The Cultural Cities Enquiry, which came together in March 2018 to develop a new model to help culture flourish in cities in the context of diminishing public funding in UK, has published its final report. The enquiry aimed to consider how we can radically increase the ability of our cities to use culture to drive inclusive growth, noting that the value of culture to our civic life is now indisputable.
The Enquiry outlines how UK cities can make greater use of cultural assets to promote thriving communities and to compete successfully for talent, tourism and investment – while developing new income streams that will support culture for the long term. It also emphasises the role of culture in attracting people to cities as places they want to work, live, and play.
The report demonstrates how business and cultural sectors can work together to plan and support local growth through culture, based on their shared interests in promoting creative and digital innovation, capturing external investment and attracting and nurturing talent.
The four recommendations include:
- Leadership: Strong and sustained collaboration between strategic city partners can support collective, coordinated action to grow a city’s cultural ecosystem, to drive lasting social and economic benefits. Cities with a clear vision for culture supported by business, city authorities, education and the cultural sector can align activity and funding and leverage new resources;
- Investment: Culture can create compelling investment propositions delivering cultural, social, economic and financial returns for the city. By linking cultural projects to civic outcomes, including urban regeneration, growth of the creative and digital industries, health and wellbeing, and tourism, cities and cultural organisations can access new public and private streams of investment;
- Talent: For culture to release the creative potential of all people in our cities, the cultural workforce should better reflect the diversity of our communities, and cities could be more strategic about nurturing talent for creative industries. Greater coordination at city level can drive coordinated development programmes for creative talent;
- Place: Cultural activity has a powerful capacity to catalyse economic development, and spur the growth of creative and digital industries. Publicly-owned cultural properties can be strategic assets for cities in driving regeneration. But regeneration can lead to displacement of culture, and civic returns are not always optimised. Portfolio approaches to asset management can help sustain and enhance a city’s cultural ecosystem, capturing and recycling value into the sector, the city and communities.
You can join the conversation on Twitter using #culturalcities and read the full report here.