whether we are performers or not, whether we are highly creative or not—our lives will be enriched if the opportunity to take part in or enjoy and appreciate creative endeavour is open to us, which is why resolute focus on opportunity for all starts here.