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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress he has made on plans for UK Festival 2022; and how (a) Stoke-on-Trent and (b) Staffordshire can participate in that festival.

Festival UK 2022 is a major nationwide festival of creativity and innovation. It will deliver a programme of ten ground-breaking large-scale new commissions with the ambition of bringing people together and promoting the UK’s creativity to the world.

The programme, led by Martin Green, Chief Creative Officer, recently launched a £3m R&D Project. This is an open call for creative teams of organisations and individuals from across Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths to come together to receive funding to develop new ideas for 2022.

I encourage people and organisations in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire to get involved by registering on the Festival website (www.festival2022.uk)