Too many major arts organisations are not committed to the importance of creativity in forming the British citizens of the near future. Nor is the Department of Schools Children and Families, and unless they do commit “we are doomed”.

This is the view of Paul Collard, chief executive of Creativity Culture & Education, the new identity of the recently made independent Creative Partnerships, expressed in a frank exclusive interview with AI (see page 12).

He says that too many cultural organisations believe involvement in creativity among young people is not their responsibility, and that they want to confine their activity to their own production. He also says many schools are afraid to commit to creative activities because they believe they will distract from securing the good exam results their futures may depend on.

“The question is whether art wants to make a claim to having a contribution to make to creativity - I think it’s got a massive contribution to make - or it can decide that it doesn’t want to play that game, in which case there are all sorts of other people who will do that, like scientists, mathematicians, fashion designers” he says.

His view follows the findings of a report, Get It, by the new Culture and Learning Consortium which calls for central and local government, and cultural organisations to ensure, for instance, that there is specialist training for teachers.

He also says that DCMS has been too anxious to keep the creativity agenda to itself, when the need was for all government departments to sign up to it.