Arts Council England £19 million cuts - CCE's reaction

18 June 2010

Commenting on the £1.6 million of cuts passed onto national charity Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) by the Arts Council England, Paul Collard, Chief Executive of Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), said:

"As a charity the cut of £1.6 million to our in-year funding from the Arts Council has been very painful for us at Creativity, Culture and Education. However, after much hard work, we have managed to achieve these cuts within the organisation without impacting on the schools and children involved in the Creative Partnerships creative learning programme.

"These cuts have meant paring back budgets which relate to training of children and arts professionals, community engagement, communications and research and mean that future cuts will not be able to be made without a dramatic impact on the children and young people in schools who currently benefit from Creative Partnerships. Further cuts would also be felt hard by regional organisations that deliver the programme locally as well as the thousands of individual artists and frontline cultural organisations involved in the programme.

"It is important that the government recognises the value of engaging children and young people with the arts through creative and cultural education – this is vital for life long involvement with the arts, and independent evidence has proven that our work helps to raise attainment levels, improve attendance and increase pupil motivation particularly for schools in challenging circumstances. Creative Partnerships has to date impacted on more than 1 million pupils in England and worked with over 5,000 schools.

"We hope that the Arts Council and the Government remain committed to supporting the future prospects of our children."

Creativity, Culture and Education (www.creativitycultureeducation.org) is the national charity that manages Creative Partnerships, the government’s flagship creative learning programme. Creative Partnerships fosters innovative long-term partnerships between schools and creative professionals, including artists, performers, architects, multimedia developers and scientists. These partnerships inspire young people, teachers and creative professionals to challenge how they work and experiment with new ideas.

Creative Partnerships has worked with over 1 million young people and engaged over 90,000 teachers in local projects. Research highlights include:

• Young people who have attended Creative Partnerships activities made, on average the equivalent of 2.5 grades better progress in GCSE (NFER)
• Creative Partnerships was shown to be associated with an educationally significant reduction in total absence rates in primary schools (NFER)
• Around 70% of the programme’s funding goes directly to the practitioners and over half of those working with Creative Partnerships have developed other work and employed other professionals as a result. Thus having a positive impact on the economy (Burns Owen Partnership)

Date: 18/6/10 Ends

For more information or comment please contact:

Sarah Scott, PR & Media Manager at Creativity, Culture and Education on 020 7420 5423 or email: sarah.scott@cceengland.org

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