Well, it’s not quite a new announcement, but it is more details on the proposals they announced in The Children’s Plan. There will be £25 million of funding for pilot schemes across the country, focusing on those children who would normally miss out.
Of course, it’s more than money that keeps people from going to the theater or opera. The National Theater offers tickets for £10, you can stand at the Globe for £5 and even the Royal Opera House has a limited amount of tickets for about £10 for all performances. What needs to be addressed is the sense that these are intimidating environments in which people feel that they do not belong.
We think that the best way of doing this is to introduce children to these environments from a young age, so that looking at art or listening to classical music is habitual rather than alien. Hopefully today’s announcement will be the first step towards this.
