Minister for Culture ENYAN launch speech

The Right Honourable always sounds very very grand, most people call me David…

When I was asked to do this a few weeks ago I knew that it was between two events – between going back to the house of commons to vote. So I had to decide – do I want to be here or do I want to be in the House of Commons?

I decided I wanted to be here, although I can’t be here for the whole hour, because personally this story, which is youth arts, is one that has touched me. I would not be here, I would not be a member of Parliament, I would not be the Minister for Culture, coming from the background that I come from: having grown up in inner city Tottenham in the 1970s and 80s, were is not for Youth Arts.

In that context then it was the opportunity, I guess to be exposed to two things. It was the opportunity to be exposed to classical music – yes I was a cathedral chorister! And, it was the opportunity to really be enlivened by drama and working with some wonderful theatre people and drama teachers in Peterborough Key Theatre after school. And both of those experiences, if you like, gave me the confidence. So the sad news for those of you working with young people across the country is, yes you may well be producing a future politician. But that is something we should be proud of.

What we know is that this work has often been going on in isolation, it’s been going on sometimes without much funding, it’s not been networked, it’s not been brought together, and we have a hard or harder time telling the story of its value because its not joined up.

So there are a couple of things that become very, very important when you get to my position and you end up, if you like being one of the ‘people in charge’ of this stuff. The first thing is funding, this stuff needs money and it needs Governments to say that it’s important and that it deserves to be funded. It needs people to say that the arts and culture are as important as other things in local communities. It is as important as say, sport. There will be people inspired particularly by the World Cup to go out and kick a football around and to one day dream of being a player for Tottenham Hotspur, but there will be many, many, many, young people inspired my the arts, inspired by music, inspired by poetry, inspired by the circus, inspired by theatre, inspired by drama, inspired by dance – the whole family that is the arts is important.

It’s important to our individual sense of well being, it’s important to confidence and esteem, it’s important to how we feel about ourselves and the world, it’s important to expression. It’s important if we want a questioning society that doesn’t necessarily take what we’re told for granted – and we want that kind of society. If we are to solve some of the problems that still face us we have to invest in this stuff. Now we have been doing that for a few years. We have things like Creative Partnerships which means that we don’t just bring an artist into a school for one day or one week, we bring an artist, a poet, a musician into a school for a long sustained period working with a class, working with young people, so that you really entrench that sense of the arts -and that is a successful project that I really value.

There is a big debate in education at the moment about personalised learning; about centring the learning on the children. Well surprise, surprise this sector has been doing it for years! Most of what we, and you do is based directly on the individuals’ expression, on what they want to bring out of that particular artistic experience. We also have brought into being, with the cooperation of the Arts Council and others, the Arts Mark which I think is really important, and the Arts Award – by giving young people the opportunity to value each other and say this stuff going on there is brilliant, and you should get an award for it, and we are doing that as well.

And at the same time we’re also trying to unpick huge areas that didn’t have a light shone on them for a long time. Music provision was one of the issues that was raised continually across the country. Why did certain young people, particularly in deprived areas not have access to the right instruments and other things that middle class kids were taking for granted? We solved that problem, or begun to solve that problem through Youth Music, and the money we have put into that but also through the Music Manifesto, where we brought the whole of the music sector – both the industry and the BMI, and all those lot, and teachers, and the BBC, and local education authorities -together to sign up to really re-launch the manifesto, and we are at the beginning of that journey.

I could go on, but what I want to say is that this particular initiative, ENYAN, is vitally important. I have seen wonderful projects across the country, particularly working with the most deprived young people. Working with young people who are looked after or in care, looking after young people who are in the local pupil referral unit, working with young people that are caught up in crime, as well as working with all young people whatever their background in a particular area, and many of the youth leaders particularly are heroes – they deserve huge awards because they are often doing it in isolation. I don’t want to be in a place as a politician in ten years time where we are still having this debate. I want it to be settled, I want the funding to be there, I want you guys to be networked , I want you to grow as a sector, and I want in that coming together for the sector to be a powerful force – and that’s what I think ENYAN can achieve. That coordination, that ever greater stride for professionalisation, and that ability to advocate for young people yes, but for the arts for young people across the country. So that’s why I interrupted the commons to be here and I am very, very grateful for this opportunity, thank you.