Part One – Why The Arts And Culture Industry Deserves Our Support

The Arts and Culture industry contributed £11.8bn to the UK economy in 2017, grew by 10% (five times faster than the wider economy), employed over 674,000 people, and returned £5 for every £1 of Government funding.

Creatives – certainly the ones I met in my fourteen years as an actor and director in film, TV and theatre – are predominantly liberal, progressive, and pro-EU. Now, more than ever, we should be their natural political home.

The Arts do immeasurable good. As well as contributing greatly towards the economy, they also help to rejuvenate towns and cities, provide us with a vehicle to understand, challenge and inspire the world we live in, enhance social cohesion, play a vital role in the development of life-skills such as confidence, self-identity and expression in individuals, and even act as a means of therapy, particularly successful amongst young children who have experienced great trauma.

Yet, no political party seems to fully appreciate or understand the true value of the Arts, leaving many creatives without a political home.

The Conservatives believe the Arts are an ideological luxury that are an easy target for cuts during austerity, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) – the suite of subjects on which the government judges school performance – does not even include arts subjects anymore, and those studying creative courses at GCSE level fell by 47,000 in 2017.

Labour are no better and although they feel safe in the knowledge that at least they aren’t the Tories, they have been badly damaged by their current stance on Brexit, leaving many within the industry looking for alternatives.

I can count on one hand the number of people I know who feel that any of the main political parties are representing and promoting the Arts and Culture sector sufficiently.

There is so much potential for us to fill that gap, and in part two of this blog later today, I will make the case for why we – the Liberal Democrats – should be playing a much greater role in helping to support Arts and Culture, as well as the wider creative industry, in the UK, and must do so quickly before this unique window of opportunity closes.

* Adam has been a member of the Liberal Democrats for just over a year and is an active campaigner with his local party in Bromley, Kent. Having previously worked as a TV, film and theatre actor and director for over fourteen years, he now runs the Theatrical Guild, a small theatre charity based in Covent Garden, and is writing a book on mental health in the Arts.