Space to think

In 2000, Arts Council England, South East (then Southern Arts) launched ‘Art at the Centre’, to fund local authorities to explore how artists could lead urban regeneration. Almost £1m of investment into seven local authorities later, and much has been learnt. Those lessons, stories and successes are reflected in an evaluation document which we hope will inform the future relationship between the arts and regeneration.

Space pilot
Cast your mind back to 1999. New Labour had recently come into power and there were early signs that arts and culture were likely to be on the new Government’s agenda. However, for many they still lagged behind as an item for ‘any other business’. One of New Labour’s plans was to revitalise town and city centres – with a focus on better designed buildings and spaces between buildings. These plans were articulated by the report ‘Towards an urban renaissance’, published by a Government task group headed by Sir Richard Rodgers. In my role at Southern Arts, I was very much motivated by the role the arts could play in this process of revitalisation. We designed a scheme that would position art at the centre of regeneration. The ‘Art at the Centre’ scheme was launched in 2000, making funding available to three local authorities which wanted to test new ways of doing exactly that. We wanted to offer local authorities a freedom that meant funding was not tied to specific projects or ways of working, encouraging them to tackle the opportunity in whatever way they chose. Overall, around £300,000 was made available to the local authorities, with additional funding used to support peer education and evaluation programmes.
Timing and funding
Our experience has taught us that quality matters. The successful impact of the arts on any regeneration programme depends on the quality of the experience that people have, and the quality of the art that is produced. This finding is reinforced by the McMaster Review. We need to support the artists acting as co-ordinators on regeneration projects to develop their skills and networks. Unsurprisingly, the 2004 Egan Review of Skills for Sustainable Communities failed to identify the need to provide training and support for the arts sector to engage in regeneration. Artists need to be brought into regeneration programmes at the right time. Before I started the work on Art at the Centre, I believed that artists need to be involved from the outset, but my experience suggests that to involve artists too early in a project can be as disastrous as involving them too late.
‘No strings’ funding has an important role to play. Our Chief Executive, Alan Davey, recently spoke about the courage of funders in taking risks. Working with local authorities in this way has been instructive for us as much as for them, and I would argue that – with the appropriate financial controls – more funding should be used to explore creative solutions to problems. We will always need advocates to argue for the value of the arts in place-making and developing communities, but this scheme has shown how important it is to develop these advocates within the worlds of planning and economic development. 2009 will see a new set of cultural planning tools and guidance, under the auspices of the ‘Living Places’ programme. This will give us more support to make the case to and with our colleagues in the planning community. It is important to work with local government. Art at the Centre has given arts officers a seat at the table and encouraged cross-departmental working which has been a success in all the councils we’ve worked with.
Future thinking
What now? Naturally, the regeneration environment is affected by the economic slowdown. The impact that this is having on the housing and retail sectors will impact on the opportunities to engage the arts in regeneration schemes.
Nevertheless, we must prepare ourselves for the upturn, and ensure we are ready to capitalise on what we have learned. We know that communities can begin to own their environments through the arts, and that artists can enable regeneration activity. But we suffer, from a lack of longitudinal research to demonstrate the positive effect that the arts can have in regeneration programmes. Art at the Centre was a time-limited approach to see how interventions through the arts could enhance the process of renaissance in urban environments. The scheme has now come to a close, and we are looking to see how the arts can continue to support place making and place shaping. We need to ensure that artists are recognised as having the skills and professional standing to put art at the centre of regeneration. We have come a long way but there is still further we can go.