Local issues to feed into national arts agenda

A major national conversation about local experiences of the arts and culture will be at the heart of a new initiative aiming to empower local voices and support local ambitions in wider debates on future national cultural policies, structures and funding. Launched through a collaboration between Arts Development UK (ADUK) and Voluntary Arts, ‘Our Cultural Commons’ will be collecting evidence of collaborative activity being used to sustain and develop local cultural infrastructure across the UK and Republic of Ireland. It aims to reveal more about the nature of the ‘cultural commons’ that communities aspire to and explore new ways to sustain and develop the creative lives of communities – “ways based on the assets we already know we have and can deploy rather than beginning with a deficit in what we have lost or never had”.

The starting point for the initiative was the recognition that, for most people, their first cultural experience – and probably their last – is likely to be based close to home: “In the coming years, most of us will be able to experience the arts and cultures of the world virtually. Some of us will also travel to experience them in person. But all of us will grow up and grow old experiencing and participating in the arts and culture, locally.” But the pace of change surrounding local cultural spaces – especially changes to local government, digitisation of the wider cultural world, and, in England, regional distribution patterns for national arts funding – means that previous models of local cultural planning are no longer thought to provide adequate support. Chair of Arts Development UK, Jane Wilson, told AP: “Both ADUK and Voluntary Arts felt that the rapid decline in the number of dedicated arts services meant that it was time to have a proper conversation about how best to support local cultural infrastructure. There is a huge amount of creative energy going into local artistic work on the ground, but because much of this is at community level, it can go unnoticed when looking at the bigger picture. It is time that this is brought to the fore and fed into the national debate.”

The arts community across the UK and Ireland is being invited to sign up online to “join the conversation”, which will be taking place in an online forum as well as through a series of round table events and a conference next year. Wilson said: “The preliminary work done so far has given us insight into the range of issues facing the sector at the local level, and the diverse solutions being found to address them. The next step is to bring people together to extend the conversation – both online and in person. The aim is to develop a coherent shared narrative that will form the basis of a full report which can then feed the national debate on how best to secure access to the arts for all.”