The devolution will not be televised

Exactly five years to the day since the start of the first Covid lockdown, Rochdale Town Hall will host the second national Cultural Development Fund (CDF) Network symposium, Cultural Development Gathering-25 on 26 March 2025. This event will not be live-streamed or filmed.

These are all very deliberate and conscious choices. So let’s unpick them.

Cultural devolution

During her recent Jenny Lee Lecture, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy made a convincing case for Arts for Everyone, Everywhere, arguing that “part of how we discover [a] new national story is by breathing fresh life into local heritage and reviving culture in places where it is disappearing”.

This is of course very welcome. But we can’t expect those in government, commissioning or place development to get out of the cities and invest in smaller towns across the regions if we’re not prepared to do it ourselves. This goes for event organisers and audiences.

One of the great joys and privileges of being lead coordinator of the CDF Network is seeing firsthand the amazing work being done in the 20+ places that comprise the network – from the Isle of Wight to Berwick across the length of England and from Barnstaple to Medway across its breadth.

The national CDF Network symposium is an opportunity to share this with the wider cultural sector, so there was never any question of hosting it anywhere but in one of our member places. The only hard part was deciding which one and ensuring all the second-round projects are equally well represented.

Place = Space + Meaning

Quite apart from being a magnificent setting, Rochdale Town Hall serves as both a case study of heritage-led placemaking in itself and as a physical metaphor for devolution.

One of the finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the country, Rochdale Town Hall’s exterior evokes comparison with national and regional seats of government – complete with a 58m clock tower reminiscent of both Manchester Town Hall and London’s Big Ben.

Historic England considers the ornate stylings of its breathtaking interior, now exquisitely restored and reopened in 2024, to be rivalled only by the Palace of Westminster.

Why Gathering-25?

From the early days of the Cultural Development Fund, the Network has brought together partners on a quarterly basis for live sharing, in-project updates, peer learning and support. We always billed these internally as ‘Gatherings’, long before the word was sullied by those infamous parties at Number 10.

On this fifth anniversary – and with only the slightest of mischievous nods to Partygate – it’s time to reclaim the term and what it signifies for the rest of us.

It’s the exact opposite of a lockdown. It’s a chance to meet in person, to connect in a physical space, to celebrate the value of culture to our towns and cities and to remind ourselves of what was lost for too long during the lockdown era.

Culture and community are vital to every village, town, city and region across the country. Each town that supports cultural development also supports opportunities for enrichment, learning and growth. We must make the most of these opportunities whenever and wherever we can.

Continues…

Online placemaking?

If those long months experiencing culture and connections through our screens taught us anything it’s that, while we should always look to develop opportunities to engage online, it can never replace real world experiences or connections. This is especially true when we talk about places.

Where does place exist online? As place-based funding, strategies and policies have become ever more in vogue, so too have the number of webinars, conferences and online workshops exploring these themes, each packed with case studies to demonstrate and share good practice.

The challenge of hosting or speaking at such events is that no amount of still images, videos or now ubiquitous drone shots can ever convey what it means to be standing in a place or walking around it in real life. It’s hard to fully appreciate – much less understand – the vital link between a town’s culture, its community, heritage and the integral role of the physical infrastructure and town planning around it without actually being there.

So, we invite you to Rochdale and we urge you not to stop there. The CDF Network regularly organises study visits and supports partners to visit and learn from each other’s projects. We strongly advocate for such practice elsewhere.

Finding the time to fit this into busy schedules is always a challenge, but those who do never fail to return home feeling newly invigorated, inspired and with new insights and connections that inform their own projects and practice. While we can’t promise to extend this to everyone, we will also be working with local partners to include local walking study tours of Rochdale’s cultural development projects for visitors to Gathering-25.

Peer support

Successful cultural devolution can’t be sustained if we expect it to be solely supported by government or public funders. So, make your next cultural visit an unexpected one. Visit Barnsley, Middlesbrough, the Isle of Wight, Stockport, Rochdale, Torbay, Berwick, Grimsby, Wakefield, Plymouth, Morecambe or any one of the CDF Network partners and discover some extraordinary venues or inspiring new work outside the major cities or big national venues.

Doing so makes a vital and direct contribution to these local economies. It’s also enriching. See for yourself that cultural devolution is happening now. It needs to continue and is dependent on you to support it, learn from it and value it – whether in your own home town or in near or distant neighbouring towns.

Five years ago, this is part of what we lost. Mostly, that was temporary, but the risk of losing it forever is always hanging over our heads.

Our ask is simple… Explore place. Support culture. Enrich lives.

Find out more about the CDF Network.