Writing in 51³Ô¹Ï on 15 May, Jack Grove notes that such ¡°relative research minnows as De Montfort, Birmingham City, Westminster, Hertfordshire and Sheffield Hallam universities¡± are among the 50 universities that have been given three studentships each by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The article raises the question as to whether this move to spread funded studentships equally but thinly will weaken arts research. My response is that it will do the opposite: by making research more diverse, the new funding formula will make it far stronger.

This matters because, as we know from studies by the Sutton Trust and others, access to the arts is already deeply unequal. Opportunity is limited by background, and any further restriction of studentships to fewer organisations than the 50 now selected would only have made them even less accessible and diverse.

The article goes on to argue that the impact of the changes on Russell Group institutions will be particularly severe given that many were securing a dozen or so studentships annually in the Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) competitions that these new ¡°landscape awards¡± replace. But that isn¡¯t quite right. It may come as a surprise, but De Montfort University, where I work, was also competitively receiving (and match-funding) around a dozen. Our loss is therefore as significant as anyone¡¯s.

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The claim that the ?were all run by large research-intensives isn¡¯t entirely accurate either: two were run by smaller research-intensives, Royal Holloway and Sussex.

As the founding director of Royal Holloway¡¯s consortium, I still vividly recall the scramble to assemble the partners you wanted during the first round of the DTP competition. I also remember clearly being told by a dean of a large Russell Group institution that there was no way they would work with Royal Holloway since our track record in securing funding in the previous open competition would mean we would win too many studentships in a DTP consortium, to the detriment of the other partners.

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No matter. We mobilised around a vision of the craft of the PhD, sought out excellence wherever it existed across London and the south-east ¨C in small, specialist and modern universities ¨C and built a successful DTP.

That experience does make me lament the passing of the DTP model. Running Techne for a decade showed me first-hand how they succeeded in transforming the UK PhD experience in the arts. Prior to DTPs¡¯ establishment in 2012, most arts supervision was undertaken by a sole academic, with limited access to wider skills training. DTPs created collaborative supervisory teams, delivered annual symposia and training events across their cohorts, and enabled work placements. They also fostered collaborations with cultural and academic organisations and explored interdisciplinary work, including a pilot scheme connecting AI and the arts.

It is to be hoped that the new regional consortia can retain some of this innovation. Yet I worry that the deep expertise built up in running the large DTPs ¨C especially among the talented teams of administrators and trainers ¨C may now be lost.

Which brings us back to the core purpose of the present funding shift: ensuring that the most talented students can access PhD opportunities in the arts. To do that, we must ensure that we draw them from diverse backgrounds.

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The Sutton Trust has shown how skewed the creative arts remain. A revealed that, among those aged 35 and under, there are four times as many people from middle-class as from working-class backgrounds in creative occupations. Privately educated students make up more than half of music students at the UK¡¯s most prestigious conservatoires, and at Oxford, Cambridge, King¡¯s College London and Bath, over half of creative students come from ¡°upper-middle-class¡± families.

This entrenched inequality is precisely why so-called research minnows are essential. Our recent analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) data highlights the important role that these universities play in widening access to doctoral study in the arts. In the subject group encompassing design, creative and performing arts, these institutions educate just over 5 per cent of all UK PhD students. However, they account for nearly 10 per cent of all BAME PhD students in this field. Moreover, that proportion has been rising steadily since 2015-16 as the number of BAME PhD students at these institutions has nearly tripled.

These figures challenge the idea that only large research-intensives can support meaningful arts research at doctoral level. They also reinforce why broad-based funding models are not just fairer but smarter than more concentrated distributions if we want to achieve both equity and excellence.

At De Montfort, we have a research project called , funded by Arts Council England. It is a 25-year longitudinal study investigating the impact that access to arts and culture has on babies as they grow into young children, adolescents and adults. It has particularly targeted hard-to-reach families in diverse, often migrant communities across Leicester. We are now six years in, and the babies who attended the early classes ¨C offered for free by De Montfort as part of the project ¨C are now children preparing for school. Already, their teachers report positive engagement and no unauthorised absences. Whether this is a result of the classes they enjoyed is hard to say. But it makes me excited to see what happens next.

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The arts matter ¨C we know this. But access to them matters more. That is why I applaud the AHRC for reinforcing this principle so positively through the new landscape awards.

is vice-chancellor of De Montfort University.

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