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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to improve the accessibility of cultural activities in Wolverhampton.

This government is committed to supporting culture, and making sure that arts and cultural activities will no longer be the preserve of a privileged few. As part of our Plan for Change, we are committed to ensuring that arts and culture thrives in every part of the country, with more opportunities for more people to engage, benefit from and work in arts and culture where they live.

The government supports the arts predominantly through Arts Council England (ACE) funding. ACE’s open funding programme, National Lottery Project Grants, is currently accessible to organisations and individuals across the country, including those in Wolverhampton. This programme provides over £100 million of support annually to individuals and organisations, and since 2020 has invested over £2.3 million into arts projects across Wolverhampton. Alongside this funding, organisations in Wolverhampton currently receive £1,029,081 per annum through ACE’s National Portfolio programme.

Our new Creative Foundations Fund, announced in February, will also invest £85 million into arts and cultural organisations across England to support urgent capital works to keep venues across the country up and running and open to the public. In addition to this, we were pleased to announce last week that Wolverhampton Art Gallery has been awarded a major Capital grant of over £1.6m from Round 4 of the Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND), and that a fifth Round will launch shortly.