Written evidence submitted by the Mayor of London
1.1. The Mayor welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Inquiry.
1.2. The powerful social impact of culture and sport is clear and a major reason why The Mayor has made culture and social integration core priorities for his administration.
1.3. Access to, participation and representation in culture and sport can remove barriers that can exist between groups. It can help to challenge the stigma and discrimination many face, from asylum seekers and refugees to people with disabilities, and enable all Londoners to play a more active role in their community. It also helps combat loneliness and isolation, improve health, develop new skills, and strengthen bonds between communities.
1.4. Alongside ensuring that all Londoners have access to and can participate in London’s cultural and sporting offer, improving social integration is central to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s vision for a safe, healthy, prosperous and world-leading global capital in which all Londoners have the opportunity to thrive.
1.5. The Mayor has demonstrated his commitment to this vision by appointing Matthew Ryder as London’s first ever Deputy Mayor for Social Integration, Social Mobility and Community Engagement. Matthew’s role is to work with colleagues including Justine Simons OBE, the Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries, to remove the barriers that many Londoners face to participating fully in their city, and to enable them to lead lives that are more connected.
1.6. Social integration is about how we all live together and interact with others who are different from ourselves. It involves shaping a city in which all Londoners can relate to each other as equals and play an active part in their city, and overcoming the barriers which can be caused by factors such as social class and economic inequality
1.7. Culture and sport play a crucial role, but access is at risk. Too many Londoners do not get to make the most of the city’s culture assets and with participation among people from lower socio-economic backgrounds declining in recent years[1]. Many different types of cultural and sporting facilities are at risk of closure due to development; local spending on arts and culture in communities has decreased; and creative subjects are deprioritised in education – limiting young people’s experiences with the arts.
1.8. London is leading in improving social mobility, enhance community engagement and enrich individuals’ experiences through greater participation in culture and sport. The Mayor will shortly publish his statutory Culture Strategy, setting out his approach to culture and sport. He will also publish, for the first time, a strategy setting out his new approach to social integration. Read together, they detail his approach to increasing access to culture and sport for all Londoners and promoting social integration across the city.
1.9. The Mayor would welcome the opportunity to work with government to deliver a co-ordinated and cohesive approach to culture and sport with a greater focus on improving social outcomes, particularly social integration, throughout.
2.1. London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, with over 300 languages spoken in the capital every day. London is larger today than at any time in its history, with a population of 8.63 million, expected to grow to 10 million by 2030. 37% of Londoners were born outside of the UK, and for more than one in five, English is their second language at home. 45% of Londoners identify as white British, with 40% from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, and a further 15% identifying as white other.
2.2. There is also huge socio-economic disparity. Trust for London’s poverty profile of London shows that unemployment rates for young people in London aged 16-24 are 2.5 times higher than those who are aged 25-64; Londoners who are BAME are more likely to be unemployed. Females from Bangladeshi or Pakistani backgrounds are the most likely to be economically inactive. Deprivation and poverty are the biggest barriers to social integration.
2.3. While London’s diversity is an important part of London’s strength and is fundamental to its global identity, Londoners spend relatively little time with people from different walks of life.
2.4. Contact between groups who would not otherwise interact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice, misunderstandings, unconscious bias or even overt conflict between members of different communities or social groups. It can reduce the alienation and isolation that can cause ill health and loneliness. Social networks can not only help to reduce the risk of mortality but can also help individuals to recover when they fall ill.[2] Stronger, more diverse social networks can help people from all backgrounds access opportunities, such as finding a new job. This can support social mobility and help to reduce inequality.
2.5. Participation in the arts, sport, volunteering and social action enable Londoners to come together across barriers and play an active role in their community. From street art to music festivals and dance performances, culture presents opportunities to challenge prejudices, bring people together and celebrate the contributions of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. Taking part in communal or group sport and volunteering can help to combat loneliness and isolation, improve health, develop new skills, and strengthen bonds and understanding within and between individuals and communities.
2.6. Arts and health bodies have also shown that creativity and the arts make a significant difference to people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.[3] Data from Creative Health found that:
3.1. The Mayor has made both social integration and access to culture key priorities. Culture can bring communities together, create shared experiences and remove barriers. The Mayor’s vision for social integration in London is to improve relationships, participation and equality.So culture and social integration go hand in hand. Investing in culture and sport to ensure that all Londoners – including those from the most deprived and excluded backgrounds – have access to all that London has to offer, is vital for the health and wellbeing of the city.
Culture
3.2. In 2018, the Mayor will publish his draft Culture Strategy[5] which will set out priorities and new initiatives to ensure more people can access and create culture locally, strengthening communities, and enhancing health and wellbeing. The strategy will also set out plans to protect grassroots and community cultural infrastructure which contributes toward social integration like LGBT venues, pubs and music venues.
Access and participation
3.3. However, access to and participation in the arts in London is under threat, especially among the most excluded groups. Participation levels have fallen in recent years, with people from lower socio-economic backgrounds having much lower levels of cultural participation. [6]
3.4. Three of London’s poorest Boroughs are in the bottom 20% for adult engagement with the arts across the UK. In Newham, only 29% of adults have attended an arts event or participated in arts activity at least three times in the past 12 months, compared to 65% and 69% in Richmond and Kensington and Chelsea respectively. Only a third of Londoners feel they make the most of culture on their doorstep.
3.5. Large disparities in cultural infrastructure between boroughs[7] is exacerbated by losses of venues; between 2007 and 2016, London lost 35% of its grassroots music venues with only 94 venues remaining programming new and emerging artists.
3.6. The London Borough of Culture, is a major new initiative from the Mayor, inspired by Hull as the UK City of Culture in 2017, to put culture at the heart of the community and engage audiences and residents who don’t usually take part in the arts. It is a city-wide competition that has invited the capital’s boroughs to bid to deliver a cultural programme with local, regional and national reach.
3.7. That the UK’s world class museums remain free to all is an enormous strength, and essential to access and participation and audiences become more diverse after the introduction of free admission. There was a 178% increase in visits to government sponsored museums by people from an ethnic minority background from 2001-2011.
3.8. The Mayor will continue to support the London museums that fall under his jurisdiction[8] and find ways to help them work together to develop audiences further. He will invest £70 million to create a new Museum of London at West Smithfield which will exhibit more of the collection than ever before, and help the Museum to meet its ambition of doubling its audiences and reaching every schoolchild in the capital.
3.9. The diverse range of London museums includes those such as the Migration Museum Project in Lambeth, which is increasing knowledge and appreciation of how migration has shaped Britain across the ages – working with groups from all over London as well as issuing resources for teachers and school children.
3.10. Funding festivals and events are key to community involvement and increasing volunteering, and will also be crucial aspect of the Mayor’s draft culture strategy. Lumiere London, Totally Thames, Liberty, Pride in London and Notting Hill Carnival build bridges between different communities. These events provide spaces where people from all backgrounds come together. For example, London Mela is a celebration of Asian culture and creativity, inspired by South Asia and its diaspora which attracts a diverse audience and encourages social inclusion, with approximately a third of the audience from non-Asian backgrounds.
A diverse workforce
3.11. The Creative industries are growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, they provide 1 in 6 jobs in London and are on track to create 1,000 new jobs a week in the next decade, according to recent research[9] Up to 30% of jobs in London are at risk of automation over the next twenty years[10] but cultural and creative jobs may be less at risk, with 87% of highly creative occupations thought to be at low risk.[11]
3.12. The creative economy will provide jobs for the future, however, the creative workforce in London is far from representative of its population. Representation is a crucial element of equality. The evidence is clear that when funding for London falls or major cultural institutions such as the BBC move operations away from the capital there is a disproportionately large impact on the representation of excluded BAME communities.
3.13. The Mayor aims to support a diverse and creative workforce by supporting all young Londoners to develop their talent and skills, and making it easier for all Londoners to enter the creative industries.
3.14. The Mayor’s London Ambitions platform enables more young people to explore their creative talents through work experience and to consider the range of careers in the creative industries such as: carpenters building theatre sets; electricians managing lighting and cabling on film locations; accountants making sure creative enterprises run on budget.
3.15. The Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Board has made diversity and inclusion a priority. The Mayor has commissioned the first ever BAME pay audit for the Greater London Authority Family, has called on Ofcom to adopt new measures to increase diversity in broadcasting, including an industry-wide definition of a ‘BAME production’, ring-fenced funding for diverse productions and clear job targets for broadcasters.
Community Infrastructure
3.16. Access to cultural and community spaces like arts centres, pubs, LGBT venues, grassroots music venues, dance and community spaces is critical in ensuring local communities have spaces and places to meet, engage, participate and develop networks.
3.17. But they are under increasing pressure, from development, rising rents and business rates, and constrained local authority funding. In addition to supporting local areas to develop creative clusters, the Mayor has developed the most pro-culture London Plan ever, taking a strategic approach to integrating culture across major developments and infrastructure, and safeguarding music venues, heritage pubs, affordable work space.
Culture Education
3.18. Culture in schools helps young people from different backgrounds work and socialise together. The Cultural Learning Alliance studies demonstrate that learning through arts and culture improves attainment in all subjects[12], with music boosting academic performance and theatre education improving reading and writing.
3.19. There are signs that cultural education is under threat. Between 2010 and 2016 there has been a decline of 20 per cent in the number of arts GCSE entries in Art and Design, Design and Technology, Media/Film/TV Studies. Entries in, Music and Performing/expressive arts has dropped from 720,438 in 2010, to 618,440 in 2015. The Mayor believes that the arts have been downgraded in schools in response to growing pressures on school budgets, changes in how schools are rated in league tables and difficulties in teacher recruitment and retention. He believes strongly that cuts to creativity in schools is a false economy and that arts education must be protected.
3.20. The Mayor’s London Curriculum Programme uses the capital to bring the national curriculum to life at key stages 2 and 3. Through free teaching resources, students are supported to learn outside the classroom, taking inspiration from the city. It provides suggestions for visits to a range of London venues, helping schools to use London’s assets to strengthen teaching and learning. Resources have been developed in partnership with experts including the Museum of London, Royal Geographical Society and UCL Institute of Education. Teachers in more than 80% of London’s secondary schools and more than 300 primary schools, and across every London Borough have accessed these resources – with schools in deprived communities the most likely. An independent evaluation reported greater pupil engagement and motivation and potential long-term improvement in pupil outcomes.
3.21. The Fourth Plinth Schools Awards invites primary and secondary schoolchildren to create artworks inspired by the world class artworks commissioned for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Every year, thousands participate – there were 3,400 entries in 2017, an increase of 25% on the previous year, and with submissions from every London Borough.
3.22. Many talented young musicians cannot afford to train after primary school and without support, we will fail to nurture the musicians of the future. The London Music Fund, helps thousands of children and young people to develop their musical potential. In the past five years, the Fund has worked with almost 9,000 aspiring young musicians of which over 65% were from BAME backgrounds.
Sport
3.23. The Mayor’s sports programme aims to make London the most active and socially integrated city in the world. By investing in, promoting, and celebrating community sport initiatives the Mayor hopes to harness the full potential of sport to drive social integration on a large scale and demonstrate to the sports sector in London and beyond that sport can make a significant contribution to our overall health and wellbeing.
3.24. Later this year the Mayor will set out his plans for a community sports investment programme that will be organised around two themes: Sport for Social Integration, and Sport for Health.
3.25. For the first time, sport and physical activity will be used as a vehicle to bring more Londoners together, to promote greater social integration and strengthen our communities. Continuing to invest in major sports events, will be a crucial part of this approach, alongside grassroots programmes to improve Londoners’ physical and mental health. In addition, the plan will be designed to harness sport’s potential to unify people from London’s diverse communities.
The Mayor’s approach to sport and volunteering
3.27. In 2016, nearly four million adults in London reported participating in active sport in the last four weeks, representing 58% of London’s adult population[13]. Sport can be a great leveller, with high engagement among groups that are often excluded, and particularly among young people where there is no difference in active sport participation between white and BAME groups[14].
3.28. There are also physical and mental health benefits for some of the most isolated groups such as older people and those with mental and physical disabilities, who are more likely to be inactive.
3.29. The worlds of sport and volunteering have many strong connections. The majority of grassroots sport is delivered by volunteers. The voluntary contribution to sport outstrips all other types of volunteering and is also significantly greater than the amount of paid employment in sport. The largest percentage of people (52%) involved in any sort of regular, formal volunteering do so to support organisations or groups related to sport. Londoners recognise the opportunities for volunteering to enhance social integration – 86% see volunteering as a way to bring communities together.
3.30. Volunteering experiences can also develop personal, professional and social skills to help young people to progress. It can increase understanding of career opportunities increase exposure to positive role models, and provide experiences which build the skills needed to move into education, employment or training. It also creates greater representation, of young people, disconnected and under-represented groups.
3.31. Volunteering plays a crucial role in the Mayor’s draft social integration, sport and culture strategies. Team London is the Mayor’s volunteering programme which encourages all Londoners to become active citizens by giving their time to make the capital a better place.
3.32. The Mayor is currently running two major programmes focussing on volunteering and social mobility:
The Olympic Legacy
3.32 The Mayor wants to build on the success of hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games by ensuring that more global sporting, cultural and artistic events to come to London. Attracting large sporting events to the capital not only demonstrates the diversity of talented sports men and women who compete and succeed in such events, it also provides fantastic opportunities to volunteer. Volunteers made to a major success of the 2012 Games, and more recently the World Athletic and World Paralympic Championships last summer. Volunteers will also play a central role when London hosts the semi and final of the 2020 European Championships.
3.33 Another important part of the legacy of the 2012 Olympics is the regeneration of the Stratford and East London area. A new, world-class cultural, innovation and education district in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with leading institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian, Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion, and UCL will developed. This new district will deliver jobs, regeneration and a new visitor destination bringing significant benefits to east London and the whole country.
4.1. London is blessed with some of the world’s best museums, galleries, music and sporting venues which offer fantastic opportunities to bring Londoners together to participate in their city. But the city’s artistic and cultural life is facing some real challenges. There is pressure on funding, arts education, cultural and community infrastructure, and grassroots spaces like LGBT and music venues, at increasing risk of closure. More needs to be done to increase diversity in the creative workforce. With some of the lowest levels of engagement with culture across the UK in some of London’s poorest boroughs, it’s clear that too many Londoners aren’t able to make the most of the city’s cultural assets.
4.2. The Mayor is determined that all Londoners should be able to benefit from the capital’s fantastic cultural and sporting offer. He is leading the way by weaving objectives for social outcomes, especially social integration, through his culture and sports strategies. These strategies will prioritise increasing access and participation, alongside protecting London’s status as the artistic and cultural capital of the world. His sports strategy will enable and encourage more people to participate and compete at every level.
4.3. The Mayor believes that the case for harnessing the benefits of participation in culture and sport for improving social integration and other social outcomes is clear. In order to do that, arts funding for London must be protected and arts education in schools, supported, He would welcome the opportunity to work with government to deliver joined up strategies across culture and sport with a greater focus on improving social outcomes, particularly social integration, throughout.
February 2018
[1] JEZ! Taking Part Survey
[2] (Holt-Lunstad, 2015) (Marmot, 2010) https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/about-loneliness/
[3] For example, the Royal College of Music’s award-winning music, health and mental wellbeing activities, Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Prescription for Art referrals for older people at risk of mental ill health, and the “CW+” project that is transforming Chelsea and Westminster hospital into a more creative environment.
[4] Source: Data from Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing, p8 https://www.kcl.ac.uk/Cultural/-/Projects/Arts,-Health-and-Wellbeing-Inquiry.aspx
[5] Culture for All Londoners: The Mayor’s Culture Strategy (forthcoming). London: GLA.
[6] JEZ! Taking Part Survey
[7]Local Cultural Infrastructure Plan, London Borough of Haringey mapping report, 2017, BOP Consulting.
[8] The Museum of London, including Museum of London Docklands; The Transport Museum; the Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre; and The London Fire Brigade Museum.
[9] https://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/creative-nation
[10] Successive studies by Frey and Osborne (2014)
[11] NESTA, Creativity v Robots
[12] Key Research Findings: The Case For Cultural Learning, Cultural Learning Alliance, 2011
[13] GLA Analysis of Taking Part Survey, 2015/16. This compares with 55 per cent of adults in the rest of England.
[14] GLA Analysis of Taking Part Survey, 2015/16. Younger people aged 16-29 years are more likely to do active sport. There is no difference in young black men (76 per cent involved in active sport) and young white men (also 76 per cent).