Human beings thrive on arts and culture. This is evidenced not only by the huge swathes of visitors to museums and art galleries every day (Tate Modern counted nearly 4,000 visitors per day for the 2011 Gaugin show), but also by the abundance of organisations and activities related to the arts. If you attempt to type in to a search engine some vague term such as ‘arts uk’, you are immediately bombarded with millions of links to the seemingly infinite facets of the arts industry; theatre, dance, fine art, to name just the most obvious. So with all this huge wealth of resources in the arts surely our kids have more than they need in the way of access to them. Not so. A recent UNICEF report showed that, unsurprisingly, ‘in the UK inequality was…seen in access to outdoor, sporting and creative activities, with poorer children spending more sedentary time in front of screens whilst the more affluent had access to a wide range of sports and other pursuits’, and a new report by the Children’s Society shows that half a million children in Britain are unhappy with their lives.

Some of this must be a direct result of the elitist tradition of arts and culture for the upper classes which still abounds in the UK, perpetuated by rising costs of attendance and lowered wages, which completely prices out a whole chunk of society who couldn’t possibly afford to spend £60 on a ticket to the Opera. And what of your average west end show? You’re still looking at around £20-30 per ticket. More affordable for the so called ‘squeezed middle’ but still out of reach for the average family, except perhaps as an irregular treat. No wonder then that cultural activities such as these are seen as being ‘for posh people’ or ‘for university bods’. Having grown up in a working class town on a council estate, these are genuine descriptions I still hear regularly from both adults and children, which is depressing in its self-defeatism. Any one of the people on that estate could enjoy a gallery or theatre show just as much as a ‘uni bod’ if they could go with an open mind and the self confidence that comes with knowing these things are there for THEM. Cultural public ownership often doesn’t feel as if it includes the working classes.

With these entitlement attitudes being cyclically ingrained in kids at home and the government demonising the working class even more than usual, through a constant barrage of recession-approved negative association (welfare – they don’t deserve it, jobs – they can’t be bothered, health – they can pay for it themselves etc.) the middle and upper classes dominate the market almost entirely. This attitude has to be changed and to do that, prices need to drop to a reasonable level, as well as provision of far more free outreach workshops which take the theatre out of the west end and encourage parents and children to get involved. It is do-able if the funding were there. It’s investment in our children, and you’d think we’d jump at the idea. But this brings us squarely to the general British attitude towards children and childhood. To be blunt we just don’t respect it. This attitude leaches into the top echelons of many arts organisations, where children appear to be an afterthought. I’m not saying people don’t care, or that they don’t do their best; in fact I’m generalising in a big way, but I’m talking more about an overarching attitude and social manner. Our modern family zeitgeist, if you like. Capitalism and major corporative influence of a level never seen before, sees us now buying into the commercialisation of our own children, then feigning ironic surprise when they riot angrily and prioritise free clothes and shoes. The arts have been proven to have a beneficial effect on cognitive development, so why are we allowing this aspect of childhood experience to be pushed aside by a Gove-led education system concerned only with academic league tables and in churning out future business graduates from business-run Academies expected to ‘save the failing system’? We need to mobilise.

Action for Children’s Arts recently sent Freedom of Information requests to 20 major arts organisations in the UK, asking them what percentage of their annual budget was spent on producing work for children. The results were shocking. Children under 12 make up 15% of the population and yet rarely more than 1% of any organisation’s budget was spent on them alone. We should, in fact, be spending more than the technical 15% on them – like I say, investing in their and our futures. But as well as not being bestowed with extra, they are refused even their fair share. 1% funding for our children is a disgracefully poor representation of our public arts industry. ACA held a conference on 19 June 2012 to discuss how we can work together to change this. The conference was insightful and full of optimism for future policy reform, both within the government itself and individual organisations such as the BBC and the Arts Council, among others. We are continuing to discuss and gather ideas, via twitter and on the website, to inform a discussion group in the pipeline, whereby we aim for the outcome of a solid action plan and potential children’s arts charter.

Let us not forget how many organisations there are who do provide arts services for children and work tirelessly to keep our children’s imagination filled with fun and play and wondrous things: Unicorn Theatre, Polka Theatre, 5x5x5=creativity and Imaginate to name but a very very few. However, children as a whole section of society are underrepresented in the arts and are too often lumped into ‘families’ groups whereby an adult event is deemed suitable for children rather than being devised with children in mind.

The number of arts facilities provided just for children does in no way represent their percentage numbers in society and this fact alone does them a great injustice. It’s about time we started making children our priority, the future of this country. It’s about time we started taking responsibility for the fact that they feel angry and undervalued and not lazily blame the parents, but blame the culture. When art becomes truly art for all, for the whole of society, we will have achieved our goal. Until then, join us in fighting for an undeniable right for our children, the right to have access to the arts.

Kate Withstandley

Exploring Art in the City

Against a background of growing concern about children’s well-being in the UK, negative perceptions of children and a feeling that childhood itself is undervalued, perhaps we should not be surprised that little more than 1% of public funding for the arts is directed towards work for which children are the main audience.

This is what Action for Children’s Arts found to be the case when we sent Freedom of Information requests to twenty of the UK’s major arts organisations, the four national Arts Councils and the British Film Institute.  Their responses are included in a report, Putting Children First, that was presented at a conference at the Unicorn Theatre, London, on 19 June.

We asked the UK’s arts funding bodies what proportion of their grants helped to fund work aimed at children up to 12 years of age.  None of them was able to give a precise answer.  The BFI was unable to identify films made specifically for this age group, only those classified by the British Board of Film Censors as either U, PG or 12A.  Each of the national Arts Councils gave a high priority to ‘children and young people’ but none of them could say exactly how much their clients spent on work aimed at children.

We asked our sample of arts organisations how much of their budget went on productions, performances, exhibitions or broadcasts aimed wholly or mainly at children up to 12 years of age.  It was a relatively small sample, covering all the major art forms, but the degree of consistency between the answers we were given suggests that the results are likely to be representative.  The BBC spends 3% of its budget on programmes for children.  That’s less than it spent three years ago.  On average, the UK’s flagship arts organisations spend just over 2% of their total budget on the performance or exhibition of original work for children.

Since the publication of The Arts in Schools by the Gulbenkian Foundation in 1982, the arts world has generally perceived its relationship to children in the context of education.  Successive governments have funded programmes such as Creative Partnerships to promote links between the arts and education sectors.  Government-commissioned reports, from All Our Futures in 1999 to this year’s Henley Review of Cultural Education, have argued for the central place of the arts in children’s learning.

Most arts organisations today have strong education departments running programmes of high quality.  The irony is that, in most cases, they spend more on these programmes than they do on producing or presenting original work for children.  It is still the case that most theatres do one family show a year – at Christmas – and that most cultural organisations plan their programmes primarily to meet the perceived needs and interests of an adult audience.

Children up to twelve years old make up around 15% of the population.  The arts have a special place in their lives.  Through reading, singing and dancing, watching plays and films, seeing their lives reflected in paintings and sculptures, children’s imaginations are stimulated and they learn to be creative.  The attitudes, values and skills that we learn in childhood stay with us for the rest of our lives.  No one who works in the arts would disagree with that.  So why do we spend so little on children’s arts?

The cynical answer would be that more for children would mean less for grown-ups.  (They asked for more!)

The realistic answer would be that the arts are no different from any other group in a country that came bottom of the league in the 2007 UNICEF report on children’s well-being in 21 industrialised nations.

A better answer would be to make a less rigid distinction between children and grown-ups when it comes to the arts.  The best children’s books can be read and enjoyed by grown-ups too.  The best children’s theatre is a treat for parents and teachers (who have the added enjoyment of seeing the children enjoy themselves).  The best artists think like children.

With our report and our conference as a starting point, Action for Children’s Arts will be campaigning vigorously from now on for an overhaul of practice in the arts world.  We want galleries to put on exhibitions that children will want their parents to see.  We want the production of original work for children to be part of the remit of our flagship cultural organisations.  We want the BBC to start commissioning home-grown programmes for children again. We want the cultural sector as a whole to put children first.

Please read the report and join in the debate.