Save cultural learning - the campaign

22 Nov 2010

A national campaign to safeguard young people's access to cultural learning reaches a climax this week.

The Big Link-Up will bring together schools, arts campaigners, teachers and leading writers and artists in an event which will attempt to highlight the threats to arts provision for young people and to develop a strategy for coping with the current difficult economic climate.

The event is being organised by The Cultural Learning Alliance , a year-long campaign to safeguard cultural learning for young people, be it through art, music, libraries, dance, film or social media.

The author, Michael Morpurgo, will address the event, which will held at the British Museum and will be beamed live to several locations around the country. Schools are being invited to link-up and to hold assemblies on the topic.

The Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, will be speaking and answering questions at the event tomorrow (23rd November), which I will be chairing.

The combination of spending review cuts to school budgets, to arts bodies and to local authorities pose a serious threat to the maintenance of cultural learning and activities for young people.

The government has also withdrawn funding from Creative Partnerships which runs cultural visits and events for schools.

The imminent education White Paper - which will set out the direction of the review of the national curriculum - will also have an impact on art, music, dance and drama in school timetables, with a greater focus expected to be given to traditional academic subjects.

The effects are only starting to be felt in local authorities, which overall saw a 28% reduction in their budgets in the spending review.

Somerset Council this week made a decision to cut 100% of its funding to the cultural sector. This will impact heavily on ten cultural organisations. Elsewhere, Central Bedfordshire council have announced plans to cut funding to their Youth Music Service to zero by April 2012.

You can follow the event on the website or via Twitter (#culturelearning).