Action for Children’s Arts, ACA, yesterday launched a manifesto, welcomed and endorsed by all three major political parties, based on Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Creative activities in schools have been submerged under endless testing and the barmy curriculum requirements of numeracy and literacy that mean nothing if unrelated to self expression and a mood of discovery.

Beverley Hughes, Minister at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (the DCSF) hoped children would now catch “the culture bug” while her Labour and Lib Dem opponents, Jeremy Hunt and Don Foster, shadows at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (the DCMS), chimed wisely on the intrinsic value of art and music in schools and the need to “free up” again the creativity of children and, perhaps more importantly, that of their teachers.  

I’m right behind the ACA, the DCSF and the DCMS. Even members of the APOATH (A Plague on All Their Houses) department, the BBCPIS (Bring Back Corporal Punishment in Schools) movement and the SPATBFE (Stupid Parents Are To Blame For Everything) league muttered their approval as they sat hypnotised by some quality arguments in the Unicorn Theatre yesterday.

Most noticeable by their absence — apart from Beverley Hughes, who sent in her contribution by video, reading it inexpertly off an autocue so that she sounded like a pre-programmed dalek — were the children themselves, seriously outnumbered by the combined forces of the WKWBFY (We Know What’s Best for You) brigade.

The day did end, however, with a short father of twins (pas de deux) from the London Children’s Ballet, and we all rather wished it hadn’t. This cutesy, precious little item with two pre-pubescent girls mincing around as lovelorn creatures in Jane Eyre was the best possible argument against Billy Elliot and the whole system of arts education in dance and drama in this country.

Still, the Unicorn conference was in no mood to be put off by any evidence of where its good intentions might lead. Three brilliant speakers spoke up for the healing, therapeutic and transforming powers of art in young children.

The first was Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company, who sailed into the Unicorn like a serene, silken, parti-coloured galleon to describe how artistic outlets help deal with the emotional vacuum in the lives of traumatised, homeless children.

In a fascinating analysis of how the brain works, she also confidently predicted that neuroscience will give a language of explanation to empower us to put the arts at the top of the national agenda, not keep them as a side issue.

Then the actress and writer Michelle Magorian revealed how music and drama had helped one of her sons with his speech problem and eulogised the work of the Petersfield Youth Theatre, before Shami Chakrabarti, the brilliant firecracker lawyer and director of Liberty  suggested that if a fraction of the youth crime and justice budget was spent on the arts, there would be far less need in the long run for a youth crime and justice budget at all. Knives might be cool in some quarters, but guitars are much cooler.

By the end of the day, radical prescriptions were flying thick and fast: Patrick Spottiswoode of Globe Education suggested that boroughs should identify which of their schools were not getting enough artistic provision; Lyn Gardner of the Guardian advocated a new internet site to coordinate information on children’s arts and literature; and an education director said we needed to reinvent schools in our society from top to bottom, or at least re-think what are schools for.

Then everyone dispersed, some to collect children from school, others to exchange the hothouse atmosphere of the Unicorn for the glorious summer sunshine along the Thames. I crossed town for a farewell party at the Evening Standard for Carolyn Mulcahy, an events organiser at the paper for thirty-nine years and powerhouse behind the Standard drama awards.

Carolyn’s colleagues down the years — Angus McGill, Valerie Grove, Derek Malcolm, Charles Spencer, Nicholas de Jongh, Nick Curtis  and James Christopher — mingled with Standard stalwarts (editor Veronica Wadley sporting a very chic white summer evening dress) and Pub of the Year judges Tim Rice and Carol Thatcher.

Poor old Tim — formerly President of the MCC — told me that everyone seemed to be blaming him for the sudden demise of the English cricket team. He thinks it’s high time we now dropped the captain, Michael Vaughan, and replaced him with Paul Collingwood, but he wasn’t letting this sad rumination cast too much of a pall over a very merry occasion. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.