Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to increase participation in the arts by people from low income backgrounds.

Mr Edward Vaizey

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to experience and participate in culture and the arts whatever their background and the Prime Minister acknowledged the importance of this in a speech in January 2016 on life chances. Government is maintaining the same level of funding for Arts Council England throughout the next spending period which will include support for arts programmes in areas where participation is low.

Arts Council England funds a number of community arts organisations that look to engage disadvantaged people, such as Cinderford Artspace and Helix Arts which focus on encouraging unemployed adults and employed people on low incomes to participate in the arts. Arts Council England also places responsibility on every funded organisation to make their programme of work more reflective of the communities they serve.