Tomorrow more than 50 prominent individuals from across the worlds of culture, media and new technology will gather at 11 Downing Street to discuss a novel approach to the economic downturn. Recognising that we risk losing a generation of talent and intellectual capital if we don't react immediately to the challenge of the financial crisis, the guests will be asked to help develop a “New Deal of the Mind” for the creative industries.

The New Deal of the Mind is inspired by the cultural programmes of President Roosevelt's 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning and writers such as Saul Bellow, John Cheever and Ralph Ellison. It also draws on the BBC's “Marshall Plan of the Mind”, launched after the fall of the Berlin Wall to spread information about Western-style entrepreneurship to the former Soviet bloc.

The project grew out of a piece I wrote for the New Statesman in January challenging the Government to come up with more imaginative approaches to the recession. Gordon Brown named FDR: The First 100 Days by the Cambridge history professor Anthony J. Badger as one of his books of the year. My own reading suggested that elements of the New Deal might be replicated beyond the work creation schemes on roads, bridges and dams.

What was intended as a think piece in a magazine has grown into the beginnings of a movement. I was contacted by teachers, entrepreneurs in the creative industries, as well as artists, musicians and film-makers themselves. The New Deal of the Mind has blossomed into a coalition of like-minded individuals committed to putting a plan of action in place before the summer when hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the workforce. The Downing Street meeting is hosted by the Chancellor's wife, Maggie Darling, who has embraced the idea from the start. The same is true of the people at the University of the Arts, London, and the British Council. Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, and James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, have asked civil servants to look at ways in which they can work with the coalition. Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat frontbencher responsible for new technology has been a keen advocate and Ed Vaizey, the shadow culture secretary, will also be present.

Times Archive, 1933: Mr Roosevelt's promise of action

'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself'

• Topic: The New Deal

The WPA founder Harry Hopkins's philosophy is defined by his most celebrated quote: “Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit.” Although cultural projects formed a small part of the WPA, the legacy is just as significant. The Federal Theatre project encouraged directors such as Joseph Losey, John Huston and Orson Welles. The writers' project employed about 5,000 people, who produced guidebooks for every state. Perhaps one of the most lasting legacies can be found in collections of oral history, including the narratives of the last people who had lived as slaves in the South.

The quality of such work was mixed. The 234,000 pieces of art, 4,400 musical performances and 1,813 plays created could not all have been works of genius. But the theory was that only if significant numbers of artists were supported would greatness emerge. And it did: just read this opening passage from John Cheever's chapter in New York Panorama, produced a a WPA guide in 1938: “The rumour of a great city goes out beyond its borders, to all the latitudes of the known earth. The city becomes an emblem in remote minds; apart from the tangible exports of goods and men, it exerts its cultural instrumentality in a thousand phases: as an image of glittering light, as the forcing ground which creates a new prose style or a new agro-biological theory, or as the germinal point for a fresh technique in metal sculpture, biometrics or the fixation of nitrogen.” These words also express something of the spirit of the New Deal of the Mind.

Guests tomorrow include the heads of some of Britain's best known cultural institutions, including Christopher Frayling, Rector of the Royal College of Art, John Tusa, who chairs the University of the Arts, Jenny Abramsky, who chairs the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and Roger Wright, controller of BBC Radio 3 and director of the Proms. It is intended that the meeting will lead to further work in each of the main sectors of the industry: visual arts, design and architecture, film and television, writing and publishing, theatre and dance. At the same time, the New Deal of the Mind is keen to encourage the geeks and inventors who drive innovation in technology and science.

Where does the project go from here? There is a feeling that a system of paid internships must be set up to stop young people being used as free labour in the film, music and theatre industries and the media. There is a belief that it will not be sufficient during the downturn to train people for jobs that are not there. A more dynamic solution has to be found where individual artists set themselves up as self-employed entrepreneurs. Discussions with successful artists, musicians and writers who survived the last recession suggest that many used a little-known government programme, the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, to kick start their careers. This gave people £40 a week, advice on developing a business plan and access to free postage. But it allowed people to come off the dole and forge an identity as an artist or entrepreneur. Those who benefitted from this Thatcher-era scheme include Alan McGee, founder of Creation records, Tracey Emin, and myself.

The oral history collections at the heart of the original WPA seem to have fired the imagination of people working on the New Deal of the Mind. We have been struck by the fascination people have for oral, local and family history. Film-makers, writers and artists could help to capture this “living history”. There is talk of establishing a national living history task force, a national archive of Britain's musical heritage and a collection of migrant narratives.

Meanwhile, we should start to implement the New Deal of the Mind. As part of a national “living history” project, children should be asked to record an interview with the oldest member of their family or an equivalent figure in their community before they leave primary school. This could be co-ordinated by graduates and facilitated by people in the film and broadcast industries. The digital archive produced would provide a resource for future generations and have social benefits by bringing old and young together.

There needs to be some serious thought about how to put these ideas into practice. But not too much. Actually we should just get on with it. There is no time to lose.

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