About Find Your Talent
Culture enriches lives. Participation in cultural activities can have a significant impact on young people’s development. This been shown repeatedly in International studies, and has also been backed up by recent evaluations of major programmes such as Creative Partnerships and Museums’ Strategic Commissioning. What these evaluations have shown is that culture can help young people achieve all of the Every Child Matters outcomes.
Participation in cultural activities also gives young people the chance to develop important life skills such as creativity, confidence, self-discipline, effective communication and the ability to work in teams.
These skills are particularly important in a world of rapid technological and social change where the cultural and creative industries are increasingly important to our economic future. These industries already account for 7.3% of all economic activity in the UK, contributing £60 billion to the economy, and this is only going to grow.
Matching this economic driver is a powerful moral imperative – the intrinsic right of all children to have the opportunity to develop their talents to the full.
For these reasons the Government is committed to developing, over the next five years, a comprehensive cultural offer. This will ensure that all children and young people no matter where they live or what their background have the chance to participate in at least five hours of high quality culture a week in and out of school.
To turn ambition into reality £25m has been set aside over the next three years to establish Find Your Talent, a programme of 10 local areas pathfinders where a full range of partners will trial different ways of delivering a comprehensive offer.