Cultural and Creative Industries: Diversity

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Much of the money channelled to this area comes through Arts Council England, which has supported a number of programmes aiming to address barriers to access, including the National Youth Dance Company and Youth Music, which focuses on providing music-making opportunities for disadvantaged children. Youth Music projects support 75,000 disadvantaged children. There are other ways the money can be channelled into these very important areas.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I reiterate what was said by the noble Lord, Lord—forgive me, he is the current chairman of the Royal College of Music and is actually my successor in that post, so I declare my interest. This is incredibly embarrassing; it is the high blood pressure as you get up to speak, basically.

The metrics show very clearly that music education improves literacy and memory, short-term and long-term.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, I am musically ill-educated. It also, of course, improves collaboration and emotional development. It is very important for children. Most schools I visit show very clearly that there is not nearly enough music available to them.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I hope my own memory serves me right, but music goes further than that. The noble Lord makes some very good points, because music impacts beneficially on mental health, where there are issues in areas of high deprivation in particular. We all know that Gareth Malone, who springs to mind, has done a lot of very good work in this area.