The Arts Dividend looks in depth at seven key benefits sustained and strategic public investment in creativity and culture across England bring to our lives every day:

• encouraging our nation’s creativity

• advancing our education and skills

• increasing our happiness, health and wellbeing

• supporting our innovation and technology

• animating our villages, towns and cities

• growing our economic prosperity

• enhancing our reputation for creative and cultural excellence on the global stage

This book encourages us to consider our country’s innate creativity and the invaluable rewards to be gained from the public investment that enables the arts, museums and libraries to be part of everyone’s lives, no matter who they are or where they live.

The result of a decade-long journey across the length and breadth of England, Darren Henley reflects on our remarkable national cultural landscape from Cumbria to Kent and from Cornwall to Northumberland – and why he believes that public investment in creativity and culture can help us all to lead happier lives.

Darren Henley OBE is chief executive of Arts Council England. The author of two independent government reviews into music and cultural education, he has written thirty books about the arts. Before joining the Arts Council, he spent fifteen years leading Classic FM. He holds degrees in politics from the University of Hull, management from the University of South Wales and history of art from the University of Buckingham.