Speech to the Creative Partnerships National Co-ordinators Conference by Culture Minister David Lammy

Thank you very much for that introduction and for inviting me to speak to you all today. It’s really good to be here. I’ve really enjoyed listening to all of the things you’ve just been saying about the importance of creativity. It’s great to hear such passion and commitment.

I wasn’t surprised by what you were saying. I think that all of us here can think of moments when creative experiences really touched us. From my own perspective I doubt very that I would have the confidence to stand before you today, to stand up at the dispatch box in the House of Commons, were it not for the fact that I had some really creative teachers.

I grew up in the Tottenham in the 1970s and 1980s and it wasn’t easy going. As some of you will know the thing that really altered my world view was going to Choir School in Peterborough. Going there gave me such amazing opportunities and opened up all sorts of fantastic possibilities.

At its very best that’s what involvement with the creative arts does. As the Secretary of State put it in her own personal essay on this subject it’s about slaying one of the biggest giants of our times, ‘the poverty of aspiration’. Or, as CPs puts it so neatly in their strapline it’s all about ‘exciting minds’.

The success of CPs

That’s exactly what CPs has done. I’m sure you’re all experts on CPs so there’s no need for me to go into detail on this but it’s clear that the programme is a real success story. The headline figures are impressive. The fact that 280,000 young people, 45,000 teachers, 1,000 schools have all benefited is something that we can all be proud of. The fact that over 4,000 creative practitioners have been involved in delivering over 4,000 projects is something that we should quite rightly mention at every possible opportunity. Behind these figures are real people and we need to remember that before CPs this level of sustained outreach work was just not going on.

top

But what I am really excited by is what people are starting to say about the wider impact that the programme has had.

The recent NFER tracking work, for example, is good evidence that CPs is having a real impact on attainment. Of course, the changes that NFER identified were small and issues around causation are always difficult. We don’t do ourselves any favours by over-selling this. But on balance, I think that the results are still something that the programme can be proud of.

The recent head teachers survey was even more impressive. Whenever I’ve visited a CPs school or spoken with a CPs head teacher, they’ve always said to me that the programme is raising attainment, giving young people confidence, helping teachers to teach more creatively. This survey backs this up and shows that these impacts aren’t just happening in a few schools but up and down the country.

What particularly impressed me, what really made me sit up and take notice, was the fact that it was the head teachers in the most deprived areas that the programme works who were most enthusiastic. These are the exactly the areas that we need to be working in so it’s really inspiring to see this.

All of this presents us in Government with a real challenge. I think we’d all agree that no group of people are more important in making the education system work than head teachers. So if they are saying that they really value something, that something is really working in their schools and in their communities, then we really should listen.

top

There will of course be people who will look at these results and say ‘well they would say that wouldn’t they’. They would argue that because these head teachers signed up to the programme and have taken the CP shilling it is difficult for them to be really objective.

You and I know that this isn’t how it works. That, despite Paul’s best efforts, the idea of getting head teachers to tow any party line is pretty unrealistic. But it is a fact of life that there are sceptics out there and that, as a major programme, the burden of proof required for CPs is higher than for other interventions.

That’s why I’m so delighted that when I wrote to David Bell last year, when he was still at Ofsted, he agreed to carry out an inspection. The fact that he agreed to his inspectors doing this, given how many other requests Ofsted get and have to turn down, shows clearly how much of a priority this whole area is for them.

As the work that they are doing is only looking at 6 established areas Ofsted clearly aren’t going to be in a position to comment on the programme as a whole. What they will be able to do, however, is say whether the work that CPs does is ‘proper education’. They are in a position to say whether the stuff that CPs thinks of as excellent practice merits that description and is worth repeating elsewhere.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of this. What I hope is that the report will grasp and garner some of the things which you were all talking about earlier. There are moments when we move forward, when what we think of as education and learning changes. I hope that this report will be a catalyst for this and shift the whole debate. I hope it will say to schools all round the country that creativity matters and that actually the very best schools, the ones that really inspire their pupils, understand this.

top

Future Options

This work will, together with the other evidence that CPs are producing, go a long way to informing the decision we will make on the future of the programme beyond 2008.

Paul will, I’m sure, have spoken about the work that CPs have contracted consultants to do looking at different possible options.

Given that this work is still ongoing I don’t want to go into detail on the kind of operational issues the consultants are covering. What I would like to do is build on what you were all saying earlier and set out some of the things I think CPs does best that we need to capture, nurture and grow.

top

Putting Young People At the Centre

The first of these, and for me perhaps most important of all, is the way that CPs has really allowed us to put children at the heart of what we do. On all the visits I’ve been on this has been a clear focus of what CPs has done. In one particular school I visited, Hareclive in Bristol, I was shown round a studio that a group of students aged 8-11 ran completely by themselves. Not only did they purchase the studio’s equipment, and keep the accounts, they decided what activities to run and which artist to work with. It’s not just Bristol, things like this are happening in all of the area that CPs work with.

That’s one of the things that the Head teachers survey told us, that almost 75% of head teachers felt that taking part in Creative Partnerships made staff more likely to seek the views of pupils when making decisions that effect them. Whatever structures we end up with, what ever arrangements we put in place, we need to make sure that this knowledge and this confidence, isn’t lost.

Partnerships

The way that Creative Partnerships helps schools put young people at the centre is part of the way that the programme strives to create proper, equal partnerships. We all know that this stuff is important and it’s easy to talk about it, but it’s not so easy to do.

This was a point that came across in the review of creativity in schools that Paul Roberts carried out for us recently and which we will be publishing later this month. Paul’s report made 3 basic points on partnership working. Firstly that partnership working was ‘a key feature of successful schools and adds extensive value’. The second was that the importance of partnership working was only going to increase given the ‘increasing breadth, depth, complexity of, and demands on, the education system’.

top

The last point he made was perhaps the most challenging, that schools need help to do this. While there is lots of great stuff going on, lots of things on offer, schools need help both getting the right partners in and then establishing the right kind of relationship with them. He was clear that, left to their own devices without any support, a lot of schools would not bother at all. Others might, but would revert back to a situation where artists and other creative practitioners were only used for short term projects with limited value.

Widening the Scope and Supporting the Creative Industries

Of course, in the areas in which it has been operating, CPs has been providing exactly the kind of support that Paul talks about in this section of his report. One of the things that has most impressed about the CP activity that I have seen has been the way that it has always been tailored to meet the needs of the school. The fact that CPs are in it with schools for the long-haul means that a very real dialogue can take place. What you don’t see is artists or other creative practitioners coming in and delivering pre-packaged, ‘ready meal’ solutions whether or not they work for that school or not.

Another thing that’s been really important has been the sheer range of creative practitioners that CPs has managed to bring in. The headline figure that I mentioned earlier is impressive but what that doesn’t show is that these are different types of people working in different types areas. The programme has allowed the Arts Council to engage with a whole set of organisations that it has never really tapped into before. It’s giving it a presence in local areas that before CPs it had never really been able to touch.

top

Challenges Going Forward

The big challenge going forward is, of course, how we reach even more communities. It’s the question I think you were all discussing earlier.

Put simply, how do we get the kind of practice that Creative Partnerships has applied so successfully into more schools and into more areas? How do we give other young people the chance to take part in the kind of activities and projects that CPs offers and how do we give more head teachers the kind of support that they are crying out for and that CP provides?

There are clearly lots of areas that face exactly the same challenges as the 36 areas in which CPs currently operates and there is an issue of fairness that we provide support to some but not others. What we need to do is get to a point where everybody, no matter where they live or where they come from, has the chance to get involved in this agenda. This doesn’t mean paying for everybody but it does mean giving everybody access. That’s the aim what we set out in our last Manifesto and its something that I’m still very much committed to. How do we give all our young people the kind of cultural and creative entitlement that I think all of us in this room were lucky enough to have.

Sustainability

There isn’t enough money to repeat the current model of CPs style provision in every area that needs it. We therefore need to look creatively at how we make existing activity sustainable and also spread the benefits to new areas.

Part of this has to be about getting the schools where CPs has been operating for the last few years to take on more responsibility for the programme. The survey of head teachers shows that many schools clearly feel that CPs provides an invaluable service. If this is the case then there is an argument for saying that schools should have a bigger role in running, and paying for, the programme than they currently do. I recognise that this isn’t easy and that there are already huge pressures on budgets. But some of the schools involved in the programme are managing to do this and we need to work with others to do the same.

top

Other Institutions

We also need to make sure that whatever organisational structure we end up with work partnership with other organisations. Where there is existing cultural infrastructure we need to make sure that this used effectively and we also need to fit with the new educational landscape. For example there are already over 400 specialist arts colleges and over 20 dedicated specialist Music Colleges.

There’s a real potential here for these schools to be centres of arts excellence and beacons in their communities but we need to support them. I know that CPs already works with a number of this but we need to make sure that this link is maintained and strengthened.

Similarly emerging plans around Extended Schools are a potentially massive opportunity for us to give young people the chance to take part in CPs style activities that go beyond what’s possible in core school hours. What I would love to see here is local authorities and schools taking some risks in the kind of provision they develop. This whole initiative is only going to work if the activities on offer are what young people want and of really high quality.

In the areas in which they operate CPs have the kind of knowledge and experience that will be invaluable and we need to make sure that the programme and the artistic community more widely are properly plugged into the right networks.

The same goes for the wider plans that local authority children’s services are currently drawing up. From the consultation on the Youth Matters green paper it is clear that young people want the opportunities to get involved in the kinds of activities the programme offers in their spare time. We need to work with local authorities to support them in responding imaginatively to their statutory duty to provide sufficient provision of positive activities for young people.

I think that there’s a clear role for creative organisations like Creative Partnerships in providing the glue that will make this work. Anti-social behaviour, Respect, Civil Renewal – our sectors are central to all of these agendas.

top

Creative Skills and the Creative Economy

We need to communicate this in the same way that we need get across that that the kind of stuff Creative Partnerships does is central to every single one of the five outcomes of every child matters. We need to get over the hurdle of creativity, culture and the arts being seen as solely about enjoyment, important as that is.

Perhaps most obviously creativity is going to be increasingly central to young people achieving economic well being. Our Creative industries are among the fastest growing sectors of economy and we need to make sure that we are equipping young people with the skills they need for an advanced knowledge economy. This is one of the specific priorities that the Prime Minister set out for the Department in his letter re-appointing the Secretary of State in May.

There’s a clear economic and moral duty here on us to make sure all young people have the chance to get these skills. What we can’t have is whole sections of society who are effectively out of the hi-tech loop because of either their background or where they live. If we want to avoid that, and the tension in society that will inevitably come with it, we need to get into some of these disadvantaged areas. We need to stop talking about these communities as ‘hard to reach’ and do something about it.

Conclusion

This was brought home to me really clearly when I visited a school in Hull two weeks ago. I was actually there for something completely different but the only thing the head teacher wanted to talk about was what CPs had done for his school.

Now this was clearly only part of the picture, the head teacher was hugely inspiring and I’m sure he would have shaped a creative, lively school even without CPs. But what the head teacher said to me then is exactly what you have said to me today: that CPs, in giving young people amazing experiences and the chance to be creative is transforming lives. CPs is doing exactly what it says on the tin, it’s ‘exciting minds’ and tacking poverty of aspiration head on.

This is what we’ve got to keep hold. This is what we’ve got to do more of. This is what school should be about.

top

Back to main

Next >

< Prev