The arts will benefit from jobs fund announced in the Budget, say DCMS and DWP.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 new jobs will be created across the UK in the cultural and creative industries, through a collaboration between the DCMS and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as part of the £1.1bn Future Jobs Fund announced in last month’s Budget. Local councils, third-sector groups, arts organisations and creative industry bodies will be able to bid for Government funding for new jobs for young people, which must be paid at least at the National Minimum Wage. The DCMS, which is already working with cultural sector bodies including Arts Council England (ACE) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council now plans to work with orchestras, arts organisations, heritage bodies and the music industry. The Future Jobs Fund has been established to “help to deliver the opportunity of work or training for every 18–24 year-old job seeker who has been out of work for up to a year”, and aims to create 150,000 jobs overall between October 2009 and April 2011. The initiative for cultural jobs follows an agreement by UK Music, the new umbrella organisation representing the interests of the commercial music industry, to work with Jobcentre Plus to offer 200 music festival jobs to young unemployed people this summer. It also builds on the announcement last month that national sports organisations have pledged to bid for at least 5,000 jobs for young people. Current guidelines on the DWP website indicate that “the overall cost of each bid should not exceed £6,500 per job created (including any admin costs)”, that bids should be “in line with existing locally agreed work and skills strategies”, and that they must not replicate or replace existing jobs.
Supporting the initiative, Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, who was Andy Burnham’s predecessor as Culture Secretary, said that “the whole arts world is getting behind the Future Jobs Fund”, and added that he wanted to “create real jobs in interesting and socially worthwhile industries”. A spokesperson for ACE confirmed that the organisation has been in discussion with the DCMS and the DWP, and said it would “continue to liaise with both departments and with arts organisations to help develop detailed proposals”. Shadow Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey, called the scheme “an interesting proposal”, but noted that “many previous, high profile Government initiatives promising large sums of money have not resulted in real change”.
As well as announcing the jobs drive, Burnham launched a new document, ‘Lifting People, Lifting Places’, which describes “the Government’s vision for how culture, media and sport can play a part in helping the economy recover”. The document is also significant in that it confirms the Government’s intention to establish a four-yearly award of the UK City of Culture, in the wake of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture. Awards would be made on the basis of plans for staging major annual cultural events and “the best vision for how the award will inspire its citizens and transform its prospects”. More details on the role and the selection of winners will be made available in the summer, and the first city to hold the title will do so in 2013.