Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall

I will concentrate my remarks on the role of arts and culture on the well-being of children, and I will refer to two organisations with which I am connected: the Roundhouse in north London, and Artis, which is a small but perfectly formed business that recruits and trains performing artists to deliver specially developed programmes linked to the national curriculum and to the Every Child Matters agenda in primary schools and, more recently, in secondary schools.

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The two organisations that I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, Roundhouse and Artis, are both contributing significantly in different ways to using arts and culture to develop skills and confidence in children and young people. Again, I would give examples of this but I am not going to because I want to raise one other point. I will say only that the quiet work that Artis does, which reaches 25,000 children a week in primary schools, and the rather noisier and more ebullient work that Roundhouse does in engaging with the young people who have come through its pioneering studio programmes, which resulted in it creating, producing, managing and delivering an entire weekend’s worth of work at the Roundhouse last weekend, are important indicators of what can be achieved. There are many more, too, but we have some way to go before the benefits of learning through cultural experience are fully embraced in our educational and social policies. I hope that we shall not lose ground on this issue in the years ahead. [...]

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