Facts and Figures

25 million people a year visit a publicly funded arts event. 8.7 million people visited galleries in 1999/2000. The cultural sector generates revenues of around £115 billion and employs 1.3 million people. It contributes over £10 billion in exports and accounts for over five per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Output from the sector grew by more than twice that of the economy as a whole in the late 1990s. The sector is seen as a major contributor to social and community development,

The creative industries account for more than 5% of GDP and in the last three years have grown by 16%as opposed to 6% for the economy as a whole.

Lord Evans in his New Statesman Arts Lecture, June 2001, called for recognition of the role of the cultural economy, which is founded upon publicly funded cultural institutions;" we should begin to understand that imagination and manufacturing are not opposed, but complementary [.....] Our publicly funded cultural institutions have a vital role to play in helping us towards an awareness of the nation we have become and in making us conscious of our growing reliance on cultural industries. [.....] They have a direct economic role in providing and supporting the skills those industries need. [.....] They have a major role to play in education [........] to expose more children and parents to the transforming power of culture. And they have the vital social role of providing the social binding element of shared experience we need in a fluid and secular society. " Full text of Lord Evans' lecture can be found on the Resource website click here.

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