Action and evidence on increasing access to culture and creative activities
Crafts Council has welcomed early details of a new National Centre for Arts and Music Education, intended to give young people greater access to arts education and wider creative and sporting activities. This is part of the government’s plans to break the link between background and success.
A new Enrichment Framework is to help support schools to offer pupils high-quality creative and extra-curricular activities.
The parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched a new rolling inquiry to examine previously unheard issues and challenges. Crafts Council will be responding.
An interim report from the Independent Review of the Curriculum and Assessment system in England highlights how the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measures may unnecessarily constrain student choice, impacting on access to vocational and arts subjects. It also notes how Design and Technology has suffered a significant decline in student uptake at GCSE, as highlighted in Crafts Council’s response to the review. Crafts Council has welcomed this acknowledgement but we have called for a more explicit and robust focus on our sector.
DCMS reports on what works to increase equality of access to culture for lower socio-economic groups. Even though engagement with arts and culture supports many positive outcomes, studies have consistently found that people from lower socio-economic groups are less likely to engage in arts and culture. The report highlights what works, including:
The number of people working in the creative industries from working class backgrounds is declining, according to The Creative Mentor Network’s (CMN) latest impact report. However, the DCMS data draws on employer responses and doesn’t reflect the breadth of craft activity and its many sole traders. While Getting in and getting on Class, participation and job quality in the UK Creative Industries (2020) shows that class imbalances exist across every creative industry, craft is an exception to this.
Arts and Minds is trying to put arts subjects at the heart of teaching in British schools. The campaign is led by 20 national organisations including the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD). Meanwhile Arts Council England chief executive Darren Henley says he is ‘hopeful’ that more young people will study arts subjects to GCSE, following the Curriculum and Assessment Review.
And in the early years, there’s a gap in provision of creative activities for children under three years of age. A 25-year Arts Council England research programme, Talent 25, follows the lives of babies from 400 families across Leicester, from birth to their 25th birthdays. Early findings show that cross-sector partnerships are vital and activities need to be targeted, affordable, local, relevant and fun.