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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to maximise engagement of children and young people in the arts.

The Culture White Paper published last month makes clear that this Government is committed to ensuring that the arts should be an essential part of every child’s education both in and out of school. This includes working with the Department for Education on a range of music and cultural education programmes since 2012, supporting the Arts Council’s Cultural Education Challenge to create a network of cultural education partnerships and a new Cultural Citizens programme which will be piloted in three areas to support the engagement of disadvantaged young people with arts and culture in their local community.