Bridging the divide for children in the North

Last month Curious Minds ran a cost-of-living survey to understand the impact of financial pressures on the cultural education workforce. We knew that many grassroots arts organisations and practitioners we support have no way of absorbing rising costs. But these are the voices so often missing from national conversations, that play a vital role in the cultural ecology of local areas and are often best placed to reach into communities and help those who need it most.

Early findings describe a landscape of decreasing provision and uptake, where children and young people’s access to culture is being squeezed from all directions. This isn’t new, the warning signs have been there for some time, but the current crisis could be a tipping point.

This matters. When we talk about sector resilience, inclusivity and relevance, these are systemic challenges. Long-term change cannot be achieved without nurturing our next generation of leaders, producers and consumers. But it’s not just about talent, or the workforce and audiences of tomorrow. Now, more than ever, young people need the escape, inspiration, connection, fun and wellbeing that arts and culture provide.

A bridge organisation for the North

Curious Minds is a cultural education charity working across the North-West of England. We support, develop and champion the cultural education workforce through a range of learning and development programmes – bringing teachers, youth workers, artists and creative practitioners together and creating opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Since 2012, we’ve been the Arts Council’s Bridge Organisation for the region – a role we’ve been proud to undertake.

We believe that being creative and experiencing culture should be a regular part of every child’s learning and life. At the heart of our work is a fierce determination to tackle unequal access to creativity and culture for children and young people, particularly those excluded by social and economic inequalities. This is a significant challenge within the North-West, and across the North more widely.

It’s important to make visible these entrenched inequalities experienced by so many families. In 2021, the Child of the North report painted a stark picture: children growing up in the North are more likely to live in poverty than those in the rest of England, they are more likely to be in care, to report a mental health condition, or to die before the age of one. They are least ready to start school.

Many of our communities were hardest hit during the pandemic, we had the highest levels of unemployment, and our children experienced the greatest loss of learning. With widening inequalities increasing demand for statutory services and funding, it's becoming harder and harder to protect and grow the cultural offer.

Grassroots organisations struggling to survive

Years of austerity and the impacts of Covid have taken their toll on the cultural education workforce. Despite growing need, there’s ever-decreasing capacity, resource and expertise at a local level to work strategically, and to sustain a wide-reaching, high-quality and accessible offer. There’s brilliant work happening in pockets, and our Local Cultural Education Partnerships are working hard to fill the gaps. But there are lots of gaps.

Grassroots and community organisations pulled out all the stops to support children and young people during the pandemic, but many are now struggling to survive. Our survey shows smaller organisations with a turnover of less than £150k are expecting to be disproportionately affected by increased running costs this winter. Most are planning for increases of 15-25% of their annual turnover. They can’t pass rising costs onto participants, and they’re worried about the young people they support.

The decline of provision in schools is also a huge challenge. As a universal access point for culture, schools can play a significant role in addressing the cultural deficit in children and young people’s lives. Yet we continue to see a devaluing of arts and cultural subjects at all phases with the Cultural Learning Alliance recently reporting a 40% decrease in GCSE Arts entries since 2010.

Increased pressure on school budgets has made school trips and working with cultural partners a ‘luxury’ that many can’t afford. In some cases, school-funded arts tuition is under threat. As Frances Power, Headteacher at The Fallibroome Academy says: “We’ve worked hard to protect the arts over the years. Funding cuts and other pressures have made this more difficult, but we’ve done well, even when the numbers didn’t add up. However, I’m really worried about what’s to come. There’s no more slack in the system and with further austerity looming I’m not sure that we can continue to protect this area of provision, and that’s a real anxiety.”

All this serves to widen the gap between families that can and can’t afford to access arts and culture outside school. Our fear is that soon only the most affluent families will be able to purchase the advantages of a high-quality cultural education for their children.

Under 18s must be included in cultural infrastructure planning

It’s becoming harder to track these changes and to understand the shifting patterns of children and young people’s cultural engagement. This has always been a challenge, but we’ve done what we can using local and national datasets.

However, the new DCMS Participation Survey doesn’t collect data for under 18s. This is a real concern. We need this data to continue developing a robust evidence base, demonstrate impact and help make the case for cultural and place-based funding. With a new National Plan for Cultural Education on its way, we need to be pragmatic but ambitious.

We welcome the increased investment in the North and in direct provision for children and young people in the Arts Council’s recent portfolio announcement. But we’ve also seen a significant reduction in funding for the broader cultural education infrastructure (particularly in the North and the Midlands) stripping away vital support for our workforce and limiting opportunities for joined-up, strategic working at a local and regional level.

The inequalities are stark and ensuring that all children and young people have access to creativity and culture inside and outside school, requires resource and coordination. There’s so much we could do but these are my starters for ten:

•   We need coordinated investment for partnership working at grassroots level, drawing on the resource and expertise of the cultural education workforce. This would allow schools and other organisations supporting children and young people to work with cultural partners to solve local problems and share resources.
•   We need to remember where the talent pipeline begins and not just focus on entry to employment. Schools are often overlooked as strategic partners for developing cultural policy and programmes, despite playing a vital role in the supply chain.
•   We need capacity, resource and expertise for big picture thinking, sharing practice and coordinating collective action. This has been the role of Curious Minds for many years, and one that we believe is essential for supporting the cultural education workforce.
•   Finally, we need a joined-up approach for measuring children and young people’s cultural participation.

Hannah Baldwin is Director of Policy and Place at Curious Minds.