Now is the time to “invest, and invest big” in radical millennium-style arts and culture projects across the UK, an economist has urged ahead of the Labour government’s first budget on Wednesday.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, needs to urgently fund projects that “make lives livable” to help rebuild deprived parts of the country, said Andy Haldane, the chief executive of the Royal Society for Arts and former chief economist at the Bank of England.
Haldane said this should include making a “big, bold bet” similar to that made by the previous Labour government in the run-up to the year 2000 when it set up the Millennium Commission, which provided £2bn of national lottery funding to dozens of now iconic arts and culture institutions.
These have included the Eden Project in Cornwall, the Wales Millennium Centre, The Deep aquarium in Hull, the Glasgow Science Centre and the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena). Many were built on brownfield sites, particularly in areas with high levels of deprivation, and in some cases this has led to dramatic economic transformations of the…
