The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama: planning to cut its junior programmes. Photo salisz/shutterstock.com.
Arts education provision across Britain is suffering from continuing cuts including instrumental music, drama and visual arts. Workers in arts and education are trying to build campaigns to counter this decline. In September the TUC supported a motion for increased arts funding, including arts education. This may be a spur to further pressure on government and councils across the country.
Chris Walters from the Musicians’ Union said earlier this year, “England’s network of music education hubs, introduced by government in 2012 to address nationwide inequalities in children’s access to music provision, have operated on standstill funding for a decade and struggled to narrow the musical divide they were created to close.” He points to the outcome, “The net result is that learning a musical instrument is now not really accessible unless your parents can pay for it.”
The Artists’ Union England added its voice to this aspect of the campaign, calling for arts education to be restored throughout primary, secondary, further and higher education. They also called upon the TUC to support and lobby for publicly funded arts.
Another body campaigning for the arts as an essential part of education is the Workers Music Association. Ben Lunn, chair of the Musicians’ Union Scotland & Northern Ireland, who addressed a rally against arts cuts in Edinburgh on 5 September, pointed to its legacy of advocating proper funding for the arts since at least 1945, when it published Music in Post War Britain, surveying the many facets of musical life and how to assure their well-being.
• A longer version of this article is on the web at www.cpbml.org.uk