Ed Sheeran attacks Conservative government for supporting bankers over bands

nme.com:

Ed Sheeran has criticised the government for supporting bankers over bands.The Suffolk-raised singer-songwriter, who went to a state school in his hometown, spoke about his feelings on how the government have cut funding to the arts on Theo Von’s podcast.He said: “I’ve been doing probably for the last seven years stuff with music in high schools because in my area, so basically in 2017/ 2018, my old music teacher came to me and he was like, ‘look, the government that is currently in charge, do not value art at all..

arts, drama, music.’ And they cut all the funding for comprehensive high schools.“So my music teacher came to me and was going, I think they had to share between art, music and drama, like £700 per year for all three subjects.

So I started funding that at my local high school. And then you see a massive uptick in kids doing production, kids doing songwriting, kids doing this.”Sheeran added: “I built a recording studio there.

There’s loads of proper instruments that aren’t broken and you just see the school getting better at music. So then I started doing that in the county that I’m from.