TUC 2025 Cultural Manifesto for Yorkshire and the Humber Launched

TUC Yorkshire and the Humber seeks the endorsement of the following policies by local authorities, elected mayors and combined authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). We also call on all candidates standing for election to public office to support these policies:

• Defend and when possible increase local authority spending on libraries, arts, heritage and culture. TUC YH supports Campaign for the Arts’ 2014 call for all local authorities to work towards investing at least 50p per resident per week in the sector.
• Maintain and regularly update a comprehensive arts, heritage and culture strategy for each local authority. Arts and culture must also be at the heart of regeneration.
• Encourage good employment practices in arts, heritage and cultural organisations that receive public funding. Public funding must be contingent upon all client organisations becoming accredited Living Wage 2  employers and formally recognising the appropriate trades unions, entering into collective bargaining in good faith, adhering to applicable trade union agreements, and fully complying with health and safety legislation.
• To ensure that wherever possible local public investment in the arts is spent locally, benefits local workers and local communities and provides for local needs and wants.
• Equality and education. Local authorities need to support the creative industries’ efforts to improve the diversity of the sector’s workforce. TUC YH welcomes the government’s review of the school curriculum and assessment and its pledge to put arts, sports and music back at the heart of our schools. Education authorities need to support the training of the cultural workers of the future and to recognise the importance of school students being able to study creative, artistic and technical subjects at GCSE and A Level. Curricula need to be decolonialised.
• Lobby Central Government. Public investment in the arts has been threatened by cuts to LA funding and the current schools assessment regime. Local authorities need to continue lobbying central government for increased public investment in a thriving regional creative and leisure industries sector, and to protect and enhance arts education.

Regarding employment, the manifesto asserts that far too often, the creative and leisure industries are blighted by poor working conditions, pay levels less than government minima, harassment and bullying and even an expectation that professional arts practitioners should work without pay. Such practices must be eradicated.

The manifesto asserts that the government needs to recognise the threat from Artificial Intelligence (AI) update the law, and get industry leaders onside so that creatives can feel safe in the knowledge that their intellectual property is protected. The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI must be prohibited. CO2 emissions from AI must be minimised.

On Public Service Broadcasting, the manifesto calls on the government to urgently increase funding to the BBC to enable it to end the cuts and to thrive as a public service broadcaster.

Regarding Brexit, the manifesto supports the government’s commitment to improving the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU by removing barriers to trade and helping touring artists. Transport, cabotage and other problems affecting touring need to be resolved. Work advertisements asking EU passport holders only to apply must be opposed.

On the Climate Emergency the manifesto calls for support for the arts’ positive role in facing up to climate change and for the negative environmental impact of cultural activities to be minimised. The importance of including cultural heritage, the arts and creative sectors in climate policy began to be recognised at COP28.

The manifesto recognises Government support for the arts through sectoral tax relief, the Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC), theatre, orchestral and museum tax relief and business rates relief and asserts that tax relief must be linked to ensuring decent pay and conditions.

Turning to Regeneration, TUC YH values culture’s role in sustaining shopping areas, supports USDAW’s Retail Recovery Plan and endorses bringing closed buildings into creative use. Rehabilitation of existing buildings should be preferred over redevelopment.

The manifesto the reversal of the catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects in higher education.

The manifesto supports a number of CLIC unions’ key policies and campaigns including Artists Union England’s Good Practice Charter, Musicians Union’s #FixStreaming campaign for an equitable, sustainable and transparent model for royalty distribution in the streaming era and NUJ’s News Recovery plan.

The manifesto highlights the disparity of public sector arts funding between London and the rest of England and demands that this is redressed.

The manifesto also calls for all funding opportunities to be promoted to and accessible to grassroots organisations.

The following unions have been involved in the TUC YH Creative and Leisure Industries Committee: