Creative People

Everyone can be creative, and each of us has the potential to develop our creativity further. Taking part in creative acts such as singing, photography or writing delights and fulfil us, and helps us to think, experiment, and better understand the world

Getting involved in creative activities in communities reduces loneliness, supports physical and mental health and wellbeing, sustains older people and helps to build and strengthen social ties. People everywhere tell us how much they value opportunities to develop and express their creativity, both on their own and with others. But they also describe difficulties in finding activities for themselves or their children to take part in, as well as barriers to becoming, and then staying, involved. And in many places, the libraries and community spaces that play a vital role in organising such activities are under pressure.

Over the next 10 years we will support communities to design and develop more opportunities for creative activity. Many people already take part in activities that are run by professional or volunteer-led groups, commercial operators, or publicly funded organisations. Where these activities exist, we will encourage the organisations we fund to do more to highlight them to their local communities. And where there are gaps in provision, we will support museums, libraries and arts organisations to use their collections, knowledge, skills and other assets to support community-led activities that are open to everyone.

The public has said how much they value opportunities for children to take part in creative activities, and that they want to see more of our funding directed at widening and improving these opportunities. The pre-school years play a vital role in readying children for school, as well as helping to set the compass for future creative and cultural activity and wider success in life. We believe that it is critical to develop high-quality and affordable early years creative activity across the country, and we will support libraries and cultural organisations, community partners and the public to come together to make this available for all young children and their families.

Children and young people talk passionately about the pleasure they get from creative activities (many of which they undertake in their own time, and often online) and how they use them to express themselves and develop their skills and confidence. They also talk about the important role that creative activities can play in helping them deal with anxiety, stress and social isolation. However, for most young people, access to high quality creative and cultural opportunities outside of the home is too dependent on their social background and their postcode. This has to change. We will make the case for a stronger focus on teaching for creativity and critical thinking across the curriculum, both to school leaders and to the Department for Education. Employers from all industries and sectors spoke of the value they placed on creative skills and critical thinking in their workforces, and over the next decade, we will work to ensure that those skills are developed more effectively in young people.

In addition, we are committed to ensuring that a broad and vital arts curriculum is taught in all schools. We will also encourage the Department for Education to build on its current investment in Music Education Hubs, National Youth Music and Dance organisations, In Harmony and Saturday Clubs, so that all children and young people in this country can develop their creative potential, inside and outside of school. Finally, we will create clearer, more accessible pathways for children and young people who are interested in pursuing careers in the creative industries.

Cultural Communities

Culture and the experiences it offers can have a deep and lasting effect on places and the people who live in them. Investment in cultural activities and in arts organisations, museums and libraries helps improve lives, regenerate neighbourhoods, support local economies, attract visitors and bring people together

Arts Council England already works in partnership to develop and strengthen cultural opportunities in rural and urban areas across the country. We also invest hundreds of millions of pounds in cultural buildings, organisations and artists throughout the country. In the last 10 years, recognition has grown of the powerful role culture can and should play in transforming the streets, boroughs and neighbourhoods where people live.

We want to see communities that are more socially cohesive and economically robust, and in which residents experience improved physical and mental wellbeing, as a result of investment in culture. Over the next decade we will work with a wider range of partners, including the other National Lottery distributors, local government, further and higher education and schools, healthcare providers, the criminal justice system, the voluntary sector, the commercial creative industries and wider business, to support communities to use creativity and culture to create thriving places to live, work, study and visit. This will only be possible if there is a shared commitment to removing the geographic, economic and social barriers that currently prevent many people from taking part in publicly funded cultural activity. Many cultural organisations are in the process of evolving how they make and share culture in order to address this, while others already hold it as a core purpose. Our Creative People and Places programme offers clear evidence that when communities are involved in shaping their local cultural provision, a wider range of people participate in publicly funded cultural activity. And when the cultural sector works closely with community partners, the activity itself is richer and more relevant, resources go further, and greater civic and social benefits are delivered.

Museums are centres for knowledge and cultural participation. They work with local communities to create understanding of people and places. Libraries reach audiences from all backgrounds and of all ages, and provide meeting places, maker spaces, and focal points for creative and cultural activity within local communities, in conjunction with their delivery of four national Universal Offers (reading, health and wellbeing, digital and information, and culture and creativity). We will support local cultural organisations, including libraries, museums, Music Education Hubs and arts organisations, to develop a better understanding of the needs and interests of their communities, and to use that intelligence for the measurable benefit of those communities.

We believe that cooperation between cultural organisations and local partners is particularly effective when it is aimed at supporting children and young people. We will encourage cultural organisations to work in partnership with local education providers to plan, resource and deliver a joined-up cultural education programme that ensures every child in their area can access high-quality culture and realise their creative potential.

There is growing evidence that creative and cultural activity can lead to improved health and wellbeing. We want to develop deeper partnerships with the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, social care providers and others to support further research in this area, learn from what is proven to work internationally, and explore the potential of promising new approaches such as social prescribing. People should have access to a full range of cultural opportunities wherever they live – but these opportunities are currently uneven, particularly for those living in towns or rural areas, where public transport is often either unavailable or expensive. We will aim for a better balance of investment across the country and will work with the right partners on a range of projects, including capital investment in physical and digital infrastructure and the use of technology to distribute cultural content into homes, cultural venues and community spaces. We will continue to support the development of touring at all scales, especially into places with the least access to publicly funded culture. We want the cultural sector in every part of this country to be outward-looking. And we will support towns, cities and villages to use culture to connect, nationally and internationally, and to reflect the diverse influences, experiences and knowledge of their diaspora communities in building and understanding collections and creating and presenting work.

A Creative & Cultural Country

To achieve the first two Outcomes, we need a professional cultural sector that generates new ideas, works easily and effectively with others, and is adept at developing diverse talent from every community. It should aspire to be world-leading – in the way it makes art, in the imagination and expertise with which it makes exciting use of collections and develops libraries, and in the culture it creates and shares

The cultural sector will only ever be as strong as the talent on which it is built. Many artists from this country have developed global reputations for the quality of their work and are in demand around the world. However, it is also the case that many creative practitioners and cultural workers, especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, D/deaf or disabled people, and those from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, continue to struggle to develop and sustain financially viable careers. Unless we address this, the cultural sector will fail to achieve its potential, and the global competitiveness of this country’s creative industries will come under threat. Currently, the opportunity to establish and sustain a creative career – as a freelance director, writer, maker, performer, designer, composer, producer, painter, curator, librarian, sculptor or choreographer – is unfairly dependent on personal background. We want to help children and young people from every part of the country to understand what a career in the cultural sector or the wider creative industries could look like, and to support everyone who embarks on such a career to remain in the sector and fulfil their potential, regardless of their background. The future success of the cultural sector depends on being able to draw on a talent pool that reflects society as a whole and is much wider and deeper than it is now.

We will encourage the organisations we invest in to embrace innovation. We will support them to adopt new technologies, focusing both on developing new work and reimagining our cultural heritage for the audiences of today, and on experimenting with new ways of reaching the public. We want them to become more collaborative: to learn from each other, share resources and jointly develop talent. We will assist them to forge new partnerships with further and higher education, the technology sector, the charitable and voluntary sectors and the commercial creative industries. We are confident that, in drawing on this wider pool of expertise, organisations will see new creative and business innovations emerge.

The publicly-funded cultural sector already acts as an incubator for the commercial creative industries: spotting and nurturing talent and undertaking early development of new content. We will deepen those connections, supporting the creative industries to build on England’s international reputation for creativity and act as an ever more important engine for the country’s economy. We want to work in partnership with further and higher education and the commercial sector to undertake more effective research, and strengthen training opportunities so that more people working in the cultural sector become ready adopters and developers of new technologies. We believe that this will help people in creative careers to be more adaptable, thus supporting them to move back and forth between the publicly funded cultural sector and the commercial creative industries, circulating knowledge and skills as they do so. Risk taking and innovation are critical to the success of the cultural sector. But funding pressures over the last decade have made it harder for many cultural organisations to experiment and undertake formal research and development. In future, the Arts Council will do more to support innovation. We will be clearer about the fact that we are open to taking risks, and that we accept that not all of our investments will be immediately successful.