Unboxed: Finance

(asked on 30th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent estimate she has made of the total funds to be allocated for Unboxed: Creativity in the UK.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 28th April 2022

UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK is an ambitious programme of ten major multi-site and digital creative projects. The programme objectives are to bring people together and celebrate our collective and unique offer to the world. To deliver this, UNBOXED is taking the projects to over 80 places across the UK which have not generally staged such events in the past, all for free.

This programme aims to deliver a wide range of social, cultural and economic benefits which will be independently assessed and a report will be published in early 2023. In particular, the programme will help contribute to people’s happiness and wellbeing across the UK through taking part in and enjoying world-class cultural events, and help support the creative sector’s recovery from the pandemic through employment opportunities and new partnerships. It will demonstrate innovative uses of technology, drive up engagement with science and technology, and showcase the very best of the UK’s creativity to the world.

These benefits are already starting to be realised. For example, thousands of people have enjoyed ‘About Us’, a spectacular light and music production in Paisley, Londonderry, Caernarfon and Luton. Fifty young people are working on ‘Storytrails’, and hundreds of young people are contributing creative work to ‘Tour de Moon’. ‘Green Spaces Dark Skies’ has invited 20,000 people to carry lights in areas of outstanding natural beauty across the UK to create a magical light show. There is an extensive learning and participation programme which includes hundreds of lesson plans, workshops, school trips and other learning resources inspired by the ten projects.

The total budget for UNBOXED is £120 million, of which £98 million has been allocated to DCMS, and the remainder made available to the Devolved Administrations via the Barnett Formula (led by HM Treasury).

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