The elephant in the corridor

There are two inevitabilities that come with the publication of any new government strategy, plan or policy for the creative and cultural sector. First, that it will be met with a standard response from across the sector of “we welcome the government’s shiny new document” and, second, that this will be immediately followed with a thorough take-down outlining what’s missing.

This is always contextual depending on who is doing the talking, or to put it another way: “Great that you’re doing something, but what’s in it for me?”

In terms of culture, place, infrastructure and data – always our priorities – there are three key areas of concern and consideration.

Culture

There is little of any substance in the Creative Industries Sector Plan for the cultural sector, but the clue is in the title. It’s an industrial strategy, not a cultural one, so should we be surprised that it focuses on “the more commercialised end of the creative industries”?

Arguably, the national cultural strategy is something different – in England, it’s Let’s Create, which encompasses both the economic and societal transformations made possible through culture.

So the question becomes: How is this going to be developed, supported and funded moving forwards? In this respect, it’s all eyes on the Arts Council England review and future budget allocations – including those of local government.

Place

Though flawed in its execution, the last government’s Levelling-Up policy was at least well intentioned, with culture identified as one of its key pillars and a focus on “left behind” places. Through our work with the Cultural Development Fund (CDF) Network, we see firsthand how vital investment in culture has been for places such as Barnsley, Morecambe, Paignton, Berwick, Rochdale, Medway and many other small-to-medium sized cities and towns historically deprived of investment across the country.

The Creative Industries Sector Plan marks a clear shift, prioritising city regions, combined authorities and creative corridors. This is the devolution agenda. The places and local leaders who are geographically closer to smaller towns and communities across the regions are better placed to know what they need – or so the argument goes.

This is less devolved funding and more devolved responsibility. The elephant in the room – or corridor – is whether it will result in decentralisation or recentralisation, with those in the centre or commutable suburbs of major metropolitan areas sucking up investment while those in the margins – having briefly enjoyed a moment in the sun – left hoping for whatever trickle-down impacts or investment might come their way.

This goes beyond direct investment in culture, with investment in transport infrastructure also hugely significant. While cultural organisations such as Creative Folkestone and the Turner in Margate, for example, are quite rightly cited as helping turn around the fortunes of their respective coastal towns, both benefited immeasurably from the opening of HS1 train services around 2009. In this respect, whether or not Bradford, for example, is included in plans for the Trans Pennine Route Upgrade and Northern Powerhouse Rail could prove at least as important – if not more so – as the visibility and investment that comes with being City of Culture.

Here again the language is all about supporting growth in the big cities. The Unlocking Regional Growth section of the UK Infrastructure Plan explicitly references “Enabling more people to access city centres …. Helping residents to access good jobs and encouraging businesses to cluster there”. This more than implies that the direction of flow is only one way. Then there’s a great piece of data research work just published by Centre for Cities which also shows how this impacts consumer spending, with big city centres “picking the pockets” of their smaller city neighbours.

Small to medium-sized cities – let alone towns, rural or coastal areas – will have to fight even harder to get noticed or leverage the hoped-for growth around major metropolitan areas, corridors or clusters. Great examples of good practice include our CDF Network partners in Middlesbrough, with an innovative partnership between Navigator North, Middlesbrough Council and Trans Pennine Express on its fantastic Most Creative Station project. This is part of a large-scale, CDF-funded programme to transform Middlesbrough’s cultural anchors including the Central Library, MIMA, The Auxiliary and Platform A.

There are positive signs also from some of those, like Greater Manchester, who are furthest ahead in the devolution transformation, with our CDF Network partners in Stockport and Rochdale both having benefited from designations as Greater Manchester Towns of Culture and the recently announced news of Steve Coogan leading regeneration of Middleton. Again, this has as much to do with wider infrastructure development – and specifically the massive Atom Valley development – as it does with supporting culture and the creative industries in and of itself.

Data

Evidencing spend and impact in the places that need it most is going to be key, and particularly relevant in light of one the bigger challenges we grappled with when developing the Culture and Place Data Explorer alongside Arts Council England and OCSI. There is an abundance of data showing where the need is – notably the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, (currently under review prior to being updated by OCSI – with a provisional timeline of publication by November this year). And – of course – investment data will show who has received investment and where – right down to postcode level.

The elephant in this space is that the area of investment and of benefit are not necessarily one and the same, and it’s notoriously difficult to evidence the latter through data alone. Taking Cultural Development Fund as an example, data for the CDF investment in Bradford will show funding to the postcode of Kala Sangam, the lead partner NPO in the city centre – literally where the funding is received – not the postcodes of the network hubs it has supported in Keighley, South Square, Bloomin’Buds or of every school, community group, artist, town, place or neighbourhood where they are delivering their CDF programme and activities.

So again, we have a risk of one-way traffic with the data too, with leaders in city regions, combined authorities and creative corridors using data from deprived towns to evidence need and secure funding, but not necessarily able to robustly evidence that the investment or activity will ever reach them – even when this is happening. Solving this issue – a robust, quantitative, data-led approach to evidencing area of benefit or impact which is consistent and coherent across all the nations and regions – should be high on the list of those “data collection challenges” which the Creative Industries Sector Plan promises to address.