Last week, Equity was amongst a coalition of arts and entertainment organisations who joined the Arts & Minds campaign as they handed in a 10,000-signature letter to Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education, and Lisa Nandy MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, calling for urgent action to support arts education in schools.
The Arts & Minds campaign is a direct response to the alarming decline in arts education across the UK. The campaigning group says that since 2014, access to creative subjects has been eroded at every level of the education system. The campaign calls on government to put “arts at the heart of education”, and is backed by stark statistics: between 2010 and 2023, entries to GCSE and A-level arts subjects dropped by 42%, and participation in arts further education has fallen by 57% since 2014.
Equity staff and members joined as the campaign marched from outside Parliament to the Department of Education to hand in the letter. The letter, whose signatories included Harriet Walter and Juliet Stevenson, as well as hundreds of Equity members, cites “inadequate funding” and “lack of status afforded to creative subjects”. The letter states:
“Over the last 14 years arts provision has been significantly reduced across every school stage – a direct result of inadequate funding, an overly burdensome assessment and accountability system and the lack of status afforded creative subjects. As you know, access to the arts is growing ever more restricted for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. This has to stop and can only be reversed through government action... We are calling on you to ensure that ALL children can enjoy these rich and inspiring subjects THROUGHOUT their school life.”
In May 2025, Equity’s annual conference unanimously passed a motion to collaborate with the Arts & Minds campaign, emphasising the multifaceted benefits of creative arts in the curriculum and their significance to emerging industries which contribute significantly to the UK economy. The recent manifesto launched by Equity’s Class Network also includes a demand to restore all arts and creative subjects as a crucial part of the curriculum.
