On April 23rd the V&A was supposed to open an exhibition on the history of the handbag. Two months later, one on Alice in Wonderland had planned to follow. Now, after a closure of almost 150 days, the gallery is set to reopen, thought the format is a touch unclear.
For the museum’s director, former Labour MP, Tristram Hunt, the arts have never been more important. Indeed, Hunt responds to the recent actions of Sir Daniel Moynihan, who claimed “I don’t want to be accused of cutting the arts, but we want kids to be successful,” as he swiftly culled the number of GCSEs available to his students, is nothing short of horror.
In an OpEd for The Telegraph, Hunt reasons thus: “Young people have been horribly let down by the response to Covid-19. It isn’t simply the absence of sporting activities, social circles, free school meals and daily structure, but months upon months of lost learning.”
In short, he notes, abandoning arts in schools “is a mistake.”
For Hunt, his distaste at the response to arts education by no means stops at Sir Moynihan. He continues: “It feels that restarting Premier League football and restocking pubs is more important than getting Portakabins into playgrounds or making classrooms Covid-secure.” The government is as much responsible for this failure as the educational leaders are.
Hunt supports the importance of an arts education with research that indicates: “students who study arts subjects are more likely to get a degree, more likely to stay in employment, more likely to vote and more likely to report good health.”
One cannot help but hope that the powers that be listen to Hunt’s warnings, before it is too late.
