Last week I had the pleasure of contributing to a Westminster Hall Debate on removing barriers in education. I chose to discuss the importance of the arts and creative sectors in education and the barriers that exist. As a proud drama graduate of Chichester University, I am living proof that a creative qualification can lead you down many paths in life, even to Parliament.

But years of underfunding and poor organisation means that despite a booming creative industry in the UK, young people are finding it increasingly difficult to attain the education they need to enter the sector though the state system.

There has been a significant drop in arts enrolment at A-Level, a 29% decline since 2010, and Chichester College, has had to remove Drama A-Level from its offering for next year due to a low take-up. Government grants for arts education has been cut by 40% in real terms over the past decade and those teaching arts-based subjects has reduced by 27% between 2011 and 2024.

Chichester Festival Theatre, of which I am honoured to be a trustee, has a thriving learning, education and participation department and is leading the way in giving access to performing arts education to those from underprivileged backgrounds. This summer’s production of Oliver Twist had a fantastic cast of young people and CFT’s internationally renowned youth theatre puts on a professional production every year, a privilege I had the opportunity to partake in as a young person growing up in Chichester. Pallant House Gallery also has a fantastic education and outreach department and there are a variety of creative courses available at both Chichester College and the University of Chichester for the next generation to feed into a creative industry that’s worth £126billion in gross value and employs 2.4 million people. The work that charities and organisations are doing in this space to reduce barriers to opportunities is immeasurable and their work is at risk if local authorities are not appropriately funded to ensure their non-statutory obligations to funded creative industries are protected for future generations to benefit from.

placeholder image — Jess Brown-Fuller MP in Parliament

The Liberal Democrats are committed to including arts in the English Baccalaureate, ensuring OFSTED monitors schools to provide a broad curriculum including arts and providing proper funding for creative arts degrees and apprenticeships within the creative and digital sectors. This encourages young people to continue with an arts-based qualification, which is shown to be beneficial to their mental health and improve overall attainment in education, including in maths and English.