Labour asks pop stars to fund the arts

A Multi-million-pound arts and science agency, using lottery cash and donations to help talen- ted young people develop new projects, will be proposed tom-orrow by the Labour leader Tony Blair, writes Stephen Castle.

A central part of a new Labour arts policy, the scheme will be named the National Endow-ment for Science and Arts (NESTA). Labour hopes that, in the way that people donate property and land to the National Trust, they can be persuaded to give artistic and scientific property to NESTA. Already, several leading mus-icians have said privately that they may consider bequeathing income from the copyright of songs to help the foundation.

Supporters include the film-producer Sir David Puttnam, who said yesterday: "There is a beautiful simplicity to using old copyrights to stimulate new copyrights. NESTA will allow some of Britain's most successful and creative people to help a new generation achieve success in the 21st century."