Rugby MP's campaign to boost creative arts and culture is aired in BBC Radio 5 Live - and our town gets a mention too, of course!

John Slinger's suggestion is that there should be culture and creative arts bulletins on the broadcast news programmes.

The Matt Chorley programme then featured a creative arts bulletin at half past the hour, read by the BBC’s arts and entertainment correspondent, Colin Paterson, who also took part in the discussion with Mr Slinger and Matt Chorley.

The invitation to appear on the programme followed a social media post from Mr Slinger in which he argued that the creative arts deserve equal prominence to sport on national broadcast news.

Speaking to presenter Matt Chorley, John Slinger said: “Firstly, culture, the creative arts are just a wonderful, joyous thing in our society and also contribute hugely to the economy, but they do so much more.

“They improve mental health, physical health, they boost local towns’ economies…so there are some obvious plus points about the creative arts. But the argument for me is that sports, which I’m a huge fan of – I represent the town of Rugby after all, and I’m a huge fan of Rugby, I’m a huge fan of sports. They do wonderful things for our economy, again, for young people, hard and soft skills.

“But it struck me while listening to the Today Programme a couple of weeks ago that we have regular sports bulletins, which is great, but we don’t have regular creative arts bulletins, and I think we’re missing a trick. We’re missing the opportunity to share the information about the creative arts, to normalise it for audiences, to celebrate it, to shout about it, excuse the pun – to bang the drum.”

Asked by Matt Chorley “what’s interesting about both Ozzy Osbourne and Oasis is they’re not new cultural phenomenons, they’re existing, shared cultural things that we’re revisiting, if you like”, John went on to say: “That’s true, although we still do have those incredible moments – Glastonbury Festival is one, the BBC Proms is another. I speak as someone who used to play in rock bands myself, and so while I would agree that - well I certainly wasn’t in a big band like Oasis – while I would agree that there are fewer of those mass appeal cultural moments, there are still ‘micro’ moments within every town and even sometimes, villages.

"There are bars like ‘Inside the 22’ in Rugby that put on amazing bands and local musicians and those events themselves provide a ‘micro’ or ‘mini’ version of that sense of pride in place, that sense of communal enjoyment of the creative arts. And it really does give people a lot of joy and it also puts money into local businesses, which is really important.”

Mr Slinger said after the show: “I was glad to be invited to contribute to the programme. It’s not about creative arts instead of sport; it’s about creative arts and sport."

“It was great to help raise the profile of culture and creative arts bulletins, and I hope more people will tune in and learn about the vibrant events happening around them."

"Let’s hope that BBC Radio 5 Live and others have more creative arts bulletins in the future.”