The Impact of the BBC - Arts and Culture
Providing unique value as the UK's biggest cultural partner
The BBC is the UK’s biggest cultural partner and most ambitious creator of original arts programming.
Our unrivalled arts offer is defined by a wealth of distinctive, world-class content, available for audiences every day across TV, radio and online. For over 100 years we’ve been at the heart of the UK’s cultural life, and we are as committed to the arts now as we have ever been. And it’s a commitment built on the belief that the arts matter, they matter for everyone, and they matter even more when times are tough.
But if we want them to flourish in the UK, it will require friends and champions working together with real resolve, collectively making the case for the UK’s priceless independent arts institutions which do so much to enrich and strengthen our society. The BBC is determined to play our part and be the best cultural partner we can be.
Providing unique value as the UK's biggest cultural partner
No. 1
Audiences spend more time watching arts programming on the BBC than all the other broadcasters and streamers combined, while hours viewed on BBC iPlayer are up 20% year-on-year
80%
Arts and music content on the PSBs would fall by 80% if the BBC ceased to exist – and new programmes would fall by 90%
163
Last year we partnered with 163 organisations working on arts projects and content
3k
The BBC Proms hosts 3,000 artists each summer in the world’s biggest classical music festival, with over 70 concerts across an eight-week period
Giving everyone the chance to discover something they love
Last year the BBC reached nearly 34m – around half the population – with an unmatched range of arts and music content, way ahead of the next nearest provider.
Each year we make available a total of 28,000 hours of arts, classical music, and culture content across TV, Radio and Online, including:
- Ambitious arts programming like Civilisations: Rise and Fall, Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, Simon Schama’s Story of Us, The Last Musician of Auschwitz, Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India, Big Night of Musicals, In My Own Words, and new Arena films including Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks and L.S. Lowry: The Unheard Tapes...
- World-class arts coverage of UK music and culture festivals and events including Hay Festival, Leeds Piano Competition, Bradford City of Culture, the Edinburgh Festivals, National Eisteddfod, Olivier Awards, Celtic Connections, Booker Prize, Glyndebourne, Museum of the Year, and concerts from Wigmore Hall...
Celebrating live music and performing arts events including Dance Passion, Inside Classical and the BBC’s Orchestras and Choirs based across the nations and regions, plus coverage on Radio 3, the only UK station playing live classical music daily, such as In Tune, Radio 3 in Concert, Classical Live and Choral Evensong...
Landmark shows across TV and radio such as Front Row, In Our Time, This Cultural Life, The Arts Hour,In Tune, Book at Bedtime, and A Good Read, literary adaptions like Lord of the Flies and Wolf Hall, and support for the National Year of Reading, the National Short Story Competition and poetry festival Contains Strong Language...
- Everything we do for children from the new music initiative Get Singing and writing competition 500 Words to Ten Pieces and the CBeebies Prom...
Uncovering, nurturing and supporting new artists from across the UK
We champion new talent for everyone, from BBC Words First, Young Writers and New Generation Thinkers to BBC Introducing and Young Musician, helping to launch the careers of world-class performers like Nicola Benedetti and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
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