Arts Education Is A Social Justice Issue

By: Sam Cairns *

Studying the arts fosters creativity, innovation, empathy, and resilience. The arts enrich young lives, making them happier and healthier and give children the skills needed in a labour market that places an increasingly high premium on creativity. However, not every child reaps the benefits of an arts-rich education, and increasingly it feels like it is becoming the preserve of those who can pay for it. 

The Case in the UK

There is deep and increasing inequality in our society. Over the last decade child poverty has increased in the UK, social mobility has stalled, and hate crime is on the increase. For the moment the UK is the world’s 5th largest economy, but infant mortality is on the rise. 

Set against this backdrop a decline in access to the arts for children seems like a small issue. However, if we believe the research about the value of an arts education and the academic, social, personal and economic uplift it can give children, then it is important we give every child an arts-rich education and not allow access to depend on who your parents are. 

Research shows that children with an arts deficit are disadvantaged educationally and economically while their more fortunate peers – generally from more affluent backgrounds – are more resilient, healthier, do better in school, are more likely to vote, to go to university, to get a job and to keep it. 

In a nutshell this is what makes arts education a social justice issue in the UK: 

  • we live in an increasingly unequal society; 

  • arts and culture improve the life chances of children; 

  • our children do not have equal access to arts and culture. 

I suspect that part of the success of the middle-classes is the uplift they get from engaging in arts and culture and building cultural capital that then translates into better jobs. (You can read more about this in a blog about cultural capital and power I wrote back in July.) 

The Data from Schools

In England if you go to school in a poorer area, you have less arts in your school education than those going to schools in more affluent areas. You get to study arts subjects for a shorter amount of time. Teachers report schools in poorer areas tend to get their children to specialise a year earlier at age 13 to get in more time for subjects they will be examined on at age 16. Department for Education data shows over half of young people do not study an arts subject past this cut off point of 13 or 14. 

If you are from a poorer background you are less likely to visit the theatre, museums, to play an instrument or to have dance lessons. Surveys of teachers show that children in schools in more deprived areas do less music. Taking Part data from the Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport shows that adults in more deprived households do less arts, and data published in the new year will drill down into the levels of activity by background of children. 

 If you are poor all the things that are at the bedrock of developing your creative life you do less of. And this lack of equity has an impact on your life chances (see our Employability and Health Briefings).

What is Happening Now

This brings me to the work of the Cultural Learning Alliance. The Alliance champions a right to art and culture for every child. We published a Social Justice Statement in 2018 and a Briefing on the research in October 2019.

Children and young people who feel ownership of the arts feel more confident in their ability to create, challenge and explore; they learn to participate not just in arts activities but within society. The arts can give our children the skills and tools to tackle the increasingly wicked problems our societies face, including climate change, and in the UK Brexit. Equality of access to arts and culture is the right of every child and should be unaffected by income, ethnicity, gender, disability or location. Participation in the arts fuels social mobility.

 If we want to live in a just society we must work together – policy makers, schools, teachers, artists and cultural organisations – to ensure that every child and young person experiences an arts education that enables them to fulfil their potential. Otherwise the arts will continue to be the preserve of those who can afford them.

*Sam Cairns 

Sam Cairns has worked in the culture sector for 20 years - starting in museum education and expanding into libraries, archives and then the arts, and has Co-Directed the Cultural Learning Alliance since 2011. Sam was Project Director for Phase 1 of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations, and is currently Project Manager of Learning About Culture a two-and-a-half year investigation into the role that cultural learning plays in improving educational outcomes for children run by the RSA in partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation.