The arts are about what makes us human: that sense of creativity, of being able to make and create, to imagine and innovate. Seeing the best of what other artists have produced over time is also really important. It gives young people that opportunity to build on what’s gone in the past as they build the future.
I always feel that the young people I meet in schools, colleges and universities are the people who are going to invent tomorrow. They’re going to do new things that none of us can possibly imagine at the moment, and that’s really exciting.
Over the past 20 years of Artsmark, there has been a growing understanding that cultural subjects such as art and design, dance, drama and music can themselves create a positive culture within schools, as well as being valuable in their own right. I have seen some absolutely brilliant schools, where the senior leadership team really understands the value of the arts in a young person’s life. In the past 20 years, we’ve engaged more than 11,000 schools, given almost 17,000 awards, and there are currently 1.9 million pupils receiving a brilliant creative education through their Artsmark school.
There’s no doubt that this is a generation that is experiencing a lot of pressure every day. Young people are facing very real and well-documented challenges with their mental health. While I would never want to claim that cultural education subjects are a cure-all, we do know that being creative can activate a different part of your brain and give you a release. Those cultural education subjects can take a young person beyond their normal sphere of experience, beyond the house they live in, the town where they’re growing up, enabling them to see that there’s a different world out there.
Supporting future creative talents
That’s why opportunities to share cultural experiences are so important. When the pandemic temporarily closed our theatres, museums, libraries, galleries and venues, we all really missed that in our lives. And think that was the case for young people in schools as well, because school was where they had a creative outlet through art, music, dance and drama, and it was giving them something that is so important in their lives.
When I talk to people who work as professionals across all art forms, there is almost universal agreement on the value of investing in our next generation of creative talent. I believe that talent is everywhere in this country. What many, many schools do absolutely brilliantly is to allow young people the opportunity for that talent to grow. But that opportunity sadly isn’t always everywhere and we need to continue to work hard to do something about that.
What Artsmark does is to celebrate those talents and passions, giving schools a way of developing and growing an arts-rich curriculum that champions the role of the arts within the ecology of their school.
Arts Council England’s new 10-year strategy, Let’s Create, which we launched at the beginning of the pandemic, is all about giving people from all backgrounds right across the country the opportunity to live their best cultural lives. For young people, we’ll do that by working with schools, because for many children, particularly those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, school is going to be the place where they’re most likely to have their most formative and exciting cultural experiences.
Life-changing experience
I’m a massive fan of the pantomimes staged in theatres across the country at this time of year. When a young person goes on a school trip with their classmates to a pantomime in their local town or city, and they see live drama and comedy and music and dance happening on a stage in front of them, it can be an absolutely life-changing experience. They are enriched by this and it opens up new possibilities for them.
It makes me sad to think that there might still be some children who might leave primary school without having that collective experience with their friends or family in an auditorium with tippy-up seats. And that especially remains a risk for some young people from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.
There are many aspects of cultural education that have serious and rigorous benefits for the lives of young people, but also it’s important that it’s fun, too. We should never be ashamed of that. The three words that get me up in the morning are “creating happier lives”: that’s what we’re doing at the Arts Council, and that’s what Artsmark is doing, by working with teachers and students. We want our young people to go out into the world as happy, rounded adults, and we know that artistic and cultural experiences and learning can help them to do that.
In the 20 years to come, I hope that our country will become an even more imaginative, innovative, creative and exciting place to live, work and study. A place where all our young people can see their creative ideas become reality. Because when we all achieve our creative potential, we’re creating happier lives for everyone.
Find out more about Artsmark, its impact on young people and its 20th anniversary celebrations at artsmark.org.uk
