‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees label was economic madness amid film boom, says Nandy

Labelling arts courses “Mickey Mouse” degrees was “economic madness” during a UK film and TV boom, the Culture Secretary has said.

Speaking ahead of a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Lisa Nandy said targeted support for the arts and culture sector will help create jobs and achieve economic growth throughout the country.

She described the past decade under the previous Conservative government as “disastrous” for the sector, and claimed that culture was “erased from our classrooms and our communities”.

Ms Nandy is set to announce new funding packages on her visit to Warwickshire on Thursday, including a 5% budget increase for all national museums and art galleries and a new £85 million Creative Foundations Fund to support urgent capital works to keep venues across the country open.

She told Sky News: “This is one of the fastest growing industries in the United Kingdom, a great source of jobs and growth whether it’s film, music, TV, literature.

“We export to the rest of the world and we have companies clamouring to come and invest here.

“And with the right sort of targeted support, we can make sure that we create those jobs, we get that growth, and we unlock those opportunities, and most of all that we allow every part of our country to enjoy the arts and to be able to tell their own storytellers to become the next storytellers for the next generation.

“We think every child growing up in Britain deserves that right. We think it’s in the interests of the economy and the country.”

The Cabinet minister later added: “The last decade has been disastrous for the arts.

“We’ve seen culture erased from our classrooms and our communities.

“We’ve seen a narrowing of the curriculum, government ministers branding arts subjects ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects, the number of students taking arts GCSEs has dropped by nearly 50%, and at a time when the likes of Warner Bros, Amazon, Disney are clamouring to invest more in the United Kingdom, when the film industry is taking off in places like Sunderland at the Crown Works Studios, it’s economic madness, but it’s also taking from a generation what is theirs by birthright – the chance to live richer, larger lives and to access the arts.”

The previous Conservative government promised a crackdown on “rip-off degree courses that have high drop-out rites”, with a limit on the number of students universities can recruit to these courses.

In a lecture at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Other Place, Ms Nandy said the £270 million investment “will begin to fix the foundations of our arts venues”.

She added: “We are determined to escape the deadening debate about access or excellence, which has haunted the arts ever since the formation of the early Arts Council.

“The arts is an ecosystem which thrives when we support the excellence that exists and use it to level up.”

Ms Nandy said attending the theatre as a child with her father, who was a member of the National Theatre board, were some of the “happiest years” of her life.

She added: “I love all of it – the sound, the smell, the feel of the theatre. I love how it makes me think differently about the world.

“Most of all, I love the gift that our parents gave us, that we always believed these are places and spaces for us.

“I want every child in the country to have that feeling, because Britain’s excellence in film, literature, theatre, TV, art, collections and exhibitions is a gift.

“It’s part of our civic inheritance that belongs to us all, and as its custodians, it’s up to us to hand it down through the generations, not to remain static, but to create a living, breathing, bridge between the present, the past and the future.”

Ms Nandy continued: “While talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. This cannot continue.

“That is why our vision is not access or excellence, but access to excellence. We will accept nothing less, this country needs nothing less.”