Written evidence submitted by Cultural
Learning Alliance (CLA) (arts 85)
The Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA, www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk)
is a collective voice working to ensure that all children and
young people have meaningful access to culture in this difficult
economic climate.
The CLA was created to develop and advocate
for a coherent national strategy for cultural learning. We work
alongside the main cultural and learning bodies, the relevant
government departments and their national agencies, and regional
and local partners.
The CLA brings together the education, youth
and cultural sectors, including schools, academies, colleges,
universities, libraries and museums, and other organisations working
in film, heritage, dance, literature, new media arts, theatre,
visual arts and music.
The CLA currently has over 1,500 signatories,
including over 1,000 individuals and over 450 organisations. The
following organisations are among those that form the CLA: Arts
Council England; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; Clore Duffield
Foundation; Creativity, Culture and Education; Foyle Foundation;
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; National Campaign for
the Arts; National Skills Academy: Creative and Culture; Paul
Hamlyn Foundation; and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.
The CLA believes that:
— Cultural learning transforms the lives
of young people and the families and communities that surround
them.
— Cultural learning inspires civic engagement,
raises aspiration and is key to helping neighbourhoods to make
positive changes. It equips young people with the skills and experiences
to drive forward our creative industries and contribute to our
economy.
— Cultural learning takes place within
and beyond learning institutions. Schools, colleges and universities,
and youth, arts and cultural organisations are critical partners
in delivering work at a local level.
— Young people who have the opportunity
to learn through and about culture are better equipped to achieve
across the curriculum, and to take responsibility for their own
learning. Attendance and attitude are both improved by engagement
with culture.
Our submission to the Committee's inquiry is
based on the views of teachers and the cultural sector expressed
through a widespread national consultation on cultural learning
undertaken in 2009, and more recently through our web and social
media channels.
SUMMARY OF
OUR RESPONSE
— The recent and future spending cuts will
have significant impact on cultural learning as both Arts Council
and local authority subsidy is reduced.
— Cultural organisations are in a position
to respond effectively and swiftly to the needs of parents, neighbourhoods
and children and young people. They are experts in creating new
and innovative solutions and working in partnership.
— New legislation and emerging government
priorities are opening up more opportunities for arts organisations
to work at the grass-roots level with communities. There are a
number of steps that can be taken to help provide excellent cultural
learning opportunities in this landscape. These include the development
of a national, online, searchable information resource, the development
of local cultural learning consortia and the creation of a single
national monitoring and evaluation tool.
— Public funding for core education and
learning staff within cultural organisations must be maintained,
as must the proportion of the subsidy for the arts and heritage
which goes to work benefiting children and young people. In other
word, the percentage of arts and heritage subsidy for cultural
learning should be safe-guarded.
— Arts Council and DCMS funding agreements
should include the education and learning activities of the organisation
receiving funding. Any new local structures for spending public
funding related to children and young people, education and culture
must be made accessible to cultural organisations. Arts and cultural
organisations and children and young people, should also be involved
on decision making bodies.
— Although the national policy guidelines
for the distribution of lottery funds are broadly supportive of
cultural learning, this priority must be maintained through any
review and could be strengthened.
— It is essential that the MLA and UK Film
Council functions and programmes relating to cultural learning
and the associated resources and expertise in these organisations
is valued and transferred to other bodies.
RESPONSE TO
QUESTIONS
1. What impact recent, and future, spending
cuts from central and local Government will have on the arts and
heritage at a national and local level.
1.1 Local authorities are losing champions,
advocates and brokers for cultural learning. Officers responsible
for cultural and creative practice are leaving their authorities
due to pay freezes and their positions are not being filled. There
is a fear that this will lead to the loss of the role these officers
have performed in advocating to their colleagues in housing, environment,
education, planning and other areas, and in enabling those colleagues
to understand how culture can be embedded in their programmes.
This would mean fewer opportunities for children to participate
in culture via the wide breadth of community programmes local
authorities offer. Schools, youth providers and voluntary organisations
rely on local authority colleagues to broker partnerships with
other local cultural providers. These cuts will make it much more
difficult for these organisations to identify and work effectively
with others.
1.2 The cuts to Building Schools for the
Future (BSF) have had a real impact on secondary school plans
for cultural learning. Many schools were using the investment
to create cultural facilities and spaces for the express benefit
of clusters of partner schools, local communities and cultural
organisations, and the voluntary and third sector, as well as
for their students. These spaces were often planned as specialist
facilities, offering opportunities for engagement and skills development
for the cultural and creative industries for both adult and young
participants. For example, Rainhill High School in St Helens has
been told that their £14 million BSF programme will not be
going ahead. The new mixed community/school use build and remodelling
was planned to focus on the arts with an emphasis on performance
spaces, as well as the use of mobile technology to facilitate
film and animation as part of learning.
1.3 Time and budgets for training and professional
development are being significantly reduced in local authorities.
This represents a very real threat to networks, membership organisations
and providers of training opportunities. For example, Earlyarts,
which provides a network and training for creative early years
practice, is concerned that their intensive training for professionals
from the arts, early years and cultural sectors could be impacted
upon, which would mean a reduction in the number of children who
will receive benefits from the training and resulting creative
and cultural experiences.
1.4 The withdrawal of funding from Find
Your Talent has had an impact across the country. This cut means,
directly, that children will have less opportunity to participate
in the arts over the next two to three years. The CLA has also
been told that the cuts to Find Your Talent funding are affecting
other programmes. Find Your Talent teams acted as valued local
resources, working as hubs across a range of programmes (often
only part-funded by Find Your Talent itself). There is also a
great deal of concern that the new models of integrated and effective
partnership working, which were being tested by Find Your Talent,
will now not be captured, and the learning will not benefit the
wider sector.
1.5 Cultural organisations are beginning
to find that learning budgets are decreasing as a result of cuts
to their overall budgets. This is an impact of cuts to both their
Arts Council funding and their local authority subsidy. For example,
Modern Art Oxford have recently cut 40% of their core learning
team which will have a major impact on the number of projects
and programmes they are able to deliver.
2. What arts organisations can do to work
more closely together in order to reduce duplication of effort
and to make economies of scale.
2.1 Development of a national, searchable
online information resource which allows schools, youth partners,
arts organisations, parents and young people to identify and contact
each other. This would take some initial central resource, but
information about initiatives and organisations would then be
managed by the local partners.
2.2 Development of local cultural learning
consortia. These would include cultural organisations, Specialist
Schools and Academies relating to the arts and culture, FE colleges,
local music and arts services, parents and young people.
These consortia could respond to the needs of
individual schools, youth and community organisations as they
arise and will be able to provide streamlined information and
services. They would also be able to pool their resources, such
as developing joint bids for programmes, sharing training opportunities.
2.3 Working with the CLA to create a single
set of monitoring and evaluation criteria and a universal evaluation
tool which meets the needs of local partners. Arts and cultural
organisations spend a great deal of time and resource monitoring
and evaluating their work to demonstrate value to a range of targets.
By creating a single simple tool information on effectiveness
and outcomes could be easily shared and compared and duplication
eliminated.
3. What level of public subsidy for the arts
and heritage is necessary and sustainable.
3.1 It is essential that core funding for
learning teams within arts and cultural organisations is maintained
and championed. Cultural organisations are extremely effective
in raising funds for their cultural learning work from a range
of sources, including schools, local authority children's services
and from trusts and foundations. However, these sources do not
cover the core costs of the posts which manage and deliver this
work.
3.2 It is essential that support for a board
and diverse range of arts and cultural organisations covering
cultural forms including theatre, dance, music, film, literature,
heritage, new-media and visual arts is maintained in spite of
any reduction in subsidy.
3.3 The proportion of current subsidy to
organisations for the delivery of opportunities for children and
young people in relation to the overall subsidy of arts organisations
is currently at broadly the right level—although scrutiny
of such expenditure by funders is probably insufficient (eg with
national museums)—and this level of expenditure should be
maintained through any reduction in overall subsidy for the arts.
3.4 Many local authority arts, culture and
audience development teams deliver front-line cultural learning
activities as well as providing brokerage, advice and support.
These functions should be taken into account when decisions about
public subsidy are being made, with provision made to maintain
this activity.
4. Whether the current system, and structure,
of funding distribution is the right one.
4.1 Arts Council England's funding agreements
with arts organisations often do not cover the work the organisations
do with children and young people. Any new system should ensure
that this area of work is fully addressed and supported through
this mechanism. Funding agreements should also facilitate and
encourage collaborative working.
4.2 Cultural organisations have previously
worked through local authority children's service infrastructures
to access commissioning funding for their work with children and
young people and families. As new local delivery systems emerge,
following changes in policy, it is essential that schools, community
organisations, local authorities and bodies such as Local Enterprise
Partnerships are able to directly fund and partner cultural organisations
for the delivery of services and outcomes for children and young
people. Cultural organisations are key grass-roots providers and
can deliver effective, sustainable and competitive learning and
social programmes. They should also be a part of the decision-making
process for funding at local and national level.
4.3 The Arts Council's Grants for the Arts
programme has been a good mechanism for the distribution of lottery
funding, although the application process is still a lengthy task
for small organisations. However, Grants for the Arts does not
currently cover activity that benefits individual schools, something
which should be considered if the subsidy for any other activity
in this area is reduced.
5. What impact recent changes to the distribution
of National Lottery funds will have on arts and heritage organisations.
5.1 The CLA welcomes the Government's plans
to return the National Lottery to its original good causes of
art, sport, heritage and the voluntary sector.
5.2 The abolition of UK Film Council will
mean that the lottery funding previously distributed by this body
will be transferred elsewhere. It is essential that priorities
relating to children and young people are maintained during this
transfer.
6. Whether the policy guidelines for National
Lottery funding need to be reviewed.
6.1 The CLA is pleased to see the inclusion
of a clause stating "the need to inspire children and young
people, awakening their interest and involvement in the arts"
within the Lottery guidelines of Arts Council, Heritage Lottery
Fund and Sport England. We feel that this could be strengthened
within the guidelines of the Big Lottery Fund.
6.2 We would also like to see the following
priorities included as a result of any review:
— The need for the training and development
of cultural and education professionals in the delivery of a cultural
entitlement to children and young people.
— The need to involve children and young
people in the development of projects related to activity with,
for and by them.
— The need to evaluate programmes simply
and effectively to gather learning and information which can be
shared with others.
7. The impact of recent changes to DCMS arm's-length
bodies—in particular the abolition of the UK Film Council
and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
7.1 Both the MLA and the UK Film Council
deliver excellent programmes related to cultural learning. For
example, the MLA's Strategic Commissioning programme supports
young people to campaign on local issues that affect their communities,
and supports work placements in cultural institutions. It also
provides vital joint training opportunities for teachers and cultural
professionals. The UK Film Council has been an instrumental partner
in funding the 21st Century Film Literacy Strategy, which supports
a network of key providers of film education, offers training
and development and creates educational resources. It is essential
that these functions and programmes relating to cultural learning
and the associated resources and expertise are valued and transferred
to other organisations.
7.2 The MLA has been instrumental in joining
up a range of cross-cultural services to provide efficiencies
and streamline front-line cultural learning services. For example,
the Working With Children's Services strand of the London Cultural
Improvement Programme hosted by the MLA has been developing new
models of supporting local partners to share practice and support
each other in the delivery of common priorities. Programmes of
this nature should be maintained in order to support communities
and cultural organisations as they transition to a new policy
and delivery landscape.
8. Whether businesses and philanthropists
can play a long-term role in funding arts at a national and local
level.
8.1 Arts and cultural organisations are
extremely successful in attracting funding from both business
and philanthropists to their learning programmes for children
and families, to match public funds. This success is underpinned
by core learning team staff who are able to work with communities
and schools to pull programmes together and fund raise successfully.
Businesses and philanthropists have not been in a position to
fund these key long-term positions and it is therefore critical
that public subsidy continues to be used as a way of partnering
and levering this private investment. Philanthropists wish to
see core funding covering key posts.
9. Whether there need to be more Government
incentives to encourage private donations.
9.1 Any additional tax incentives to encourage
cultural giving would be a good thing. Private support should
be encouraged, facilitated (through tax incentives) and celebrated.
September 2010
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