Harnessing the power arts and culture in Wales

Today sees the launch of an exciting report in Wales calling for a change in the way our cultural institutions, large and small, interact with each other and which challenges them to play a fuller part in our national mission to eradicate poverty in Wales.

This ground-breaking document was written by Baroness Kay Andrews, until recently the Chair of English Heritage. In her introduction, she says that only the Welsh Government in the UK would show this sort of ambition for our cultural sector and in fact we’re already ahead of the game.

Working out ways to get the most out of cultural and heritage assets, as part of a creative and competitive economy and resilient community, is a problem exercising other countries. But only in Wales, to my knowledge, has any government put this question at the heart of the challenge of finding a broader path to social justice for all. (Baroness Kay Andrews)

It is a ringing endorsement from someone who knows the sector inside out, but as her recommendations make clear, there’s so much more we can do.

The key recommendations I will be looking at over the coming weeks include:

• Widening access and breaking down social exclusion, by addressing physical and psychological barriers to our institutions, such as transport costs;
• Increasing engagement at community level, to anchor culture within communities and increase the impact of outreach programmes;
• Focus resources and training to support cultural organisations in helping close the attainment gap in our schools;
• Establish all-Wales action to focus and drive greater engagement around poverty by cultural organisations.

Those of us who work within arts, culture and heritage may feel we need quite sharp elbows to get in on the political debate in these days of austerity. But, writ large in Kay’s report are reasons why locking out the cultural sector from discussions on economy, education and social justice would be counter-productive and wrong.

Only last month Carwyn Jones announced that Pinewood is setting up a new studio, their first outside London, that will bring 2,000 jobs to Wales. We were not the only ones in discussion with them, but our commitment and track record in creative industries helped win the day.

In addition to the abundant economic evidence for having a modern, ambitious cultural policy – there are educational benefits too. You have Michael Gove and his acolytes in England saying everyone needs to be more middle-class to succeed. More like them, they mean. Actually what you need to raise ambitions, and attainment, is to give more opportunity to young people in disadvantaged communities to experience a broad range of cultural experiences.

The great Welsh historian, Dai Smith, recently produced a superb report for us on the value and role of the arts in education. He cited international research on how exposure to the arts and other cultural activities can spark children’s interest and help narrow the educational attainment gap between children from disadvantaged families and other children. You don’t need to dress your children differently to raise their sights, as the UK Government now suggests, you need to open the doors of your great national – and local – cultural success stories.

We’ve led the way on this before, pioneering free entry to museums and doing the outreach work to get everyone involved in our iconic national institutions, like the National Library, WNO, and National Museum Wales. Today’s report gives us fresh impetus to lead the way again.

John Griffiths AM is Welsh Minister for Culture & Sport