Speaking at the relaunch of the charity Mousetrap Theatre projects, actor Hugh Bonneville warns that the current cuts to arts education risk ‘sidelining an entire generation’.
Mousetrap Theatre Projects has rebranded to Go Live Theatre projects, reflecting the organisation’s ongoing projects offering young people and their families subsidised theatre tickets.
Bonneville, a patron of the charity, says he has been quite vocal and angry about the gradual sidelining of the arts over the last decade.
‘Intellect and creative instincts are what lift us above and beyond and allow us to connect as human beings. We are a multibillion-pound industry in the creative arts in this country, and [maintaining that industry] needs to start from the grass roots. So having the arts in all its forms as part of the curriculum and part of the school experience is absolutely essential, and we hack away at it at our peril.’
Bonneville argued that we have the opportunity to readdress out attention to promoting arts education in a post-pandemic world and blamed the government for the lack of funding in the arts sector over the past 10 years.