Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, this short debate is about what the Government are doing to support the arts, particularly the visual arts and heritage, in face of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. The point I want to make is that it is particularly important to promote policy and practice designed to support the arts at a time of restriction. It is just when horizons are being shut down that it is most important to enlarge them.

That is what the arts do in taking us beyond the mundane and the prosaic and into the world of the imagination, beyond the concrete and the functional and into the world of feeling and the emotions. It is not going too far to say that this is essential for mental and physical well-being. We are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for reminding us of a truth all too easily forgotten when we are fighting a crisis. Yet, in truth, we are strengthened in fighting the crisis if we do not allow society to forget it.