Chi Onwurah
Main Page: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Paul Blomfield
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am well aware of the importance of the cultural offering in Newcastle, and I will return to the point about incubating young talent.
Sheffield can report great success for our museums. Museums Sheffield, which is one of our two successful museum trusts, welcomed 1 million visitors across three sites last year, 96% of whom rated the museums good or excellent—but Museums Sheffield has lost 40% of its staff since 2012. It becomes more and more of a challenge to maintain standards against that background, with a declining core grant year on year resulting from central Government cuts to local authorities.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. This morning, I had a meeting at the National Portrait Gallery to discuss, among other things, its work with Tyne and Wear museums which led to the excellent Trailblazers exhibition at the Discovery museum last year and the current Laura Knight exhibition at the Laing. Does he agree that, although it is great to see such working together between London and regional institutions, we need strong, regional institutions with continued funding to foster regional talent and create exhibitions that can perhaps travel to London?
Paul Blomfield
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will return to the point she makes in the context of my experience of some of our institutions in Sheffield.
There is also under-investment in the visual arts sector in Sheffield. I am told that Sheffield has the largest number of practising artists per capita outside London, but we have limited provision for the exhibition of contemporary and visual art and do not have the resources to take advantage or to make the most of the opportunities they provide. We need to invest to reap the rewards. Our core cities provide a platform for artists on the way up: three of the four Turner prize nominees for 2013 had exhibited at Sheffield’s Site gallery in the past six years.
The Arts Council is at pains to point out that 70% of lottery funding is spent outside London, but that does not take us back even to the 2009-10 level of spend outside London, which was at 76%, and lottery funding is one-off funding. The lottery has supported some excellent capital developments, not least the stunning Persistence Works in Sheffield, but Arts Council funding has not matched that ambition with programme funding, which would enable us to animate these spaces to fulfil their potential.