Opinion with Dr Robert Marsden

The Office for Students (OfS) has announced a 50% cut in its contribution per head for Performing Arts and Media Studies students for 2021–22. Certain specialist providers, including numerous conservatoires of theatre and music, actually share a £10 million increase in funding between them. These include the University of the Arts, London, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and The National Film and Television School amongst the others who live in the TRAC Peer Group F groupings of universities. Fundamentally, for every other Higher Education Institute not considered a specialist provider, funding is moved away from the ‘high-cost’ courses towards STEM subjects, and those deemed more likely to produce graduates who can support the rebuilding of a post-pandemic economy.

While this is a seemingly small amount per student (£121.50), this equates to the majority of (non-staff) running costs in my department alone. We can make this work through our creativity and ingenuity, and the value of an arts education is placed high on the agenda at Staff ordshire University, where I work. Our civic mission is fundamentally plugged into the artistic community of North Staff ordshire and Stoke on Trent, with theatre, music, media and the arts front and centre of this.

There are two ways to look at this: teaching the arts, and teaching through the arts. In teaching arts subjects, we fundamentally examine what it means to be a human being. We can make sense of the world around us through our art forms, and those that enter the profession in the creative industries directly contributed (pre-pandemic) £111bn to the UK economy.

But more fundamental to this is the notion that teaching arts subjects and teaching through the arts supports the skills that are needed by employers in five to ten years' time. The World Economic Forum 2020 Jobs of the Future report set out skills needed for 2025 against a backdrop of continued automation and Industry 4.0. Some of these skills are: creativity, originality and initiative; leadership and social influence; resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.

Pearson's Future of Skills research project (with NESTA and Oxford Martin School) outlines fluency of ideas and originality as just two findings in relation to what employers will need by 2030 for numerous professions. I think about my theatre and media students: developing explicit skills in resilience through working to a time deadline to open a show or get the film ‘in the can’. I see their creative thinking and original ideas through the projects that they undertake, and they accrue leadership skills through their directing and producing assignments. I could go much further here. It's important to note that we do not teach these skills implicitly; students are taught these and must reflect on their approaches.

So, an arts education is not just about teaching the arts and expecting everyone to enter what is, undeniably, an overcrowded profession. It develops just the sort of transferable skills cited by the government as needed in our post-pandemic world.