Why culture matters
Culture is not a luxury.
Culture is work.
Every day, thousands of people across Wales earn their living creating, performing, producing, teaching, designing, and sustaining our cultural life. Their work underpins our language, our communities, our wellbeing, and our economy.
The arts, creative and media sectors are part of Wales’s foundational economy — rooted in people, place, and public value. Yet the people who make culture possible too often face low pay, insecure contracts, unsafe conditions, and chronic instability.
A cultural nation cannot be built on insecurity.
Ahead of the Senedd election on 7 May 2026, we are asking candidates to back our manifesto setting out five pledges to ensure culture in Wales is treated as essential infrastructure — funded sustainably, built on fair work, and open to everyone.
The Five Pledges
Pledge 1 — Cultural leadership and democratic control
Treat culture as essential national infrastructure by supporting strong political leadership and democratic control over cultural decision-making in Wales.
This includes a Cabinet Secretary for Culture and Arts, further exploration of broadcasting devolution, and ensuring Welsh stories, language, and creative workers are supported locally.
Pledge 2 — Sustainable investment in culture
Commit to long-term public investment in culture as part of Wales’s foundational economy.
This includes working towards funding equivalent to 0.5% of GDP, supporting a Culture Bill to protect funding from political cycles, replacing “Priorities for Culture” with a properly funded national strategy, and ensuring fair distribution of resources across communities, languages, and artforms.
Pledge 3 — Fair work and workforce voice
Strengthen and embed the Arts, Creative and Media Sector Workforce Social Partnership so fair pay, safe conditions, and trade union standards are a normal condition of publicly funded cultural work.
Cultural labour must be treated as skilled professional work, not voluntary or disposable.
Pledge 4 — Equality and class justice
Remove structural barriers in the cultural sector by recognising class-based inequality, extending the Socio-Economic Duty to cultural bodies, and strengthening equality standards so creativity is accessible to everyone, regardless of background or income.
Pledge 5 — Economic security for creative lives
Support measures that provide economic security for creative workers, including Universal Basic Income, so freelancers and artists can build sustainable careers and live with dignity in Wales.