The UK government has chosen ten areas across the country to pilot its £25m Find your Talent programme, aimed at giving young people five hours of arts and culture experience each week.

Organisations were selected based on their proposals for implementing the programme from a pool of 141 applications.

The ten chosen are Bolton Borough Council; Hampshire County Council; Leeds Children’s Services; Leicestershire County Council; North Somerset; Telford and Wrekin Council; Tower Hamlets; The Creative Foundation, serving Shepway District including Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh; Customs House, serving North and South Tyneside; and Liverpool City Region Partnership, serving three Merseyside neighbourhoods.

Beginning in September, the organisations will trial different ways of offering young people cultural experiences within schools and professional art settings, using different approaches based on partnerships between schools, local authorities, and arts organisations.

The programme will see creative practitioners enter schools, as well as working with children outside the classroom. Children will participate in activities including performing on stage, attending museums and galleries, gaining film and broadcast experience, learning a musical instrument, practicing creative writing, and creating visual art.

Details of how the £25m will be divided among the organisations will be finalised this summer, said a spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is overseeing the initiative along with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

It is unlikely that the funding will be divided equally, as costs to run the programme in inner city and rural areas will be very different, he said.

The pilot will be run and assessed for three years in the 10 areas, enabling the DCMS and DCSF to make a bid to the treasury to make the programme national and permanent, which is the government’s goal, the spokesperson said.

DCSF secretary Ed Balls said: “Schools already offer many cultural activities in school hours, for example in music, art, and English in the curriculum, and there is already much cultural activity taking place outside school and beyond the school day.

"The five hour offer is about building on this and giving all children and young people the opportunity to take part in cultural activities.”