Leader: Creativity czar should consider dual funding

British designers, artists, musicians and writers have looked with envy at the billions spent recently on science. Many of their subjects could have been funded for the price of one of the research labs paid for by initiatives such as the Joint Infrastructure Fund. Michael Bichard is calling for these disciplines to be taken as seriously as science and technology in the quest for national economic success. Given his position as head of the London Institute he is hardly objective, but that does not make him wrong.

But putting things right is complicated. The arts do not have a monopoly on creative thinking. Nor, unlike science, is an academic environment necessarily the best in which to foster artistic creativity. The pushing and pulling required to present artistic activity as "research" in order to tap into research assessment exercise funding has been, at times, risible. Nor have the efforts of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts to embrace all creative activity had great impact. Sir Michael, in his role as creativity czar, should consider arrangements for supporting individuals through grants and bursaries inside and outside higher education, alongside pleas for infrastructure funding in institutions such as his own. Both will be needed to foster artistic creativity.