Up to £1m for New Deal

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHM), this week pledged a sum “north of zero and south of a million” to the ‘New Deal of the Mind’, a coalition of entrepreneurs, teachers and individuals working in the creative industries, which aims to create an action plan to help those affected by the recession and graduates joining the creative workforce this summer. Government Ministers have also expressed support for the organisation, which was founded by Martin Bright, former Political Editor of the New Statesman, inspired by the New Deal created by US President Franklin D Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A cross-party summit meeting hosted at 11 Downing Street by Maggie Darling, wife of the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was attended by over 50 leaders from the worlds of culture, media and new technology. Political representatives included Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, and James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Shadow Arts Minister Ed Vaizey and Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on technology.
Opening the meeting, Bright posed the questions: “How will the creative industries grapple with the challenge of the economic downturn? What practical solutions can be put in place in the teeth of the recession and what can be done – and quickly – for the school-leavers and graduates thrown into the job market this summer? And what can be done to make use of the skills and experience of those laid off in the months to come?” Burnham pointed to the differences in the creative economy since the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. He indicated that he would be working with Purnell and Hazel Blears, the Communities Minister, to look at issues such as taking over redundant spaces in town and city centres and possibly increasing the number of creative apprentices from its current level of 5,000. He also suggested creating opportunities for unemployed creative people to work voluntarily in schools “to keep their own sense of optimism and hope”. Purnell pointed out that although he had just abolished the New Deal for Musicians, the Government had plans to reintroduce “something very similar to the Enterprise Allowance scheme” and would “put [the creative industries] right at the heart of what we want to do in response to rising unemployment”. Vaizey committed himself to working with the Government and the Liberal Democrats to fight for arts funding and for support of the creative industries.
 

Phillips, pointing out that the initiative should “tap into the energy of a more diverse society”, said that the CEHM did not wish to be “a commissioner of cultural works”, but would work with partners including the BBC, the Arts Councils and others to fund projects. Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), said that projects regenerating community buildings, involving volunteers and apprentices, could be supported by “organisations like the HLF giving the kind of seed-corn [funding] to enable them to take place”. She also put forward the idea of a national archiving project covering oral history and archives of disappearing industries such as Wedgwood pottery. Ruth Mackenzie, Advisor to the DCMS, said, “We have an arts sector with an infrastructure that actually is well-placed to help the creative industries…, to mentor, to train, to be unselfish in setting up schemes for internships, to open their doors for the next generation – and it’s well equipped to do it”.