Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Conclusion 15
Third Report - Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda
Published 2 Nov 2022
Paragraph 94
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Arts and cultural education is important in its own right for the social benefits it brings, but it is also an important factor in addressing issues of poor social mobility and the national skills shortage. While we welcome the Government’s efforts to introduce a National Plan for Music Education and Cultural Education Strategy, we have heard that education policy in the main can have a detrimental effect on the provision of education, training and skills development in this country. We remain concerned that cultural education is still seen as of lesser importance to the curriculum, which feeds negative perceptions of careers in the creative industries, discourages people with necessary skills from pursuing those careers and compounds issues of social mobility within the sector.
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Third Report - Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda (HC 155), paragraph 94, 2 November 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 3 February 2023 (deadline 11 January 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the inquiry and agrees that place-based cultural policymaking can help deliver the Levelling Up missions, but it disagrees with the Committee's conclusion on a joined-up approach and declines several recommendations.
- It disagrees with the Committee's "lack of faith" that a collaborative approach to Levelling Up cultural infrastructure is being taken, citing partnership working between Government, Arms-Length Bodies and places.
- On skills, it says a Government-led national training programme "is not required", and does not agree that an audit and roadmap of cultural placemaking skills is necessary, citing the risk of duplication.
- On Cultural Compacts, it says that "in the current fiscal climate, further Government investment in Compacts at this time is unlikely", preferring their "organic development".
- On funding, it says current policy does not distinguish "national" from "regional" or "local" organisations. It says there are "no plans to expand the Music Hubs model to other art forms".