7. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport, and Chief Whip: Culture and Heritage Update: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic History, Culture and Heritage

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:42 pm on 7 June 2022.

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Photo of Dawn Bowden Dawn Bowden Labour 4:42, 7 June 2022

Thank you. Can I thank Heledd Fychan for those points? I'll start with that last one first, because although this wasn't a statement about sport—and, yes, I will come back and deal with that—sport is very, very close to my heart, particularly football, particularly after last weekend, and I'm just so excited. It's just—. You know, I get all kind of—. I was talking to somebody last week, actually, before the game, and I was supposed to have been having a business meeting with them, talking about the arrangements for the game, and I was having palpitations just talking about getting ready for the game. But we have a huge amount to do in sport. Now, I was watching on tv the other night—there was an international game played between England and Hungary behind closed doors, because of Hungary's racist crowd-chanting and so on, and the game was played behind closed doors. So, the Hungarian football association allowed 30,000 young people into that match, because that was a loophole in the law. When the team took the knee—the England team took the knee—the crowd of children booed. Now, that is really frightening—30,000 booing a team taking the knee to demonstrate anti-racism. So, if anybody tries to tell us that we don't have a problem, and I think, again, the point that was Sioned was making—. You know, kids aren't born racist, they are taught it. They're taught that behaviour, and if we don't come in at a very early age—and I'm sure that my colleague Jeremy Miles will be dealing with this in his statement—if we don't start that at a very early age, through our education system, then we're in very difficult territory.

To go back to some of the other points that you've raised, I think what is important, particularly in the areas of representation in terms of access—access to our bodies, whether it is access to exhibitions, so it becomes more accessible for people to participate in the viewing and the involvement in exhibitions that we have in our museums and libraries, so that it's more accessible, easier to understand—that's the one aspect, and that's also true of sport in terms of access to sport. But it's also about the people that our national bodies employ, the people that sit on the governing bodies and so on. So, to deal specifically with your point, we did have a report that came out of a number of inquiries, research that was undertaken both in the National Museum Wales and the Arts Council of Wales, and that led to the report on widening engagement, which was looking particularly at leadership and accountability, cultural democracy, equality and the Welsh language, accessible services, work development, staff training, skills, communications and branding. So, that is now running through everything that Amgueddfa Cymru and the Arts Council of Wales are doing around their appointments process, appointments to their boards and so on. But you've quite rightly identified, Heledd, that there is still a huge amount of work to do about how do we get people to apply in the first place, and part of that widening engagement action plan is about looking at this whole thing about, if you keep doing things the way you've always done them, you'll always get the same results—so, we have to address that and we have to look differently at that—and why engagement with people with lived experiences is so important. That's why that is key and central to everything that we are doing.

Again, I would have to agree with you about the huge amount more that we still have yet to do. I think further questioning needs to take place with our accredited museums about why all of them didn't take part in this training, and maybe some of that we have to look at. We may have to look at it in terms of what our funding means to organisations that will not participate in what is, after all, a programme for government commitment.

So, I really just conclude by saying I absolutely agree with virtually everything that you have said. There is so much more to do. But I think we have set out on a path, a very clear path, of determination to get this right. And, as I said to Tom Giffard, that accountability is to me, and it is from me back to this Senedd, so I've got a vested interest in making sure that those things are delivered as well. Thank you.