Labour will require state-subsidised arts organisations to prove they are taking steps to stop the arts becoming the preserve of an older metropolitan elite, the shadow culture secretary, Harriet Harman, is due to warn.
She is expected to single out the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden for criticism, saying that when she went there last week, "even from the cheapest seats in the house, I couldn't see in the audience anyone who wasn't like myself: white, metropolitan and middle class".
Equally, she will say, she seldom sees people from her south London constituency at the BBC proms. "It doesn't have to be like that. But to change audiences, there has to be committed, focused intervention," she will argue.
Her remarks, due to be made in a speech on Monday, are part of a drive by Harman to ensure that schoolchildren remain connected with the arts. She will also suggest that schools should only be rated as outstanding by Ofsted if they provide outstanding arts education.
She claims participation in arts activities has fallen by a third in schools since the coalition came to power. In the speech, at a conference on arts policy and youth at the Roundhouse in London, she will warn: "The danger is that, at the moment, there is the prospect of there being a generation of young people with no meaningful exposure to arts and culture."
Labour is considering making it a requirement of Arts Council funding that organisations spell out how they will extend opportunities to young people and publish an annual progress report. Harman will also propose the BBC broadcast national young Booker and Tate prizes, as well as a national youth arts festival. She will say that extending opportunity does not require dumbing down, pointing out it "wasn't elitism that gave birth to the creative excellence of Tracey Emin, Danny Boyle or Steve McQueen".
Admitting the trick is to craft something that is creative without being bureaucratic, she will say she is also considering a Labour election manifesto guarantee that every child can visit a theatre, concert or gallery every year.
She will claim the government has downgraded arts and culture in education and Britain is now reaping the consequences, with participation in music down from 55% to 36%, theatre and drama down from 49% to 33%, and dance collapsing from 45% to 29%.
The numbers taking arts GCSEs have fallen and teacher training places in arts education have been cut by 35%, while the number of specialist arts teachers has also fallen.
Harman claims governments should not accept a binary choice between a focus on science or arts. "We need our young people to grow up to be problem solvers – to be creative and analytical, to become innovative and inquiring in their chosen profession."
She rejects any suggestions that the arts are soft subjects, pointing out that the violinist Nicola Benedetti "has highlighted the discipline, focus and application that music demands. And try telling Deborah Bull or Arlene Phillips that dance is a soft option."
But the Labour deputy leader also warns arts organisations which receive state funding that in austere times they will have to do more to justify it.
She says: "There is a democratic imperative for the arts to show why the hard-pressed taxpayer – struggling with the cost of living crisis – should fund the arts. Public funding is only sustainable to the extent that the public support it. So the public have got to see what they are getting out of it.
"Whilst in better times, it might have been possible to fund the arts without consciously engaging public support, that just isn't the case now.
When the NHS is struggling, and councils face agonising choices about cutting care for dementia sufferers, public funding for the arts is only sustainable to the extent that the public knows it matters to them.
"We all have to turn and address this big issue. If you are getting public money, people have to have a stake in what you do."
