Anyone who’s anyone (or should that be “anywhere that’s anywhere”) has a place-based cultural strategy these days. What is the point of them? Can public policy really make a difference to the creative life of where you live, or is the brutal truth that some places are destined to be culturally zingy while others simply… aren’t?
The process of creating a cultural strategy is more than a quick, tick-box exercise. If you’re committed to impactful change, the process will lift the lid on local power dynamics and priorities, requires collaboration and an honest assessment of local strengths and weaknesses. It can bring awkward questions to the fore and challenge the status quo. It forces you to consider who’s ‘round the table’ in your community, who’s not and how you can tackle that. Do it badly, and it will reinforce existing inequalities, waste resources and fragment (and irritate!) the local cultural sector.
So, if you’re reading this and thinking you’ll knock up a quickie strategy to help you bag levelling up or Arts Council funding then, beware! It’s not that the current shift in funding isn’t important – the geographical inequity of cultural power and investment in our country is real. But starting with the money is ultimately a recipe for failure.
If you’re considering whether or not to develop a cultural strategy for your ‘place’ – your town, city, county or even for your own local cluster of creative sector partners – you want to be sure that it’s worth the effort. What are the goals you’re trying to achieve? What is the purpose of the strategy? How will you develop a compelling vision and a meaningful, inclusive action plan for your patch?
Not every cultural powerhouse has a cultural strategy. Sometimes, a fortuitous, organic mishmash of factors develop into a cluster that maintains itself through a critical mass of talent, access to funding and markets, reputation, connectivity and lifestyle.
This is nothing new. There’s a whole field of economic geography, stretching back to the late nineteenth century, about ‘nodes’ of industry, why certain industries spring up in certain places and whether policy-makers can help nudge them along. Twenty-plus years ago I managed to shoe-horn my love of music into my Geography degree by writing a dissertation about the music industry ‘clusters’ of Soho and Brighton. As far as I remember, very little of their success or creative buzz was planned by local authorities…
But happy accidents aren’t generally regarded as a good approach to regeneration and place-making, and they’re not always sustainable. It’s a truism that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. As a rule of thumb, cultural strategies matter for a number of reasons.
First of all, they put culture front and centre. An ambitious vision, mission and set of objectives, backed up by a practical plan to deliver them, helps a place to understand and articulate shared goals. Individual artists or organisations maintain their creative autonomy, but become part of something bigger, beyond their immediate disciplinary or community boundaries. By looking at the big picture, planners and fundraisers can more easily make the case to investors, both public and private, about what impact their investment will have, both short- and long-term. By building a good strategy you link the depth of skill and creativity of artists and organisations, and couple it with wider, long-term goals towards which everyone can collaborate, for the shared benefit of their local area. It helps to make culture central to your local future and there’s so much evidence about why that’s a good thing*.
Secondly, it’s an opportunity to put local residents at the heart of any plans. The process matters here because the consultation (in all its forms) is a chance to listen and understand local views beyond the general pictures you might glean from, say, your local theatre’s ticketing data or Audience Agency breakdowns. Local residents’ views about the strengths and weaknesses of your local area’s cultural offer, or what local cultural priorities should be, might just be different from what the cultural sector or council or other power-holders assume they are. That can be a tough pill to swallow, but at least then you’re not guessing what people want – or making policy decisions based on a whim.
Thirdly, having a cultural strategy supports place-making and regeneration (and did I mention there’s loads of evidence about that*.) I’ve recently been researching European Capitals of Culture and UK Cities of Culture. Every one I looked at – Liverpool, Derry/Londonderry, Hull – can show that a year of culture changed perceptions of the place for the better, increased inward investment and tourism, boosted the confidence of local residents and the cultural sector, and raised ambitions. As one interviewee said “it gave us some va-va-voom!” Every one of these cities (and recent host, Coventry) started with an over-arching vision and strategy to guide them. Because without it, it’s easy to forget about long-term, cross-disciplinary goals when dealing with day-to-day pressures. A strategy connects culture to broader policy issues, such as education, health and wellbeing, environment and place-marketing – it helps to make sense of complexity.
And finally, it gives the Council – or whoever is leading your strategy – “reasons to say no”. That sounds harsh, but it’s a phrase the director of a charitable trust once said to me, with regards to their funding strategy, and it’s stuck. Because you can’t do or fund everything, you can’t be all things to all people. A good strategy means you avoid scatterguns, or pet projects or reactiveness. Councillors are, of course, focused primarily on their ward or their own priorities and passions (likewise, Business Improvement Districts or Civic Trusts or, indeed, individual arts or heritage organisations. They are all passionate and important and needed, but ultimately focused on their own agendas, not the big picture.) So having a strategy means those responsible for making it happen can focus time, investment and resources, and be empowered to stick to the big picture mission.
The process for developing your strategy really matters. Take time and care to do it well. Consult widely and inclusively. Because you need the buy-in of a whole range of stakeholders to stand any chance of success.
* See e.g. Why art and culture matters | Arts Council England for more info.