This week sees the expansion of a government-funded programme designed to encourage more people to consider careers in the performing arts.
This comes in the context of 2023 data shared in the press release depressingly reporting that “performing arts lost 35,000 jobs since the pandemic, highlighting the critical need to support pathways into employment.” As such, Discover! Creative Careersmust be welcomed but with some reservations.
The announcement comes in advance of Rachel Reeves’s Comprehensive Spending Review. If the advance notices are anything to go by, this will boost defence spending at the same time as trying to patch holes in the NHS and the care system more widely.
Beyond that, there are attention-grabbing stories about desperately needed improvements to the transport system outside London and other long-term plans. If the best that the arts can hope for is a month-long careers fair for those in senior schools, there is still going to be much pain in a beleaguered sector.
Since she took on the mantle of Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy has shown relatively little interest in the performing arts, but her main concentration has been on the diminution of arts-based education in schools.
In the current economic climate with Donald Trump taking a wrecking ball to the UK economy, ignoring what he is doing for his own country, the chances of boosting the numbers of music, drama and other teachers to instil a love of the arts in the nation’s children seem slim in the short to medium term. Instead, perhaps we should be grateful for the crumbs that are offered and look at the expansion of Discover! Creative Careers as a positive development.
The programme is government funded with the commendable intention of inspiring more 11- to 18-year-olds into performing arts and other creative industries. It's annual Discover! Creative Careers Week takes place in November and, this year, will be month-long. As the blurb explains, “the event connects young people with real-world experiences in the creative industries through employer-led events, talks, and workshops designed to inspire future talent into performing arts.”
You get a feel for its purpose and limitations from the goals of a steering group member, Get Into Theatre, “a careers platform that provides young people with information, opportunities, and guidance on how to pursue a career in theatre, regardless of their background or experience”.
As its director, Alex Duarte-Davies, explains, “access to theatre and the wider creative industries remains deeply unequal—too often shaped by socioeconomic barriers and systemic privilege. Young people from working-class backgrounds are still four times less likely to enter the creative industries than their middle-class peers, and the theatre sector, particularly off-stage, falls short in reflecting the diversity of the UK population.”
For the most part, it appears that the 100,000 youngsters who are exposed to the scheme will get a relatively brief opportunity to chat and interact with those involved with many arts organisations and some will undoubtedly be fired up and wish to explore further.
In addition, there will be a focus on two-week in-person placements which are directed towards years 10 and 11. These should enable those lucky enough to receive invitations to fall in love with a particular industry or, alternatively, decide that it is not for them.
It would be good to know how many of the 62,000 young people who have been involved in the scheme over the past two years are now considering careers in the arts or may even have taken their first steps in that direction.
There must be concern that this kind of arrangement is as much performative as effective, sending out a positive message without necessarily achieving all that much. If that is the case, then it could be argued that the money might be better spent on boosting arts education, Lisa Nandy’s own preferred goal.