Arts Council England: Funding

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this important debate. I absolutely echo his comments about access for all to the best of the arts. I am a passionate champion of arts in Luton and across the country. Participation in cultural activity develops social capital, and enables local people to lead happy, healthy and prosperous lives.

Financial security has rarely been more important for our arts and cultural organisations, having weathered the challenges of the covid pandemic and a decade of funding cuts to the arts. Cultural industries in the UK are a success story: in 2021, the gross value added by the creative industries was £104 billion.

The role of the Arts Council is very important and its funding decisions are critical to encouraging creativity across the country and in all our communities. In Luton, we have a rich and thriving arts and culture sector. It enriches our town’s cultural diversity, encourages investment and supports social mobility and inclusion. Arts culture and creativity are central to the Luton 2020-2040 vision for a place where everyone can thrive across all our communities, and the Arts Council plays a critical role in that.

Last year, brilliant Luton organisations, Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton Carnival Arts Development Trust, Tangled Feet theatre and Music24 community music group, each received funding as national portfolio organisations. Revoluton Arts is an excellent example of the impact of the Arts Council creative people and places funding in Luton. It is a people-powered project that cultivates grassroots creativity in Luton and puts on high-quality creative events, particularly focused on increasing the participation of diverse communities.

We do not have a large professional theatre or venue in Luton to attract symphony orchestras, large scale theatrical work or indeed opera, but we have an excellent music service team and a music hub, and brilliant schools that want their children to experience the best cultural, artistic and musical activities available. That is the reason I was disturbed by the original Arts Council decision.

Arts Council funding of English National Opera helped to bring opportunities to our young people and led to a strong partnership between ENO and Luton music hub. The partnership created excellent opportunities for Luton’s young people. English National Opera brought its opera squad to Lea Manor High School, albeit in in Luton North, and there have been trips from Luton to the London Coliseum, both back-stage and to the opera. The partnership had expanded post-pandemic with the Finish This… programme in which more than 500 Luton children from key stage 2 became English National Opera composers for a term, and created their own musical colour worlds in response to ENO’s specially commissioned piece, “Blue, Red, Yellow…”, by Omar Shahryar.

The list of excellent work goes on and on, but the fact is that the music hub’s partnership with English National Opera brought opportunities to young people in Luton that simply would not have been achieved otherwise. It is proof that the impact of English National Opera is beyond the borders of London. It is showing diverse, working class, young people in Luton that opera singers look like them and the sky is the limit on their aspiration, but the Arts Council’s decision cuts off that aspiration.

I welcome the announcement yesterday that Arts Council England agreed that it will invest £11 million in ENO in 2023-24, but because opera plans significantly further ahead, a 12-month commitment is very short term. Last November, the Arts Council said it would ringfence £17 million for three years of transitional funding. If we take the funding for year one, can we assume that leaves about £2.7 million a year for the following two years, compared to the Arts Council’s previous annual funding of £12.8 million?

A funding cut of that size is shocking because English National Opera has exceeded many of the success criteria set by the Arts Council in terms of young audience growth, increased diversity and representation, the ability to reshape opera and maintenance of financial stability. The cut is accompanied by the recommendation that the organisation relocates from London to Manchester by 2026. I agree with others that does not make strategic sense, given that Opera North already has a presence in Manchester. The Arts Council needs to provide an opera strategy so we can see its intent. Further discussions with the Arts Council and English National Opera must lead to a fair funding settlement and ensure that ENO can continue to deliver the very best that it has to offer.