Join the #ArtIsEssential Creative Education Coalition and pledge your support for protecting the creative skills pipeline

#ArtIsEssential campaign coalition launch Creative Education Manifesto, calling on all political parties to protect the creative arts talent pipeline

Ahead of party conference season, a coalition of creative and higher education organisations have launched their Creative Education Manifesto, calling on all political parties to commit collectively to restoring creative arts education.

The manifesto contains eight key asks which, if actioned, the coalition argues will help protect the critical talent pipeline that feeds the UK’s successful creative economy, and with it the economic backbone and cultural identity of the country.

Backed up by a wealth of compelling evidence, the Creative Education Manifesto illustrates how protecting and nurturing creative skills in education can have huge economic and societal benefits.

Among these benefits are:

Job, skills and wealth creation and generation
Increased innovation, productivity and growth
High street renewal, safer streets and desirable communities, a true pathway to delivering levelling up across the UK
Healthier, happier and responsible citizens equipped with powerful self-efficacy and agency.

All this whilst sustaining one of the most valuable UK Plc assets: its world-leading creative and cultural arts sector.

The #ArtisEssential Creative Education Manifesto calls for cross-party commitment and collaboration, and a long-term creative education and cultural plan for the UK.

The coalition hopes this will restore the talent pipeline into the creative arts and cultural industries and unlock a multiplier benefit impact across all sectors of society including the economy, health and community cohesion and integration.

The #ArtIsEssential Creative Education Manifesto calls on all political parties to:

Equip every child with a solid foundation of creative education skills
Drive the recruitment and training of specialist creative arts teachers
Put the creativity back into creative arts/cultural arts education
Review creative arts/cultural education assessment and qualifications to ensure valuable qualifications are protected in the long-term and creative arts skills are formally recognised and valued
Enable a primary, secondary and tertiary education system that values STEM, the Arts and Humanities in equal measure and enables and embraces interdisciplinary study and research
Realise the value of sustaining a talent pipeline of creative arts/cultural arts students into higher education and beyond, including a commitment to Lifelong Learning within and through creative education
Ensure equality of access to a thriving creative arts/cultural ecosystem for every citizen across the country
Ensure recognition of – and investment in – the power play of creative arts/creative skills to turbo boost entrepreneurism and commercialism across the UK

Evidence:

According to the DCMS’s own research published in June this year, participating in the creative industries and can have a significant impact on wellbeing – not just for improved mental health, but for degenerative health issues like Parkinson’s disease and dementia. The positive impact of the arts on health is strongest in tackling psychosis in young adults, postnatal depression, recovery from neurological damage and falls prevention in older people. Estimated cost saving to the NHS due to a reduction in GP visits from arts participation is estimated to be in the order of hundreds of millions of pounds per annum.

Creative industries GVA has been growing faster than the UK economy since 2011 with large increases seen in 2015 and 2019.[1] The GVA of creative industries has increased 5.6% between 2018 and 2019 and by 43.6% between 2010 and 2019 in real terms. The creative industries delivered £115.9bn of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2019, 5.9% of UK GVA.

Frontier Economics reported that “…firms with greater connections to the [creative industries] are more likely to produce product innovations.”

Kingston University Future Skills 2022 survey of 2000 business leaders found 44% identified creativity as a valued skill for innovation (8^th in the list of 10 Future Skills).

A DCMS Culture White Paper from 2016 found that cultural participation can help deliver improved educational outcomes in children and young adults, including raised attainment and a greater likelihood of going on to further and higher education.

The #ArtIsEssential Creative Education Coalition is made up of the following organisations:

If you’d like to join the creative education coalition and pledge your support for protecting the creative skills pipeline – Sign up here or via our QR code below: