What can we create together?

Juggling known unknowns

Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review announcement has clearly been difficult for the arts and culture, but perhaps not disastrous. What remains to be seen is how the government’s funding priorities will now be implemented by Arts Council England and others. I hope we can focus on how best to engage children and young people with the arts in ways that draw maximum benefit for them and for others. In preserving the ‘front-line arts’ (an ambiguous term…), let’s be rigorous about what works and set the climate for new opportunities rather than pared-down old ones.We won’t know the full implications of the spending review for TMC’s programmes for a while to come. It is still our ambition to complete the current Creative Partnerships school year in wonderful style. We also aim to launch new services that meet the needs of a new generation of creative children and young people.

My default question looking forward is a simple one: what can we create together?