An independent LGA commission on councils and culture has delivered its final report
The Commission on Culture and Local Government was set up in early 2022 to investigate the role of local, publicly funded culture in supporting our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The context in which we are publishing is very different, and with so many serious challenges facing communities it might be easy to ask why we are focused on culture.
As we move towards recovery, we face a whole new set of challenges: a growing cost-of-living crisis and recession; pressure on public services; rising inequalities exacerbated by the experience of the past two years; climate change; and global instability.
Under these circumstances, it would be tempting to dismiss investment in cultural services as a luxury we can’t afford.
But, for the same reasons, these services have never been more important.
Cultural services, organisations and practitioners bring people together at times of crisis and celebration; they provide support and social connection, create jobs, develop new adaptive skills and underpin empathy and critical thinking.
In many cases, they act as a trusted source of information at a time when the concept of truth is under question.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of council spending on the arts.
It is right that we celebrate the role councils play in binding together culture, communities and place, and discuss what publicly funded culture needs in the next 75 years.
Our report sets out the issues and our ambitions for more resilient, diverse, inclusive and place-led approaches to culture, to help our communities and economies thrive.
We tested four propositions about how local culture – including libraries and archives, museums and heritage, the arts, creative industries, parks, and the wider historic environment – could contribute to recovery from the pandemic.
These were:
- Resilient places – local, publicly funded culture can promote civic pride and change perceptions about a place, contributing to improvements in wider social and economic outcomes.
- An inclusive economic recovery – local, publicly funded culture is essential to our national economic recovery, particularly in relation to the growth of the wider commercial creative economy and in levelling up economic inequalities between regions.
- Social mobility – local, publicly funded culture can help address educational and skills inequalities, and challenges around social mobility.
- Health inequalities – local, publicly funded culture can challenge health inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between March and July we gathered evidence from a wide range of sources and engaged with councils and stakeholders across the country. More than 50 case studies were received as written evidence.
The commissioners heard oral evidence from 18 organisations over the course of four roundtable discussions, and more than 80 organisations were involved in wider focus groups and interviews.
We found that a vibrant cultural ecosystem creates jobs, supports health and wellbeing, enhances learning, and opens up opportunities for young people. It draws people to the high street, underpins the visitor and night-time economies, supports the growing creative industries, and helps to make places unique.
The pandemic was a powerful reminder that people reach for culture in times of crisis, as well of those of joy and celebration.
Access to culture and creativity provides hope and inspiration, and enriches people’s lives. That access must be fair for all.
Councils are a vital player in delivering this. You are the biggest public funders of culture, spending more than £1 billion a year in England alone. When spend on parks and physical activity is included, the figure is £2.4 billion annually, besides the important role you play in place making, engaging with communities and convening local partnerships.
Virtually no other service area allows councils to demonstrate leadership of place like cultural services, which – unlike many other council services – are largely unconstrained by national regulations and requirements.
This gives them considerable agency and scope to work with cultural partners and residents to shape an offer that truly meets local need and aspirations.
But we also know that councils and communities are under huge pressure, with significant challenges for council budgets in the years ahead.
In our report, we highlighted a number of barriers to our cultural services delivering everything they can and identified four ‘cornerstones of cultural placemaking’ that underpin a healthy cultural offer in place.
These are:
- Capacity and resilience in place – a levelling up of capacity for culture within place, targeting regional inequalities and enabling councils to develop and deliver meaningful place-led strategies for culture.
- Leadership and power – a power shift towards place-led approaches that enable a greater diversity of communities, cultural providers and practitioners to shape local decision-making.
- Funding – a coherent and transparent approach to funding culture in a place that supports the delivery of place-led strategies and addresses the immediate financial fragility of the sector triggered by the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.
- Evidence – a coordinated approach to developing an effective evidence base for culture and place in order to measure value and shape future investment.
Our final report and recommendations set out an overview of this evidence, which was really brought to life by all the inspirational case studies we received.
You can browse these examples as part of the case study resource accompanying the commission’s report on the LGA website.
I’d like to thank all of the 16 commissioners who gave up their time and considerable expertise to make this project so rewarding, as well as all those who gave evidence and appeared before the commission.
The publication of this report is not the end of the story.
I hope our findings and recommendations will help councils, regional bodies, cultural arms-length bodies and national government work together with cultural organisations and communities to weather this storm and secure the future of this vital community infrastructure.
Cultural councils
Estuary 2021, an arts festival celebrating the lives, landscapes and histories of the Thames Estuary, attracted 208,800 in-person visitors and created 30 immediate new jobs, with a total economic impact of £6.5 million, helped by leadership and investment from Medway Council and Kent County Council.
Portsmouth City Council has led or supported cultural investment over two decades to transform closed naval sites into a major visitor, leisure, retail and employment hub, supporting 250 jobs and bringing two million new visitors spending £51 million each year.
Culture Liverpool’s new community programme is designed to slowly reintroduce culture to clinically extremely vulnerable people, and those who have experienced mental health challenges, bereavement, or financial hardship.
North Somerset Council has put culture at the heart of its approach to place shaping in Weston-super-Mare, working with Historic England and Arts Council England on an arts programme as part of their High Street Heritage Action Zone, and developing a wider strategy for culture to address some of the challenges faced by seaside towns.
