TUC Yorkshire & the Humber launches its 2020 Cultural Manifesto
20 May 2020 12:44 PM
TUC Yorkshire and the Humber has agreed its 2020 Cultural Manifesto for the region. Drawn up by the Regional TUC’s Creative and Leisure Industries Committee, the manifesto advocates increased public investment in the arts and decent pay and conditions for all who work in the cultural sector. The manifesto also includes policies on regional inequalities in arts funding, diversity, the Climate Emergency and Brexit.
While the drafting of the 2020 manifesto was finalised before the Coronavirus lockdown measures were implemented, the lockdown has led to the manifesto’s policies becoming more relevant and necessary than ever. The Creative and Leisure Industries Committee believes that the next edition of the manifesto will need to contain specific policies arising from the Covid-19 crisis.
The Manifesto as well as a large print version can be downloaded as a PDF at the bottom of this page.
TUC Yorkshire and the Humber seeks the endorsement of the following policies by local authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and ‘metro mayors’ in the event of regional devolution. We also call on all candidates standing for election to public office to support these policies:
- Defend and when possible increase local authority spending on libraries, arts, heritage and culture. We call on all local authorities to work towards the goal of investing at least 50p per resident per week in the sector https://tinyurl.com/50p-for-culture
- Maintain and regularly update a comprehensive arts, heritage and culture strategy for each local authority. Arts and culture must also be at the heart of regeneration.
- Encourage good employment practices in arts, heritage and cultural organisations that receive public funding. Public funding must be contingent upon all client organisations becoming accredited Living Wage1 employers and formally recognising the appropriate trades unions, entering into collective bargaining in good faith, adhering to applicable trade union agreements, and fully complying with health and safety legislation.
- To ensure that wherever possible local public investment in the arts is spent locally, benefits local workers and local communities and provides for local needs and wants.
- Improve Diversity. Local authorities need to support the creative industries’ efforts to improve the diversity of the sector’s workforce. Education authorities need to support the training of the cultural workers of the future and, in the context of the English Baccalaureate, to recognise the importance of school students being able to study creative, artistic and technical subjects at GCSE and A Level.
- Lobby Central Government. The Government threatens public investment in the arts through cuts to local authority funding and the implementation of the English Baccalaureate. Local authorities need to continue lobbying central government for increased public investment in a thriving regional creative and leisure industries sector, and to protect and enhance arts education.
Regarding employment, the manifesto asserts that far too often, the creative and leisure industries are blighted by poor working conditions, pay levels less than government minima, harassment and bullying and even an expectation that professional arts practitioners should work without pay. Such practices need to be eradicated.
The manifesto highlights the disparity of DCMS and Arts Council England funding at £69 per head for Londoners and £4.58 per head for the rest of England and demands that this is redressed.
The manifesto identifies the continuation of free movement of workers, protection of intellectual property rights, safeguarding workers’ rights and the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and continued access to healthcare provision equivalent to the European Health Insurance Card as key issues for the creative and leisure industries arising from Brexit. Where Creative Industries funding from the EU is lost this must be replaced at equivalent levels by the UK government.
On the Climate Emergency the manifesto calls for support for the arts’ positive role in facing up to climate change and for the negative environmental impact of cultural activities to be minimised.
The manifesto also calls for all funding opportunities to be promoted to and accessible to grassroots organisations.
The following unions have been involved in the TUC YH Creative and Leisure Industries Committee:
Artists' Union England, BECTU Sector of Prospect, Equity, Musicians Union, NASUWT, National Union of Journalists, UNISON
In addition, the following unions support the cultural manifesto:
USDAW
Editors Note:
- Accredited Living Wage employers are those who have been certified by the Living Wage Foundation as paying at least the Living Wage Foundation’s Living Wage rates https://www.livingwage.org.uk. These are distinct from and higher than the Government’s so called living wage, which are statutory minimum wage rates for over 25s.
Contacts:
Gareth Forest (Lewis), TUC Policy & Campaigns Officer, t. 0113 200 1075 e: glewis@tuc.org.uk