Tag: Lisa Nandy

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, at Convene Sancroft, St. Paul’s, London on 2 June 2025.

I said when I addressed the Royal Television Society at the end of last year that there is a choice ahead of us, whether we choose to be the last guardians of this chapter or the first pioneers of the next. And those of you in this room are those pioneers, public service broadcasters, providing an engine room of talent development and creativity, a strong independent sector producing and distributing British content seen at home and around the world on screens big and small, a rich and varied press holding the powerful to account, not always comfortably for us in government, but essential to the functioning of a healthy democracy, and an advertising ecosystem that underpins all of this and makes it possible.

You and your sectors are central to the cultural, democratic and economic life of this country and many other countries around the world. This government values what your sectors bring to the economy, to skills and good jobs, and as a symbol of that, we have chosen to back the creative industries as one of the eight highest growth industries in the UK in our forthcoming industrial strategy. Over the last decade, the creative industries have increased their output at more than one and a half times the rate of the rest of the economy. They, you, are a major UK employer. You drive growth at home and you project the UK overseas. Collectively, you underpin a hugely important industry for this country. And whilst we will have more to say on the sector plan shortly, that will put rocket boosters under the creative industries, I want to say now that this government recognises your value and we have your back.

But the media is, and always has been, about much more than that. And there’s one issue above many others that I want to talk with you about today. Trust. Last summer, when many of our towns and cities went up in flames, nobody could ignore the fractured nature of society. We have found multiple ways to divide ourselves from one another over recent decades, and it feels at times that we’ve lost the ability to understand one another. When people are working harder than ever before, but can’t make ends meet, when their contribution is not seen or valued, when politicians display a violent indifference to the things that matter, a decent high street, transport, a viable football club, it is no wonder that people lose trust, trust in our leaders, trust in our democratic institutions and trust in each other.

That’s when news and information becomes critical. Not the sort of news and information that helps to polarise and divide, but trust in news that builds a shared understanding of the world.

And we’re all of us in this room custodians, custodians of our institutions, but more than that, custodians of a cohesive, self confident country. And who of us can look at this country and the world right now and say that we’re succeeding?

We know that people rate traditional news sources high on trust, accuracy and impartiality. We also know that news sourced via social media is rated significantly lower, and I think we’re all aware of the darker side of social media, where facts are disputed and division is sown. Against that backdrop, your work is not just important, it is central to the future of this nation.

I’ve always believed in the power of media, because it is in my blood. My mum was one of the only female editors at Granada TV in 1989, running a busy newsroom on the day that Hillsborough happened. I remember vividly as a 10 year old sitting in the newsroom with my sister until late into the night as the horrific scenes unfolded, watching her make the agonising call for the cameramen on the ground to keep filming rather than aid the rescue effort. That footage would later become critical in achieving justice for the 97, revealing evidence of a cover up and improving safety in stands at football grounds.

I watched my stepdad make the call to commission ‘Who Bombed Birmingham?’ and persist with the program over several months despite intense opposition. That documentary didn’t just go on to ensure the release of the Birmingham Six. It exposed a miscarriage of justice that would send shockwaves through the country and lead to major reforms to the criminal justice system that persist to this day. It’s in these moments that great journalism shines a light into the darkest parts of our country, holds up a mirror to those in power, and reasserts the power of the people.

I can think of no better recent example of this than last summer, as our towns and cities were set ablaze by violent thugs. It was local media on the ground who countered mis- and disinformation in real time. And they told the real story, the story of our communities, who came together to defend all of us in all of our diversity and led the community fightback.

Our national and local media is, in short, too important to fail. But we appreciate as a government that you are businesses with a bottom line, and you have been operating in the toughest of environments for some time. You don’t need me to tell you that consumer habits are changing. Seventy one percent of UK adults consume online news in some capacity, twice as many as a decade ago, and that includes some eighty eight percent of 16 to 24 year olds. Just one in 10 pick up a print newspaper, compared to over half of over 75s. And for Gen Z, internet influencers are considered almost as trustworthy as traditional media. So I’m glad that the next session in this conference is focused on news and media in the AI age.

But these aren’t the only changes that we are collectively grappling with. When it comes to the media sector, there is enormous upheaval. Print advertising is down by a third, but online advertising has more than doubled. Broadcast viewing is down by a quarter, but on demand viewing is soaring, and the advent of AI, with its enormous potential to support creativity, comes with fresh challenges around copyright, authorship and fair compensation. The consequences of this can be stark and they can be uneven. Take, for example, the dramatic shift in TV commissioning patterns that have seen the UK become a world leader in high end, at the same time that smaller producers have seen the value of their commissions fall by a third and too many talented creatives left out of work.

We’re living through a revolution, but just as with the invention of the printing press and every revolution since, we don’t run from it, we adapt again, and we learn how to become stronger for it, in a new age. And at a crucial point in our history, governments have always proactively partnered with industry to forge a new path forward, like the Annan Committee in 1974, a landmark review into the future of broadcasting that my dad was a member of. It led to the creation of Channel Four, a recognition that the country had changed, with working classes, women and minority communities crying out to be heard in this new society and a nation that needed to define itself once again.

We’re in a similar period of transition now, and transitions need to be managed. Our job as a government is to create the framework so you can keep providing rigorous journalism in an evolving news landscape, among which the creative output that is only produced by people coming together across every part of the United Kingdom, that resonates with them and their lives. That’s why we’ve already acted in the last year to fix the foundations, implementing the Online Safety Act to keep users safe while protecting press and media freedom, recognising the value and importance of recognised news publisher content. Implementing the new digital markets regimes to allow you to challenge market dominance that negatively impacts your business, and convening the National Committee for the Safety of Journalists, to bring industry and government together to protect journalists and allow you to speak truth to power.

I’ve heard from you the need for fair competition and a government that supports you. That’s why we’ve already acted to protect the sustainability of the sector, implementing the Media Act, delivering a new, more sustainable settlement for our public service broadcasters, so they can continue to invest in high quality original UK content, as well as a level playing field for our radio stations. Hearing your concerns about less healthy food advertising restrictions and acting quickly to support clarity and common sense. Increasing funding for community radio stations this year to £1 million to help support hyper local stations that represent and unite their communities. Providing clarity on foreign state ownership of newspaper enterprises, a tough and crucially workable regime to protect our newspapers from foreign interference, while ensuring sustainable investment so that our papers can thrive, and making changes to the media ownership regime to protect news in all its forms from influences that could risk our plural and trusted media.

But I do want to pause for a moment on AI, which has been the subject rightly of so much debate, not just here, but across the world. We are determined to find a way forward that works for the creative industry and creators, as well as the tech industries. Creators are the innovators, fundamental to our economic success in the future. And with my colleague Peter Kyle, we’re working together to find a better solution. The issue of AI and copyright needs to be properly considered and enforceable legislation drafted with the inclusion, involvement and experience of both creatives and technologists. And so as soon as the Data Bill is passed by Parliament, Peter and I will begin a series of roundtables with representatives from across the creative industries to develop legislation, with both houses of Parliament given time to consider it before we proceed. We approach you with no preferred option in mind. During the consultation we have heard you loud and clear that what works for one part of the creative industries doesn’t work for another. Now you know as well as I do that in this international landscape, there are no easy solutions, but this government is determined to work with you to find a solution with transparency and trust as its foundation. We have heard you loud and clear.

I will never stop working for creatives to deliver solutions, transparency and the empowerment that you need in the digital age. We are a Labour government, and the principle of people must be paid for their work is foundational, and you have our word that if it doesn’t work for the creative industries, it will not work for us.

People are at the heart of this industry, and so we’ve also acted to support the people at the heart of this sector, supporting the launch of CIISA to tackle head on the issues of workplace culture that have plagued our creative industries for too long and denied us a chance to harness the full range of talent that exists in our country. I’ve been particularly pleased to see the BBC’s recent announcement that it will no longer commission companies who are not signed up to the CIISA standards. That is what leadership looks like. I’m publishing updated online safety guidance to support journalists to report in the public interest without fear. I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve together in just one year.

But as the sector evolves, so must we, and we want a vibrant and sustainable media ecosystem with PSBs, streamers, indies, radio, TV, press, thriving across the UK, and not just individually, but collaborating together to invest in the skills, infrastructure and co-productions that we need, and when you do well, we won’t penalise you through new taxes and levies, but ensure that we have a regulatory framework that incentivises inward investment that creates opportunities for businesses, both big and small, and the UK talent to be showcased across the world.

Take Bad Wolf as an example. First, a successful indie partnering with the BBC, then getting long term investment from Sky, HBO and most recently Sony, and now with the help of the Welsh Government, one of the anchor tenants of the Cardiff creative cluster. Or the growing cluster of audio producers in Manchester, such as Made in Manchester and Audio Always supported by the shift of BBC commissioning to the region.

I told you this government would have your back, and we will. Over the coming months, we will build on Ofcom’s Public Service Media Review during the summer by taking action to ensure our public service broadcasters can continue to do what they do best long into the future. We will publish a Local Media Strategy to ensure that people in every town, city and village can access trust in news that reflects their lives as reserves better, helping them to hold local public services to account. As a government, we are committed to the biggest devolution of power out of Westminster and Whitehall in a generation, which will make local news and local media the most important that it has ever been.

We will launch the BBC Charter Review later this year to support a BBC that is empowered to continue to deliver a vital public service funded in a sustainable way. A BBC that can maintain the trust and support of the public in difficult times, support the wider ecosystem, and that is set up to drive growth in every part of the United Kingdom.

Later this month, we’ll publish a Creative Industries Sector Plan to turbocharge the growth of creative industries right across the UK. To support film and TV clusters from Birmingham to Belfast. To tap into the huge potential for growth that exists across our country.

My commitment to you is an open and collaborative partnership with the government so that we can walk through this transition together. We will play our part, but we need you to play yours. We need more collaboration within your sector and especially between our public service broadcasters, to tackle these great social and economic challenges, working together in a number of areas, particularly tackling mis- and disinformation and promoting high quality news by investing in your journalism arms, partnering more rather than competing with or undercutting local news publishers, improving media literacy by helping consumers find and recognise accurate and impartial news reporting, supporting initiatives like BBC Verify and the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

We need you to work together to promote high quality children’s content. We all want our young people to grow up to see the high quality content that will educate and inform and equip them for the world. But also to inspire young people who see themselves and their opportunities in your content, bringing untold benefit to the industry in inspiring future generations of content makers. We make great children’s content in the United Kingdom, but we don’t collectively promote it enough.

And also to understand how you can lead on this great transformation, thinking creatively about alternative ways to monetise your content and assets, and crucially, working together to move to where people are building on and developing more shared platforms and operations, like freely at radio player to help manage costs that make it easier for audiences to access your content.

We need you to take seriously the need to shift resources, opportunities and commissioning power to every nation and region. There is a principle that will run through our industrial strategy like a thread: economic growth, good jobs, skills and opportunities. Not just in one part of the country, but in every single nation and region, across our towns, villages and cities. So we need you to step up and do more, not just paying lip service to the need for regional and national content, but really embedding yourselves in those communities to make sure that those voices are heard, those stories are told. Because talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not.

In a world where trust is at a premium, it’s easy to draw divisions: broadcasters versus streamers, online versus print, local versus national, big versus small. But we have to reject that way of thinking. Because despite all the talk of challenges, and there are many, the fundamentals of our media sectors are strong. They have great talent and infrastructure, and I hope that we can work together to create a great policy framework too, so that you can continue to be the custodians of our national life and usher this country into the coming decade.

It’s my firm belief that this country has been through difficult times, buffeted by global forces and decision-making at home, and we need to take this moment to recover our sense of self confidence. When it comes to the creative industries, whether it’s film, TV, fashion, music, arts, culture, we are really good at this stuff. We light up the world with the content that we’re able to make and produce and we change lives here, at home and overseas.

Recently, I was in India and then Japan, and I couldn’t fail to be impressed by the esteem in which British media and creatives are held. Millions of people around the world watch big budget dramas like ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Bridgerton’, but they also watch a slew of other fantastic shows and formats from ‘Planet Earth’ to ‘Come Dine With Me’ and everything in between. They read our news, they watch our adverts, they listen to our podcasts.

What that does is not just project the UK to the rest of the world, but it connects people in an increasingly fragmented, divided and polarised world. So many of the people I spoke to wanted to come and make things in the UK with the UK, we are a cultural powerhouse. No one will be a more passionate advocate for our sectors than me or our ministerial colleagues at DCMS.

So know that you have our full support as we enter this new era. Know that I am confident that if we work together, we can face head-on these challenges and make the most of change as a country. We’ve been drifting too long, but now is the time to chart a new course, a media that is fiercely independent, that creates and produces some of the best content in the world. That draws on the talent that exists in every corner of our country to shape, define and give voice to our national story, and provide those moments that bring us together in shared experience at a time when so much of our consumption is fractured and polarising. As we look to this new era and a new country, let nobody say that it falls to anybody else. It falls to us.

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 22 May 2025.

Good evening everyone. Konbanwa .

It’s a pleasure to welcome you all to the UK’s Pavilion to celebrate our National Day at the Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai. I would especially like to extend a warm welcome to Her Imperial Highness Princess Akiko of Mikasa and former Prime Minister Kishida, both good friends of the United Kingdom.

The UK and Japan bilateral relationship is the strongest it has been in decades, underpinned by our common values, shared view of the world and our close people-to-people links. From security to economic growth and working together to tackle global challenges, our partnership is going from strength to strength. This step-up in collaboration was launched under the 2023 Hiroshima Accord – with thanks to former Prime Minister Kishida – and last year Prime Ministers Starmer and Ishiba agreed to build on it even further. The State Visit to the UK by Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan in June last year celebrated the depth and breadth of our partnership – as His Majesty the Emperor said, ‘we are friends like no other’.

I have seen this partnership first-hand here in Japan. And if you have had a chance to go through our visitor experience today, you will have seen the power of UK and Japanese collaboration. We can achieve so much more when we harness our shared creativity and innovation. In this spirit, the National Ballet of Japan makes their European debut at the Royal Opera House in London with their production of “Giselle” in July, under the artistic direction of Yoshida Miyako, who made her career as the first Japanese Principal ballerina in the UK’s Royal Ballet.

Ours is a partnership that is more relevant than ever. With growing uncertainty and instability around the world, there is so much that the UK and Japan can do together to ‘design future society for our lives’. This is, I believe, the defining challenge of our lives – to empower people the world over to build a world that works for us, and us for it.

So, I am delighted to be launching Musubi: a flagship new initiative that will foster meaningful people-to-people connections between the UK and Japan and build the shared leadership to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

That includes championing our young people and building a pool of international talent. And today we are announcing:

• A new Musubi Scholarship with University College London, supported by Amano Enzyme Inc.;
• A Youth Offshore Wind Scholarship Programme with SSE Pacifico to foster future talent in this dynamic sector; and * The Robert Walters career development programme to help our brightest young people reach their full potential.
• It includes drawing on the power of sport to build connections and enrich lives. Where:
• 2025 Premier League winners Liverpool Football Club’s International Academy in Kawasaki is developing young players and providing opportunities to build leadership qualities.
• And the UK Ekiden – inspired of course by Japan’s famous relay race – is bringing teams together in a celebration of teamwork, connection and friendship.

And it includes building the leadership of the future.  Later this summer at this Pavilion the UK and Japan will host an event focused on promoting female leadership in business, building on the fact that our agreement with Japan was the first UK trade agreement to include a chapter on women’s economic empowerment.

All of this will be championed by our Musubi Friendship Ambassador – Hello Kitty, presented by Sanrio.

This is the most ambitious initiative of its kind between the UK and Japan – but it is also just the beginning. Over the years to come, this initiative will continue to grow – building a lasting legacy of connections and opportunity for our countries. Thank you to all our Pioneer Partners – and I hope to see many other companies and organisations joining us on this journey! I am now delighted to introduce a congratulatory message from The Princess Royal in her capacity as Chancellor of the University of London.

Finally, this event and indeed our pavilion itself would not have been possible without our key sponsors and contributors: I would especially like to thank AstraZeneca, Aston Martin, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker, Robert Walters, Liberty, the governments of Scotland and Wales, Ampetronic, Brompton and last but certainly not least, BBC Studios.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone here this evening – I’m delighted that we have been able to gather so many of the UK’s closest friends in Japan, and I know with your support the UK-Japan partnership will continue to flourish. Arigato gozaimasu!

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 22 May 2025.

Your Imperial Highness, your excellency and esteemed guests. It is a great honour to be hosting the UK’s National Day celebrations here at Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai

Let me start by offering my congratulations to the Government of Japan, the Expo Association and everyone involved in organising Expo 2025. In today’s world where many want to focus on differences and divisions, it is no mean feat to bring together over 150 countries with a shared goal of “designing future society for our lives.” I am very much looking forward to seeing more of this amazing Expo site in the course of today.

Expo 2025 is very much about a global conversation, and within that global conversation, the UK and Japan have a particularly strong partnership. Our bilateral relationship is the strongest it has been in decades, underpinned by our common values, shared view of the world and our close people-to-people links. As His Majesty the Emperor said on his State Visit to the UK in June last year, we are ‘friends like no other’.

The UK has a long history with Expos – going back to 1851 when the first ever EXPO was held in London – and a long history with Japan, from the arrival of William Adams/Miura-Anjin in 1600 to the Choshu 5 travelling to Britain in the mid-19th century to learn about the Industrial Revolution which was transforming my country and the world.

The Japanese pioneers who travelled to Britain learnt much about our industrial prowess, bringing that technology back to Japan helping to transform Japan into the thriving, technologically advanced nation it is today. It is especially pertinent to reflect that one of those pioneers who ventured as far as Manchester went on to found the Osaka Chamber of Commerce, giving rise to Osaka’s tremendous growth. So our links are long and very relevant to this region. I am personally delighted as someone who was born in Manchester to see those links between Manchester and Osaka grow ever stronger.

It was the sharing of technology and ideas which drove the UK-Japan relationship then, and still drives it now. And it is that belief in the power of ideas to build the future that lies at the heart of the UK pavilion at Expo. The UK’s theme at Expo 2025 is Come Build The Future. It is about the power of small ideas to come together, as children do with building blocks, to create something magical and potentially world-changing.

We are a country of ideas that thrives on diversity, on a special mix of tradition and modernity. Our ancient universities drive world leading research, our whiskies and gins are still made to centuries old recipes, produced using cutting edge technology by a new generation of female distillers, our historic playhouses showcase the newest creative talents; and our small island is home to people from every country on the globe and has a capital city where over 300 languages are spoken.

Today our National Day offers a snapshot of that, underlining the message of partnership: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo will perform with taiko drummers, later today the BBC Planet Earth Live III concert will be performed by the Osaka based Century orchestra with a renowned UK conductor, and musicians from across the four nations of the UK will connect with new Japanese audiences.

I said earlier that the UK-Japan partnership is stronger than ever. This is evident from our ever-deepening economic and trade ties, through CPTPP, our collaboration on the green agenda, in defence, security, and digital technologies. But today I want to draw attention to the powerful cultural and people-to-people connections between our countries which underpin that partnership. I want to salute the power of the creative industries, of our story-tellers, to bring people together to entertain and delight, and to cross divides of language and culture.

Later today, as part of our National Day, we are bringing the Japanese premiere of BBC’s Planet Earth III Live in concert to the Expo Hall. The BBC will be well known to all of you – it has an average global reach of 450 million people across the world, bringing both independent news you can trust and award-winning television – both drama and documentary. Their BBC Earth natural world documentaries have been seen by a quarter of a billion people and have inspired positive environmental change across the world. Planet Earth, by transforming abstract climate data into personal, emotional experiences, has motivated viewers to care and take action to help shape a sustainable future.  Again, well aligned with our UK pavilion theme and that of Expo 2025.

For a partnership to flourish you need to bring not only ideas but also people together. That is why later today I shall be announcing a new form of UK-Japan partnership which focuses on that very idea of connection, of bringing people together. The UK and Japan have been connecting for hundreds of years. We want to make sure we continue to do that into the future too. We hope young – and old – visiting Expo 2025 and our pavilion will be inspired to connect globally and to seek out new ideas and new partners.

To make progress towards the SDGs and tackle the global challenges we all face, we need to come together to share our ideas, to use them as the building blocks of a better future. The UK is committed to doing that, to doing that in partnership with others and is delighted to be here at Expo 2025 to take that partnership still further.

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the Royal Shakespeare Company on 20 February 2025.

In 2019, as Britain tore itself apart over Brexit, against a backdrop of growing nationalism, anger and despair I sat down with the film director Danny Boyle to talk about the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony.

That moment was perhaps the only time in my lifetime that most of the nation united around an honest assessment of our history in all its light and dark, a celebration of the messy, complex, diverse nation we’ve become and a hopeful vision of the future.

Where did that country go? I asked him. He replied: it’s still there, it’s just waiting for someone to give voice to it.

…

13 years later and we have waited long enough. In that time our country has found multiple ways to divide ourselves from one another.

We are a fractured nation where too many people are forced to grind for a living rather than strive for a better life.

Recent governments have shown violent indifference to the social fabric – the local, regional and national institutions that connect us to one another, from the Oldham Coliseum to Northern Rock, whose foundation sustained the economic and cultural life of the people of the North East for generations.

But this is not just an economic and social crisis, it is cultural too.

We have lost the ability to understand one another.

A crisis of trust and faith in government and each other has destroyed the consensus about what is truthfully and scientifically valid.

Where is the common ground to be found on which a cohesive future can be forged? How can individuals make themselves heard and find self expression? Where is the connection to a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves?

I thought about that conversation with Danny Boyle last summer when we glimpsed one version of our future. As violent thugs set our streets ablaze, a silent majority repelled by the racism and violence still felt a deep sense of unrest. In a country where too many people have been written off and written out of our national story. Where imagination, creation and contribution is not seen or heard and has no outlet, only anger, anxiety and disorder on our streets.

There is that future.

Or there is us.

That is why this country must always resist the temptation to see the arts as a luxury. The visual arts, music, film, theatre, opera, spoken word, poetry, literature and dance – are the building blocks of our cultural life, indispensable to the life of a nation, always, but especially now.

So much has been taken from us in this dark divisive decade but above all our sense of self-confidence as a nation.

But we are good at the arts. We export music, film and literature all over the world. We attract investment to every part of the UK from every part of the globe. We are the interpreters and the storytellers, with so many stories to tell that must be heard.

And despite everything that has been thrown at us, wherever I go in Britain I feel as much ambition for family, community and country as ever before. In the end, for all the fracture, the truth remains that our best hope… is each other.

This is the country that George Orwell said “lies beneath the surface”.

And it must be heard. It is our intention that when we turn to face the nation again in four years time it will be one that is more self-confident and hopeful, not just comfortable in our diversity but a country that knows it is enriched by it, where everybody’s contribution is seen and valued and every single person can see themselves reflected in our national story.

You might wonder, when so much is broken, when nothing is certain, so much is at stake, why I am asking more of you now.

John F Kennedy once said we choose to go to the moon in this decade not because it is easy but because it is hard.

That is I think what animated the leaders of the post war period who, in the hardest of circumstances knew they had to forge a new nation from the upheaval of war.

And they reached for the stars.

The Festival of Britain – which was literally built out of the devastation of war – on a bombed site on the South Bank, took its message to every town, city and village in the land and prioritised exhibitions that explored the possibilities of space and technology and allowed a devastated nation to gaze at the possibilities of the future.

So many of our treasured cultural institutions that still endure to this day emerged from the devastation of that war.

The first Edinburgh Festival took place just a year after the war when – deliberately – a Jewish conductor led the Vienna Philharmonic, a visible symbol of the power of arts to heal and unite.

From the BBC to the British Film Institute, the arts have always helped us to understand the present and shape the future.

People balked when John Maynard Keynes demanded that a portion of the funding for the reconstruction of blitzed towns and cities must be spent on theatres and galleries. But he persisted, arguing there could be “no better memorial of a war to save the freedom of spirit of an individual”.

Yes it took visionary political leaders.

But it also demanded artists and supporters of the arts who refused to be deterred by the economic woes of the country and funding in scarce supply, and without hesitation cast aside those many voices who believed the arts to be an indulgence.

This was an extraordinary generation of artists and visionaries who understood their role was not to preserve the arts but to help interpret, shape and light the path to the future.

Together they powered a truly national renaissance which paved the way for the woman we honour today – Jennie Lee – whose seminal arts white paper, the first Britain had ever had, was published 60 years ago this year.

It stated unequivocally the Wilson government’s belief in the power of the arts to transform society and to transform lives.

Perhaps because of her belief in the arts in and of itself, which led to her fierce insistence that arts must be for everyone, everywhere – and her willingness to both champion and challenge the arts – she was – as her biographer Patricia Hollis puts it  – the first, the best known and the most loved of all Britain’s Ministers for the Arts.

When she was appointed so many people sneered at her insistence on arts for everyone everywhere..

And yet she held firm.

That is why we are not only determined – but impassioned – to celebrate her legacy and consider how her insistence that culture was at the centre of a flourishing nation can help us today.

This is the first in what will be an annual lecture that gives a much needed platform to those voices who are willing to think and do differently and rise to this moment, to forge the future, written – as Benjamin Zephaniah said – in verses of fire.

Because governments cannot do this alone. It takes a nation.

And in that spirit, her spirit. I want to talk to you about why we need you now. What you can expect from us. And what we need from you.

…

George Bernard Shaw once wrote:

“Imagination is the beginning of creation.

“you imagine what you desire,

“you will what you imagine –

“and at last you create what you will.”

That belief that arts matter in and of themselves, central to the chance to live richer, larger lives, has animated every Labour Government in history and animates us still.

As the Prime Minister said in September last year: “Everyone deserves the chance to be touched by art. Everyone deserves access to moments that light up their lives.

“And every child deserves the chance to study the creative subjects that widen their horizons, provide skills employers do value, and prepares them for the future, the jobs and the world that they will inherit.”

This was I think Jennie Lee’s central driving passion, that “all of our children should be given the kind of education that was the monopoly of the privileged few” – to the arts, sport, music and culture which help us grow as people and grow as a nation.

But who now in Britain can claim that this is the case? Whether it is the running down of arts subjects, the narrowing of the curriculum and the labelling of arts subjects as mickey mouse –  enrichment funding in schools eroded at the stroke of the pen or the closure of much-needed community spaces as council funding has been slashed.

Culture and creativity has been erased, from our classrooms and our communities.

Is it any wonder that the number of students taking arts GSCEs has dropped by almost half since 2010?

This is madness. At a time when the creative industries offer such potential for growth, good jobs and self expression in every part of our country  And a lack of skills acts as the single biggest brake on them…bar none, we have had politicians who use them as a tool in their ongoing, exhausting culture wars.

Our Cabinet, the first entirely state educated Cabinet in British history, have never accepted the chance to live richer, larger lives belongs only to some of us and I promise you that we never ever will.

That is why we wasted no time in launching a review of the curriculum, as part of our Plan for Change.

To put arts, music and creativity back at the heart of the education system.

Where they belong.

And today I am delighted to announce the Arts Everywhere fund as a fitting legacy for Jennie Lee’s vision – over £270 million investment that will begin to fix the foundations of our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector in communities across the country.

We believe in them. And we will back them.

Because as Abraham Lincoln once said, the dogmas of a quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.

Jennie Lee lived by this mantra. So will we.

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.

Like the RSC’s s “First Encounters” programme. Or the incredible Shakespeare North Playhouse in Knowsley where young people are first meeting with spoken word.

When I watched young people from Knowsley growing in confidence, and dexterity, reimagining Shakespeare for this age and so, so at home in this amazing space it reminded me of my childhood.

Because in so many ways I grew up in the theatre. My dad was on the board of the National, and as a child my sister and I would travel to London on the weekends we had with our dad to see some of the greatest actors and directors on earth – Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Tom Baker, Trevor Nunn and Sam Mendes. We saw Chekhov, Arthur Miller and Brecht reimagined by the National, the Donmar and the Royal Court.

It was never, in our house, a zero-sum game. The thriving London scene was what inspired my parents and others to set up what was then the Corner House in Manchester, which is now known as HOME.

It inspired my sister to go on to work at the Royal Exchange in Manchester where she and I spent some of the happiest years of our lives watching tragedy and farce, comedy and social protest.

Because of this I love all of it – the sound, smell and feel of a theatre. I love how it makes me think differently about the world. And 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 is part of our civic inheritance, that belongs to us all and as its custodians it is 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.

…

My dad, an English literature professor, once told me that the most common mistakes students make – including me – he meant me actually – was to have your eye on the question, not on the text.

So, with some considerable backchat in hand, I had a second go at an essay on Hamlet – why did Hamlet delay? – and came to the firm conclusion that he didn’t. That this is the wrong question. I say this not to start a debate on Hamlet, especially in this crowd, but to ask us to consider this:

If the question is – how do we preserve and protect our arts institutions? Then access against excellence could perhaps make sense. I understand the argument, that to disperse excellence is somehow to diffuse it.

But If the question is – how to give a fractured nation back its self confidence? Then this choice becomes a nonsense. So it is time to turn the exam question on its head and reject this false choice.

Every person in this country matters. But 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. And thanks to organisations like the RSC we know it can be achieved.

…

I was reflecting while I wrote this speech how at every moment of great upheaval it has been the arts that have helped us to understand the world, and shape the future.

From fashion, which as Eric Hobsbawm once remarked, was so much better at anticipating the shape of things to come than historians or politicians, to the angry young men and women in the 1950s and 60s – that gave us plays like Look Back in Anger – to the quiet northern working class rebellion of films like Saturday Night Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

Without the idea that excellence belongs to us all – this could never have happened. What was once considered working class, ethnic minority or regional – worse, in Jennie Lee’s time, it was called “the provinces” which she banned – thank God. These have become a central part of our national story.

….

I think the arts is a political space. But the idea that politicians should impose a version of culture on the nation is utterly chilling.

When we took office I said that the era of culture wars were over. It was taken to mean, in some circles, that I could order somehow magically from Whitehall that they would end.

But I meant something else. I meant an end to the “mind forged manacles” that William Blake raged against and the “mind without fear” that Rabindranath Tagore dreamt of.

[political content removed]

Would this include the rich cultural heritage from the American South that the Beatles drew inspiration from, in a city that has been shaped by its role in welcoming visitors and immigrants from across the world? Would it accommodate Northern Soul, which my town in Wigan led the world in?

We believe the proper role of government is not to impose culture, but to enable artists to hold a mirror up to society and to us. To help us understand the world we’re in and shape and define the nation.

Who know that is the value that you alone can bring.

I recently watched an astonishing performance of The Merchant of Venice, set in the East End of London in the 1930s. In it, Shylock has been transformed from villain to  victim at the hands of the Merchant, who has echoes of Oswald Mosely. I don’t want to spoil it – not least because my mum is watching it at the Lowry next week and would not forgive me- but it ends with a powerful depiction of the battle of Cable Street.

Nobody could see that production and fail to understand the parallels with the modern day. No political speech I have heard in recent times has had the power, that power to challenge, interpret and provoke that sort of response. To remind us of the obligations we owe to one another.

Other art forms can have – and have had – a similar impact. Just look at the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It told a story with far more emotional punch than any number of political speeches or newspaper columns.

You could say the same of the harrowing paintings by the Scottish artist Peter Howson. His depiction of rape when he was the official war artist during the Bosnian War seared itself into people’s understanding of that conflict. It reminds me of the first time I saw a Caravaggio painting. The insistence that it becomes part of your narrative is one you never ever forget.

That is why Jennie Lee believed her role was a permissive one. She repeated this mantra many times telling reporters that she wanted simply to make living room for artists to work in. The greatest art, she said, comes from the torment of the human spirit – adding – and you can’t legislate for that.

I think if she were alive today she would look at the farce that is the moral puritanism which is killing off our arts and culture – for the regions and the artistic talent all over the country where the reach of funding and donors is not long enough – the protests against any or every sponsor of the arts, I believe, would have made her both angered and ashamed.

In every social protest  – and I have taken part in plenty – you have to ask, who is your target? The idea that boycotting the sponsor of the Hay Festival harms the sponsor, not the festival is for the birds.

And I have spent enough time at Hay, Glastonbury and elsewhere to know that these are the spaces – the only spaces – where precisely the moral voice and protest comes from. Boycotting sponsors, and killing these events off,  is the equivalent of gagging society. This self defeating virtue signalling is a feature of our times and we will stand against it with everything that we’ve got.

Because I think we are the only [political context removed] force, right now, that believes that it is not for the government to dictate what should be heard.

But there is one area where we will never be neutral and that is on who should be heard.

Too much of our rich inheritance, heritage and culture is not seen. And when it is not, not only is the whole nation poorer but the country suffers.

It is our firm belief that at the heart of Britain’s current malaise is the fact that too many people have been written off and written out of our national story. And, to borrow a line from my favourite George Eliot novel, Middlemarch, it means we cannot hear that ‘roar that lies on the other side of silence’.  What we need – to completely misquote George Elliot – is a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life.’ We’ve got to be able to hear it.

And this is personal for me.

I still remember how groundbreaking it was to watch Bend it Like Beckham – the first time I had seen a family like ours depicted on screen not for being Asian (or in my case mixed race) but because of a young girl’s love of football.

And I was reminded of this year’s later when Maxine Peake starred in Queens of the Coal Age, her play about the women of the miners’ strike, which she put on at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.

The trains were not running – as usual – but on one of my council estates the women who had lived and breathed this chapter of our history clubbed together, hired a coach and went off to see it. It was magical to see the reaction when they saw a story that had been so many times about their lives, finally with them in it.

We are determined that this entire nation must see themselves at the centre of their own and our national story. That’s a challenge for our broadcasters and our film-makers.

Show us the full panoply of the world we live in, including the many communities far distant from the commissioning room which is still far too often based in London.

But it’s also a challenge for every branch of the arts, including the theatre, dance, music, painting and sculpture. Let’s show working-class communities too in the work that we do – and not just featuring in murder and gangland series.

Part of how we discover that new national story is by breathing fresh life into local heritage and reviving culture in places where it is disappearing.

Which is why we’re freeing up almost £5 million worth of funding for community organisations – groups who know their own area and what it needs far better than Whitehall. Groups determined to bring derelict and neglected old buildings back into good use. These are buildings that stand at the centre of our communities. They are visible symbols of pride, purpose and their contribution and their neglect provokes a strong emotional response to toxicity, decline and decay. We’re determined to put those communities back in charge of their own destiny again.

And another important part of the construction is the review of the arts council, led by Baroness Margaret Hodge, who is with us today. When Jennie Lee set up regional arts associations the arts council welcomed their creation as good for the promotion of regional cultures and in the hope they would “create a rod for the arts council’s back”.

They responded to local clamour, not culture imposed from London. Working with communities so they could tell their own story. That is my vision. And it’s the vision behind the Arts Everywhere Fund that we announced this morning.

The Arts Council Review will be critical to fulfilling that vision and today we’re setting out two important parts of that work – publishing both the Terms of Reference and the members of the Advisory Group who will be working with Baroness Hodge, many of whom have made the effort to join us here today.

We have found the Jennie Lee’s of our age, who will deliver a review that is shaped around communities and local areas, and will make sure that arts are for everyone, wherever they live and whatever their background. With excellence and access.

But we need more from you. We need you to step up.

Across the sporting world from Boxing to Rugby League clubs, they’re throwing their doors open to communities, especially young people, to help grip the challenges facing a nation. Opening up opportunities. Building new audiences. Creating the champions of the future. Lots done, but much more still to do.

Every child and adult should also have the opportunity to access live theatre, dance and music – to believe that these spaces belong to them and are for them. We need you to throw open your doors. So many of you already deliver this against the odds. But the community spaces needed – whether community centres, theatres, libraries are too often closed to those who need them most.

Too often we fall short of reflecting the full and varied history of the communities which support us. That’s why we have targeted the funding today to bring hope flickering back to life in community-led culture and arts – supported by us, your government, but driven by you and your communities.

It’s one of the reasons we are tackling the secondary ticket market, which has priced too many fans out of live music gigs. It’s also why we are pushing for a voluntary levy on arena tickets to fund a sustainable grassroots music sector, including smaller music venues.

But I also want new audiences to pour in through the doors – and I want theatres across the country to flourish as much as theatres in the West End.

I also want everyone to be able to see some of our outstanding art, from Lowry and Constable to Anthony Gormley and Tracey Emin.

Too much of the nation’s art is sitting in basements not out in the country where it belongs. I want all of our national and civic galleries to find new ways of getting that art out into communities.

There are other challenges. There is too much fighting others to retain a grip on small pots of funding and too little asking “what do we owe to one another” and what can I do. Jennie Lee encouraged writers and actors into schools and poets into pubs.

She set up subsidies so people, like the women from my council estate in Wigan, could travel to see great art and theatre. She persuaded Henry Moore to go and speak to children in a school in Castleford, in Yorkshire who were astonished when he turned up not with a lecture, but with lumps of clay.

There are people who are doing this now. The brilliant fashion designer Paul Smith told me about a recent visit to his old primary school in Nottingham where he went armed with the material to design a new school tie with the kids. These are the most fashionable kids on the block.

I know it’s been a tough decade. Funding for the arts has been slashed. Buildings are crumbling. And the pandemic hit the arts and heritage world hard.

And I really believe that the Government has a role to play in helping free you up to do what you do best – enriching people’s lives and bringing communities together – so with targeted support like the new £85m Creative Foundations Fund that we’re launching today with the Arts Council we hope that we’ll be able to help you with what you do best.

SOLT’s own research showed that, without support, 4 in 10 theatres they surveyed were at risk of closing or being too unsafe to use in five years’ time. So today we are answering that call. This fund is going to help theatres, galleries, and arts centres restore buildings in dire need of repairs.

And on top of that support, we’re also getting behind our critical local, civic museums – places which are often cultural anchors in their village, town or city. They’re facing acute financial pressures and they need our backing. So our new Museum Renewal Fund will invest £20 million in these local assets – preserving them and ensuring they remain part of local identities, to keep benefitting local people of all ages. In my town of Wigan we have the fantastic Museum of Wigan Life and it tells the story of the contribution that the ordinary, extraordinary people in Wigan made to our country, powering us through the last century through dangerous, difficult, dirty work in the coal mines.  That story, that understanding of the contribution that Wigan made, I consider to be a part of the birthright and inheritance of my little boy growing up in that town today and we want every child growing up in a community to understand the history and heritage and contribution that their parents and grandparents made to this country and a belief that that future stretches ahead of them as well. Not to reopen the coal mines, but to make a contribution to this country and to see themselves reflected in our story.

But for us to succeed we need more from you. This is not a moment for despair. This is our moment to ensure the arts remain central to the life of this nation for decades to come and in turn that this nation flourishes.

If we get this right we can unlock funding that will allow the arts to flourish in every part of Britain, especially those that have been neglected for far too long, by creating good jobs and growth, and giving children everywhere the chance to get them.

Our vision is not just to grow the economy, but to make sure it benefits people in our communities. So often where i’ve seen investments in the last decade and good jobs created, I go down the road to a local school and I see children who can see those jobs from the school playground, but could no more dream of getting to the moon than they could of getting those jobs. And we are determined that that’s going to change.

This is what we’ve been doing with our creative education programmes (like the Museums and Schools Programme, the Heritage Schools Programme, Art & Design National Saturday Clubs and the BFI Film Academy.) These are programmes we are proud to support and ones I’m personally proud that my Department will be funding these programmes next year.

Be in no doubt, we are determined to back the creative industries in a way no other government has done. I’m delighted that we have committed to the audiovisual, video games, theatre, orchestra and museums and galleries tax reliefs, as well as introducing the new independent film and VFX tax reliefs as well.

You won’t hear any speeches from us denigrating the creative industries or lectures about ballerinas being forced to retrain.

Yes, these are proper jobs. And yes, artists should be properly remunerated for their work.

We know these industries are vital to our economic growth. They employ 1 in 14 people in the UK and are worth more than £125 billion a year to our economy.  We want them to grow. That is why they are a central plank of our industrial strategy.

But I want to be equally clear that these industries only thrive if they are part of a great artistic ecosystem. Matilda, War Horse and Les Miserables are commercial successes, but they sprang from the public investment in theatre.

James Graham has written outstanding screenplays for television including Sherwood, but his first major play was the outstanding This House at the National and his other National Theatre play Dear England is now set to be a TV series.

You don’t get a successful commercial film sector without a successful subsidised theatre sector. Or a successful video games sector without artists, designers, creative techies, musicians and voiceover artists.

So it’s the whole ecosystem that we have to strengthen and enhance. It’s all connected.

The woman in whose name we’ve launched this lecture series would have relished that challenge. She used to say she had the best job in government

“All the others deal with people’s sorrows… but I have been called the Minister of the Future.”

That is why I relish this challenge and why working with those of you who will rise to meet this moment will be the privilege of my life.

…

I wanted to leave with you with a moment that has stayed with me.

A few weeks ago I was with Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who has become a great friend. We were in his old constituency of Leigh, a town that borders Wigan. And we were talking about the flashes, which in our towns used to be open cast coalmines.

They were regenerated by the last Labour government and they’ve now become these incredible spaces, with wildlife and green spaces with incredible lakes that are well used by local children.

We had a lot to talk about and a lot to do. But as we looked out at the transformed landscape wondering how in one generation we had gone from scars on the landscape to this, he said, the lesson I’ve taken from this is that nature recovers more quickly than people.

While this government, through our Plan for Change, has made it our mission to support a growing economy, so we can have a safe, healthy nation where people have opportunities not currently on offer – the recovery of our nation cannot be all bread and no roses. Our shared future depends critically on every one of us in this room rising to this moment.

To give voice to the nation we are, and can be.

To let hope and history rhyme.

So let no one say it falls to anyone else. It falls to us.

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 24 September 2024.

Thank you so much, Imogen.

An Olympic Gold Medallist and a Junior Doctor. Here to inspire and to serve, to allow people to dream, to change lives and never take no for an answer.

She absolutely sums up the spirit of our country.

And we need that spirit and that conviction after 14 dark, divisive years.

Successive Tory Governments running down our rich and proud heritage in arts and music and the right of every child to it.

At the stroke of a pen: enrichment funding in schools, gone.

Libraries, theatres, youth workers, gone.

That lifeline for young people, broken.

The promise of a generation inspired by sport, broken.

This is what cultural vandalism looks like. And Conference, it ends today.

No more of their violent indifference to the things that matter most.

Because the rich, diverse culture in our country is not just how we grow as people but how we make and shape a nation.

Conference, we are a better country than the Government we’ve had and we are going to give voice to that country again.

Because the history of Britain is the history of people like Imogen – ordinary, extraordinary people, doing extraordinary things.

Building the rich cultural inheritance that gives our lives meaning, handed down through the generations.

Every Labour Government in history has been animated by a passion for the arts, sport, music and culture which help us grow as people and grow as a nation.

It was the Attlee Government that created the national parks out of a conviction that clean air and recreation belong to us all.

It was Herbert Morrison who brought the Festival of Britain to every corner of the country.

It was the Wilson Government who created the first ever Arts Minister – Jennie Lee – whose motto ‘arts for everyone, everywhere’ enriched lives in every single part of our country.

And the Blair Government, through the amazing Tessa Jowell, who brought the London 2012 Olympics to Britain and inspired a generation of young people like Imogen to go on, dream big, achieve big and inspire the next.

And opened up, with the support of Chris Smith, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, our national museums and galleries to the nation, returning them to the people to whom they belong.

We’ve never accepted that the chance to live richer, larger lives belongs only to some of us. And Conference we never, ever will.

We face a choice as a country and as a government. To be the last guardians of this chapter, or the first pioneers of the next.

So with our fantastic team – Chris, Steph, Fiona, Vicky and Kim – change begins now.

We will be the light on the hill to open up those opportunities to a generation again and put people back at the centre of their own story.

Where their contribution is seen and valued and they can live richer, larger lives again.

And we won’t waste a minute. In our first few weeks, we’ve announced the Football Governance Bill to put fans back at the centre of their clubs and we’re taking action on rip-off ticket touts because culture belongs to everybody.

With Yvette, we are delivering youth hubs, so young people can decide what they want and need in their own communities, because we see their potential not just problems.

And resetting our relationship with our amazing civil society – the charities, the trade unions, the community groups who have been a lifeline in the darkest of times.

They were silenced by the Tories. No more. Our Government believes they are essential partners in the country we seek to build and they have not just a right, but a duty to speak out.

And we won’t stop there.

We are about to kickstart the charter review to ensure the BBC survives and thrives well into the latter half of this century.

And we’re working with the TV industry to ensure it becomes far more representative of the country, with decision makers who hail from every nation and region.

We’re about to kick off a review of the Arts Council to ensure arts for everyone, everywhere because we will never accept that culture is just for the privileged few, to be hoarded in a few corners of the country, and we will never accept there is a trade off between excellence and access.

We will hand back power to communities to reclaim their cultural assets and historic buildings so they have a vibrant future, not a forgotten past.

We will put young people back at the heart of their own futures, through a plan that they will write, because every young person matters, and with this Labour Government theirs is a generation that will be heard.

And we will put rocket boosters under tourism, film, gaming – growing creative industries in Sunderland, Blackpool, Birmingham and Dundee, alongside our amazing Mayors and Councils so, people in every part of our country have not just good jobs in their own community, but the chance to write the next chapter of our national story.

And most of all, most of all, when they erased culture and creativity erased from our classrooms and our communities.

Running down the arts subjects, narrowing the curriculum and slashing council funding so parts of the country became cultural deserts.

They choked off choices and chances for a generation to be able to imagine and create the lives and the country they believe in.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote: ‘Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and, at last, you create what you will’.

We’re going to reignite the imagination of the next generation.

Because a complete education is a creative education.

And that is why Bridget and I have kickstarted a review of the curriculum to put arts, sports and music back at the heart of our schools and communities where it belongs.

It is our ambition that when, in five years’ time, we turn to face the nation again, we will face a self-confident country that can celebrate the rich diversity and inheritance of our communities and all the people in them.

Where everybody’s contribution is seen and valued, and they see themselves reflected in our national story.

Never let them tell you that it can’t be done.

We are the party that gave the world the first ever Climate Change Act, the NHS, comprehensive education, and the Race Relations Act.

We flew the Pride Flag over our embassies in countries where loving who you love was a crime. The light on the hill for people at home and overseas.

It has been a long hard slog back to power through a dark and divisive decade.

But by opening up the arts to everyone, everywhere the lives of children you will never meet, whose names you will never know, will be changed forever because of what we have done and what we are going to do together.

This is the difference every Labour Government has made in power. It is written into our DNA. We change lives and we give our country its confidence back.

And Conference, it is thanks to each and every one of you in this room that the fourth ever Labour Government in history will do it again.

Thank you very much.

The statement made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 12 September 2024.

I just wanted to say what an absolute pleasure it is to be here tonight.

In my first couple of weeks in the job, I held a reception for a lot of our biggest stakeholders in the culture world, and I met Shanaz at an event, who left me in absolutely no doubt about how amazing this was going to be, not just for Bradford, but for the whole country.

And standing here tonight, feeling the energy in this room, walking down the street earlier, feeling a city that is buzzing with its sense of self, it is just such an enormous privilege to be part of it.

It takes a bit of getting used to this, because I’m used to coming up here and saying things like: the government should get behind this.

What you’re doing here is really, really special. And I want other people to see what you’re doing here, not just what you’ve done already, but how you’ve gone about it, involving the whole city and every single community, with all people, especially young people, driving and shaping not just this coming year, but the legacy that it will leave for a very long time.

You know, a reflection on the last few months is that I’ve had two groups of people through my door. One set of people say, there’s a lot of problems, and there are, and you need to fix them. And the other group of people, people like Tracy and Susan, come through the door and say: we’re solving this country’s problems, and we need your help. And I can’t tell you how exciting it is when that happens.

To be here in this young, vibrant, diverse city with its proud, rich cultural inheritance, from the South Asian community to David Hockney, who proudly hangs on my wall as a symbol of what Bradford has always contributed to this country and to the world and will do again.

And that’s what’s so special about next year, is that for the first time, some people in our country are going to know what Bradford has to offer, having never known that before.

And more than that, it’s our ambition as a new government that for far too long, too many people in our country haven’t seen themselves reflected in our national story, and it’s our ambition and our determination that that is going to change. So that when we turn to face the country again in five years time, we face a country that is far more self-confident, knows that it isn’t just comfortable in its diversity, but knows that it is far, far richer for it.

A self-confident country at ease with itself, where people in every part of our country, no matter where you’re from or the background that you come from, knows that your contribution is seen and is valued and sees you reflected in the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves as a nation again.

And what you’re building here will really put rocket boosters under that. It will be a model for others to follow in the future. But it isn’t just that. Tracy talked about the economic legacy that this will lead. Susan talked about the economic investment that it’s already brought.

But the creative industries are amongst the fastest growing industries in the country, whether it’s film or TV, arts and culture, heritage, video games. These are the sorts of well-paid, good jobs in every part of the country.

And you know what? For far too long, the assets and the potential in places like Bradford and Wigan, where I live, have been scandalously ignored by too many decision makers.

But there’s a reason why the film industry wants to invest in Sunderland, because of those amazing backdrops that you see right up across our coastline. You only have to walk around this city to see the beautiful buildings and the open landscapes and how much potential there is here, if we could only see it.

And if you don’t think Bradford has that to offer, if you don’t think Sunderland has that to offer, if you don’t think the Welsh valleys have that to offer, then you’ve never been to them, and you have no business making decisions about where our funding is going.

I just want to say thank you particularly to Susan and Tracy, who I’ve known a long time, who are absolute powerhouses, forces to be reckoned with. They’re the most difficult people to deal with. They never take no for an answer, and they always do it with smiles on their faces.

But our government is determined not to come in and tell you what you need as a community, but to walk alongside you, to help you realise your own ambitions for your city, for your region, and for the whole of the north of England.

Finally, I just want to say to the young people that I’ve met tonight, who are the most incredible group of young people, there are moments in these jobs that stay with you forever, and those conversations I’ve just had over there will stay with me forever.

Whether you’re a member of a youth board, whether you’re on an apprenticeship, whether you’re here on a work placement, or whether you’ve come to volunteer because you just want to be part of something really special, I wanted to say to you all that Bradford holds a very special place in my heart, because it’s where my stepdad, who went on to become a leading investigative journalist, a working class lad from Bury, first in his family to go on to grammar school and then make it to university. It’s where he started his career on the Bradford Telegraph and Argus.

Until the day he died, he said to me: it would never have happened if that pipeline and those opportunities hadn’t been there. Well, what you’re doing as a generation is creating opportunities and richer, larger lives for children who you will never meet, who will never know your names, but their lives will be changed forever because of what you’ve done here and what you’ll continue to do over the coming year.

I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of it, I’m right behind you, the whole power of government is right behind you. What is it? Be brave. Be bold. Be Bradford.

The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester on 31 August 2024.

From the England Football Team to our grassroots coaches, so many of you have told a different story and you have been a light on the hill in times of darkness.

And you’ve reminded us that there is a better country out there.

A few years ago I sat down with Danny Boyle, who hails from just down the road in Radcliffe. He says he’s from Bury, but he’s actually from Radcliffe.

And I asked him how a country that could unite so decisively around the inspiring and inclusive story of the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony could descend so quickly into anger and polarisation and division.

I asked him where has that country had gone.

And he said simply, that it is still there. But it is waiting for someone to give voice to it again.

And that is my firm belief that this country, as George Orwell said, lies beneath the surface.

And it will be heard. Not out of some technocratic notion of fulfilling quotas, getting out of London, but because that voice has a spirit and energy our country desperately needs to hear.

We are meeting here for a reason.

Because this museum celebrates the industry, innovation, and enterprise of our people. The growing economy our country needs again. The contribution that regions like ours have made to our economy, our country and to the world.

But most of all it tells the story of all the parts of our nation.

It’s the story of the ordinary extraordinary people who contribute to the growth of our country, past and present. Who quietly in every community go out and build things that last and constantly, through their hard work, rewrite our national story.

I spent many, many happy times here in this museum as a kid.

And in turn have spent many happy times here with my little boy in recent years. Although he does want to know when the train section’s reopening.

He has grown up knowing, as my generation did, that this is his museum, his

inheritance – he belongs here, and this inheritance belongs to him.

This museum, like so many of your institutions, help to shape and define us as we shape and define them. We pass them down from one generation to the next. And we neglect them at our cost.

This museum is testament to the spirit of the city that has always believed in itself. And empowered the next generation to believe in itself anew; often despite the odds.

It was just down the road in Salford that Engels wrote ‘The Condition of the Working Class’ in a city that was the driving force of the industrial revolution.

That spirit lives on in my favourite museum – the People’s History Museum. It’s funded by the councils of Greater Manchester, and there’s a reason that we do. These are the councils who have always understood that the history of ordinary people and the ideas that drove them can not just help us not just to interpret the past, but can help us navigate the future.

That museum reminds us that change doesn’t come easily. It took the battle of

Peterloo to enfranchise the men who were building our country – and far too long before our women won that right too. But today I see that spirit at work right here amongst the amazing Mancunian women like Erinma Bell who leads the battle against the violence that scars a generation and shames our country and is a priority for our Government.

This was the city that gave the world the first free library – the Central Reference Library – which stands as a shining testament to how much the mothers and fathers of this city not only believed in our people, but cherished our culture.

And I grew up here in the aftermath of the Moss Side Riots and so it is in my DNA that never again can we be allowed to write off a generation of young people. It was that belief that led me into my first job at the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint – where I learnt everything I know about politics from those brave young people – and I feel them walking alongside me as we create a new generation of OnSide Youth Zones – from Wigan to Bolton – and show this generation that they matter to us again.

From Granada TV and its pioneering journalism, whether the campaign to free the Birmingham Six to the persistent approach to telling the story of Hillsborough and achieving justice for the 96 – to today’s Manchester Evening News that has defied the odds to become one of the most groundbreaking papers in the country and reminds us all why local and regional papers matter so much.

As the late great Tony Wilson said, “this is Manchester – we do things differently here”.

That drive, that creativity, that inclusion, that willingness to do things differently. That is the spirit of our new Government.

I hope you can see and feel it already through the curriculum review we’ve initiated to put creative and sports opportunities back at the heart of a richer, larger life for every single child.

I hope you can see it through our investment in grassroots sport and our determination that the legacy of the Paris Olympics and Euro 2024 is measured not just in trophies and medals but in choices and chances for every child wherever they live and whatever their background.

Through our partnerships with our mayors, councils, businesses and charities, we’re putting rocket boosters under our growing industries – film and theatre, TV, fashion, video games, heritage and tourism – to take the brakes off the economy, create opportunity for every child and to export our incredible talent across the world.

And through my drive to ensure the public appointments that we make truly reflect our country in all its glorious diversity. Not to fulfil a quota, but to ensure that our government draws on the creative might of all of our people.

This is the spirit this city has always embodied.

And this is the country that we can be.

When we turn to face the nation again in five years’ time, it is our ambition that we will face a self-confident country, at ease with itself, where all of our people see themselves in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves as a nation – their contribution seen and valued.

And that work will be the privilege of my life.

But it’s work that belongs neither to me nor to this Government but to each of us. Equal citizens, ordinary people, but each one of us with an extraordinary contribution to make.

I will not pretend it is easy.

But growing up here, with my background taught me that whatever people say – we can move mountains.

And when I said I wanted to do this – our first national event in Manchester – they said you wouldn’t come.

But you did.

And my message to each and every one of you is that if you share that belief in our country. If you have that zest to make change. If you want to challenge us and are willing to be challenged in turn.

Then I promise you. That we will walk alongside you. We will have your back. And we will give voice to the country many of us have believed in all our lifetime but never quite yet seen.

As the great Mancunian band Take That once said:

“We’ve come so far. And we hope for more.”

The next chapter in our country’s story is about to be written. What it looks like – is up to us.