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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of her Department's spending on supporting music goes to (a) gospel music and (b) other individual music genres; and what was the cost to the public purse of her Department's support for gospel music in each of the last five years.

Gospel music and other individual musical genres receive public support through a wide variety of sources, including Arts Council England. Decisions made by the Arts Council about the allocation of funding are taken at arm's length from the Government. Its decisions are made in line with the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy, Let’s Create, which sets the direction for all the artforms it supports.

Neither the Department for Culture, Media and Sport nor the Arts Council England holds aggregated data for funding for gospel music as a specific sub-genre. Liverpool Lighthouse is a new inclusion in the Arts Council England National Portfolio and incorporates the National Gospel Music Centre. Liverpool Lighthouse will host the first Liverpool Gospel Music Festival which will take place on 9 September 2023.

Other National Portfolio Organisations, such as Punch and Pegasus Opera engage with the gospel community and have supported several gospel-focused projects through the National Lottery Project Grants programme.

Arts Council England holds data regarding a number of other sub-genres its musical investment supports. Data for Lottery and Grant-in-Aid funding in 2022/23 for these sub-genres was as follows: