Richard Boffey, Head of AccessHE, and Dale Hall, London Higher’s Creative Skills Project Manager, respond to the Centre for London’s recent report: Arts for all: tackling barriers to arts and cultural participation in London.
The value of London’s creative sector to the national economy is undeniable, but lack of support for creative education and widening access to culture risks destabilising this pillar of British industry. The government’s industrial strategy and the Greater London Authority’s London Growth Plan both highlight the creative industries as a growth sector, but this growth can only be achieved through developing a skilled and robust talent pipeline.
For this reason, we welcome the report’s recommendations, particularly around bolstering the Arts in the national core curriculum. Creative skills are vital and valuable not only to the creative industries, but to other sectors and to society as a whole.
The report is right to call in its recommendations for closer partnership working with ‘local and grassroots organisations in order to reach Londoners who are most marginalised from the Arts.’ London Higher’s members have a critical role to play here as anchor institutions, through the expertise and resources they can bring to bear but also the point of connection they provide to local communities. Goldsmiths University of London’s Community Engagement Toolkit, co-produced with Lewisham Migration Museum, and RCA’s FASHION + JOY collaboration with Share Community, are just two of countless examples of good practice on which to build.
Through their extensive outreach work, higher education providers in the capital are also well-placed to support youth engagement, which the report identifies as a priority for improving cultural participation more widely. Many already host Saturday Clubs and run community arts, music and drama provision. Extending and equalising access to this will help to achieve the participation objectives outlined in the report.
It proposes introducing an Arts Pass for under-25s as a mechanism for widening participation and the same principles of universal access are implicit in the GLA’s ‘new deal for young Londoners’ commitments as well as its recent promise to introduce a Youth Skills Guarantee. If these initiatives can be effectively joined up with the proposals outlined in this report, and can harness the potential of higher education providers in London, then ‘arts for all’ could well be made a reality.
