Living places

Living Places is an alliance of Arts Council England; Sport England; Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment; Museum, Libraries and Archives Council; and English Heritage, sponsored by Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the DCMS, working together to ensure that all communities, particularly those experiencing housing-led growth and regeneration, can benefit from cultural and sporting opportunities. Nationally, regionally and locally, the Living Places programme is working on physical infrastructure and building a sense of community and place. The Pennine Lancashire Squared scheme aims to create new spaces in six Lancashire towns, to support the flagship regeneration schemes investing in homes, communities and enterprise across the area. The Corby Cube project will bring a £30m new development with public open space to the centre of the town, combining flexible theatre space, a library, a bistro and council offices, delivering cultural facilities and multi-million pound regeneration. The experiences of Liverpool, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth and others show that investment in culture delivers significant regeneration, creating vibrant new places to live.
 

As projects like these develop, we must continue to talk to each other to ensure the needs of communities are genuinely understood and responded to at a local level. Partners of Living Places who have used this approach at local, regional or national level know the impact that it has, bringing benefits to the sector and the communities we serve. The collective voice of Living Places partners has already helped to ensure the inclusion of culture and sport in key national policies.

REGENERATION GAME
The arts have a long history of contributing to places and communities which are experiencing change, and continue to have a crucial part to play in regeneration projects. They are increasingly recognised as a key part of the process that can help shape new environments and engage communities. Having an arts partner can change the viewpoint of developers from being site-driven to thinking about their communities. In their many forms, the arts are able to comment, reflect, influence, interpret and inspire, playing a powerful role in bringing together new and existing communities. That’s why the DCLG welcomed the input of Living Places partners into the development of eco towns. It recognised that culture and sport are important attributes of any sustainable community. The investment of time and resources made by Living Places partners across the country means that we will be seeing more successes like this in the future. The relationships we have built with key partners such as the Homes and Communities Agency have a real potential to deliver positive outcomes for partners and stakeholders.

TOOLS FOR CHANGE
On a practical level, the tools and guidance in the ‘Living Places: Culture and Sport Planning Toolkit’ (CSPT) enables those working in the arts to make a more robust case for the inclusion of high quality cultural and sporting within communities. For example, the Standard Charge Approach to Arts and Museums sets out a methodology to assess and calculate infrastructure requirements and costs, in order to make a strong case for investing in cultural facilities. We all know that both Lottery funding for capital developments and successful capital regeneration programmes such as ‘Sea Change’ are highly competitive, and therefore can only reach so far into communities across England. The sustainability of funding for cultural and sporting facilities therefore lies in their incorporation into standard planning processes. This approach in itself provides a real challenge in assessing and understanding the complex needs of communities. It also takes greater account of the sustainability of arts facilities, in terms of revenue, maintenance and usage, from the outset. As a result of this trend the emphasis of cultural development is perhaps shifting away from iconic or landmark facilities. This is no bad thing – as long as the needs and aspirations of communities are at the heart of what we, as a sector, seek to achieve.

ADAPT AND SURVIVE
As the recession hit, and the competition for funds for even small-scale facilities increased, the arts sector was still able to adapt and respond to the needs of communities facing the realities of the economic downturn. Arts Council England established ‘Art in empty spaces’, building on models of working from across the country. This programme is helping artists and arts organisations carry out their work in vacant premises made available through the scheme ‘Looking after our town centres’, which invested £3m in reinvigorating ailing town centre. When I managed the final stage of development of the Culture and Sport Planning Toolkit, the impact of the economic downturn was not an issue that went unnoticed. Developers, planners and cultural professionals consulted as part of the development process all recognised that this would impact upon the availability of already contested funds for infrastructure development over coming years. Despite this, the mood remained positive. Planning and developing or improving infrastructure will always be a long-term process which spans the good and bad times within our country’s economy. As the national media begins to chart the country’s move out of the recession, we should be aware that our sector is in a strengthened position: with new robust planning tools, a more knowledgeable community of professionals, and a stronger foothold in national policy.