Lisa Nandy – 2024 Speech at Labour Party Conference

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 24 September 2024.

Thank you so much, Imogen.

An Olympic Gold Medallist and a Junior Doctor. Here to inspire and to serve, to allow people to dream, to change lives and never take no for an answer.

She absolutely sums up the spirit of our country.

And we need that spirit and that conviction after 14 dark, divisive years.

Successive Tory Governments running down our rich and proud heritage in arts and music and the right of every child to it.

At the stroke of a pen: enrichment funding in schools, gone.

Libraries, theatres, youth workers, gone.

That lifeline for young people, broken.

The promise of a generation inspired by sport, broken.

This is what cultural vandalism looks like. And Conference, it ends today.

No more of their violent indifference to the things that matter most.

Because the rich, diverse culture in our country is not just how we grow as people but how we make and shape a nation.

Conference, we are a better country than the Government we’ve had and we are going to give voice to that country again.

Because the history of Britain is the history of people like Imogen – ordinary, extraordinary people, doing extraordinary things.

Building the rich cultural inheritance that gives our lives meaning, handed down through the generations.

Every Labour Government in history has been animated by a passion for the arts, sport, music and culture which help us grow as people and grow as a nation.

It was the Attlee Government that created the national parks out of a conviction that clean air and recreation belong to us all.

It was Herbert Morrison who brought the Festival of Britain to every corner of the country.

It was the Wilson Government who created the first ever Arts Minister – Jennie Lee – whose motto ‘arts for everyone, everywhere’ enriched lives in every single part of our country.

And the Blair Government, through the amazing Tessa Jowell, who brought the London 2012 Olympics to Britain and inspired a generation of young people like Imogen to go on, dream big, achieve big and inspire the next.

And opened up, with the support of Chris Smith, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, our national museums and galleries to the nation, returning them to the people to whom they belong.

We’ve never accepted that the chance to live richer, larger lives belongs only to some of us. And Conference we never, ever will.

We face a choice as a country and as a government. To be the last guardians of this chapter, or the first pioneers of the next.

So with our fantastic team – Chris, Steph, Fiona, Vicky and Kim – change begins now.

We will be the light on the hill to open up those opportunities to a generation again and put people back at the centre of their own story.

Where their contribution is seen and valued and they can live richer, larger lives again.

And we won’t waste a minute. In our first few weeks, we’ve announced the Football Governance Bill to put fans back at the centre of their clubs and we’re taking action on rip-off ticket touts because culture belongs to everybody.

With Yvette, we are delivering youth hubs, so young people can decide what they want and need in their own communities, because we see their potential not just problems.

And resetting our relationship with our amazing civil society – the charities, the trade unions, the community groups who have been a lifeline in the darkest of times.

They were silenced by the Tories. No more. Our Government believes they are essential partners in the country we seek to build and they have not just a right, but a duty to speak out.

And we won’t stop there.

We are about to kickstart the charter review to ensure the BBC survives and thrives well into the latter half of this century.

And we’re working with the TV industry to ensure it becomes far more representative of the country, with decision makers who hail from every nation and region.

We’re about to kick off a review of the Arts Council to ensure arts for everyone, everywhere because we will never accept that culture is just for the privileged few, to be hoarded in a few corners of the country, and we will never accept there is a trade off between excellence and access.

We will hand back power to communities to reclaim their cultural assets and historic buildings so they have a vibrant future, not a forgotten past.

We will put young people back at the heart of their own futures, through a plan that they will write, because every young person matters, and with this Labour Government theirs is a generation that will be heard.

And we will put rocket boosters under tourism, film, gaming – growing creative industries in Sunderland, Blackpool, Birmingham and Dundee, alongside our amazing Mayors and Councils so, people in every part of our country have not just good jobs in their own community, but the chance to write the next chapter of our national story.

And most of all, most of all, when they erased culture and creativity erased from our classrooms and our communities.

Running down the arts subjects, narrowing the curriculum and slashing council funding so parts of the country became cultural deserts.

They choked off choices and chances for a generation to be able to imagine and create the lives and the country they believe in.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote: ‘Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and, at last, you create what you will’.

We’re going to reignite the imagination of the next generation.

Because a complete education is a creative education.

And that is why Bridget and I have kickstarted a review of the curriculum to put arts, sports and music back at the heart of our schools and communities where it belongs.

It is our ambition that when, in five years’ time, we turn to face the nation again, we will face a self-confident country that can celebrate the rich diversity and inheritance of our communities and all the people in them.

Where everybody’s contribution is seen and valued, and they see themselves reflected in our national story.

Never let them tell you that it can’t be done.

We are the party that gave the world the first ever Climate Change Act, the NHS, comprehensive education, and the Race Relations Act.

We flew the Pride Flag over our embassies in countries where loving who you love was a crime. The light on the hill for people at home and overseas.

It has been a long hard slog back to power through a dark and divisive decade.

But by opening up the arts to everyone, everywhere the lives of children you will never meet, whose names you will never know, will be changed forever because of what we have done and what we are going to do together.

This is the difference every Labour Government has made in power. It is written into our DNA. We change lives and we give our country its confidence back.

And Conference, it is thanks to each and every one of you in this room that the fourth ever Labour Government in history will do it again.

Thank you very much.