The Future of Cultural Devolution in the UK

Part Four:
Recommendations

In this section we share some of the principles and recommendations that the partners are proposing based on the we’ve gathered from all the insight gathering and research across the programme so far. 

Policy Principles

High level principles that encapsulate the headline findings from the programme so far and which cut across several policy areas. These can be applied across all nations, regions and local contexts. 

National level policies and strategies directed towards specific sub-sectors or stakeholder groups have not addressed the between and within nation/region disparities associated with the UK’s creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

At the same time, there is often a complex and interconnected web of stakeholder relations, agents, initiatives and infrastructures supporting the development and maturing of the ecosystem in places. These include tangible assets such as museums, galleries, libraries, parks and community centres, as well as intangible assets like oral traditions, social practices, festivals and events.

The ‘creative industries’ have already been identified as a priority sector for the UK Government’s upcoming industrial strategy to drive economic growth. However, national and local decision makers can no longer go without investing in the foundations of the wider creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem to deliver on these growth ambitions.

In a future where more localised decision-making becomes the norm, ‘place’ is likely to become a more practical and agile lens through which to respond to the complex needs of the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem – and its role within wider socio, economic and environmental development.

By taking a ‘place first’ approach, stakeholders will be empowered to work more strategically together through existing and emerging governance units and take a more holistic look at ecosystem development in their area.

Sector organisations, practitioners, grass roots community organisations, arm’s length bodies, grant giving bodies and the general public, view local councils as vital ‘anchors’ within the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

However, increasing enthusiasm for ‘the value of culture’ is widely undermined by decreasing investments for delivery which is leading to a widening ‘ambition gap’. Many councils are having to downsize portfolio holder teams, cut programming and are generally retreating from partnerships associated with the ecosystem because of a lack of internal resource and capacity.

Despite a general acknowledgement of the socio-economic benefits of investing in creative, cultural and heritage services, the lack of statutory requirement for local authorities to provide them leaves the ecosystem feeling particularly vulnerable.

 

Without a considerable change in approach from stakeholders right across the ecosystem, local authorities – the largest investors in the creative, cultural and heritage life of the nation – will continue to experience the ‘crowding out’ we have observed, which is putting creative, cultural and heritage services at considerable risk.

All stakeholders, but particularly national governments across the four nations, must now take urgent action to ensure that local governments can remain vital anchors for culture, creativity and heritage in preparation for increased local decision-making.

As one of the most centralised decision-making nations in the OECD, the UK has comparatively few sub-national executive decision-making structures associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

There is a significant potential for value creation through projects and frameworks designed to bolster ecosystems on a broader spatial scale. Some collaborative and strategic regional programmes are already fostering more equitable development of infrastructure and unlocking ecosystem opportunities in historically underserved areas.

In England, some combined authorities are particularly ambitious to have greater control over decision-making associated with ecosystem policy and expenditure in their areas. Meanwhile, other regions are positioning themselves as ‘coordinators,’ establishing governance boards and regional strategies to foster alignment across their constituent local authorities.

In the devolved nations of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, where democratically underpinned regional decision-making structures are not yet established, there appears to be a significant potential for enhanced regional, and in some cases pan-regional, ecosystem development. However, this potential may only be fully realised if such initiatives are resourced with additional investment and given legitimacy in local decision-making spaces.

Stakeholders across the ecosystem should now look to develop and test new approaches to setting policy, strategy and inclusive decision-making at a wider than local scale. These approaches should maintain the arm’s length principle applied to national level decision-making.

National level funding mechanisms in all four nations that require areas with variable levels of creative, cultural and heritage infrastructures to compete against one another are burdening under-resourced local authorities and are demonstrably failing to address between and within region disparities.

Under-resourced local authorities and sector organisations may lack the capacity to prepare competitive bids, diverting ever-diminishing time and resource away from their core activities. On the other hand, areas with well-established creative, cultural and heritage infrastructures appear to have a competitive advantage, leaving areas with less established infrastructures struggling to secure funding. This exacerbates disparities and prevents a more balanced development of the ecosystem.

Agglomeration benefits associated with clusters and micro-clusters are important in the development of the creative industries, and competition-based models of funding can encourage innovation within them. However, it does not appear that public policy is doing enough to redistribute growth in the creative industries to the wider creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

The competitive nature of funding mechanisms can discourage collaboration between regions. Instead of sharing best practices and working together to address common challenges, regions are sometimes focusing on outcompeting each other, which can stifle innovation and collective progress.

Some stakeholders within the ecosystem are already making efforts to direct funding to underserved areas through progressive methodologies, but competition-based models of still funding predominate. It is clear that more collaborative and redistributive funding practices are now needed to help address pervasive regional and demographic disparities associated with the ecosystem.

National governments should now develop new non-competition-based models of funding for the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem to support places with comparatively low levels of investment and infrastructures. These mechanisms should be multi-year and flexible enough to meet the needs of local policy priorities.

Competition-based models of funding could still be deployed into comparable areas to drive innovation and in certain circumstances.

In a challenging fiscal environment, more joined up alignment of resources presents an opportunity to make targeted public funding go further than before.

There are many examples of stakeholders from within the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem already collaborating in places to bring extraordinary programmes and activities to life for the benefit of people in local places.

Nonetheless, more joined-up partnership working between multiple cross-sector agencies with a stake in a region could lead to more co-ordinated and well-round decision-making associated with the ecosystem.

This could include resource optimisation through the pooling of funds and expertise; the harmonisation of investment timelines; enhanced day-to-day coordination and strategic longer-term planning; and increased local accountability for investments.

Crucial to these partnerships will be the development of new governance structures designed to bring previously isolated agencies together to problem solve and work together towards shared missions.

Public inclusion in decision-making processes associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem is still in its infancy across the UK.

However, there are pockets of innovation taking place within the ecosystem that are already beginning to point towards several potential benefits.

The public can interpret ‘culture, creativity and heritage’ very differently to sector stakeholders but nonetheless believe that community engagement and inclusivity are essential features of good decision-making that can lead to more accessible and inclusive cultural offerings.

Decision makers within existing tiers of local and regional government are increasingly aware of the value of developing more inclusive decision-making approaches, but there appear to be several barriers to making this meaningful and sustainable in practice.

National, regional and local decision makers should work with ecosystem stakeholders to develop new mechanisms that invite the public into a range of different decision-making processes, for example, to co-design local cultural plans and participate in the setting of budgets.

Policy Recommendations

More specific recommendations organised into four spatial layers: International, National, Regional, Local. They are an extrapolation of the Policy Principles into action.

International

e.g. Global collaboration, foreign policy, international trade

National

e.g. UK Government, devolved governments, cross-border

Regional

e.g. Pan-regional, regional, multi-/combined/unitary authority

Local

e.g. Local authority, community, individual

Local

e.g. Local authority, community, individual

Local governments are critical stakeholders in the cultivation of the creative, cultural and heritage life of the nation.

However, a crisis in the overall spending envelope for local authorities has seen a widening gap between what they are expected to deliver across a range of policy areas and what is feasible within over-stretched budgets.

Whilst local authorities are increasingly aware of the cross-cutting ways in which the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem is able support in the realisation of local policy priorities, a lack of resources makes it near impossible for many to realise their ambitions.

Without meaningful intervention to revive the general health of local government across the UK, national efforts to support individual parts ecosystem are unlikely to deliver inclusive growth.

We join a host of other voices across the UK in urging the UK Government to redress the underfunding of local authorities to enable them to meet their statutory obligations across health and social care, education and transport.

There are limited legal requirements for local authorities to provide creative, cultural and heritage services in the UK. At present, only library services are covered by a statutory requirement through the Libraries and Museums Act 1964.

There is an unevenness in the scale and quality of creative, cultural and heritage services that local authorities are able to provide in different parts of the UK and this, in turn, contributes to the uneven patchwork of provision and infrastructure associated with the ecosystem.

Financial pressures are also forcing some local authorities to make difficult decisions about the creative, cultural and heritage assets and services they maintain.

Local government associations in each of the four UK nations should instigate a formal review into the role that local authorities are best placed to play in the delivery of high-quality creative, cultural and heritage services.

Such a review could lead to the development of guidance for local authorities on delivering key creative, cultural and heritage services. It could also explore how a local creative, cultural and heritage sectors plan (see below) might help turn these expectations into action locally.

Planning and strategic development associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem varies considerably between regions and nations of the UK.

However, plans and strategies are proving to be vital tools in aiding local authorities to develop a cohesive and locally informed vision for building out infrastructures, as well as attracting investment into their areas for the ecosystem.

National governments should empower local authorities to develop a statutory ‘creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem plan’ setting out how they will support the ecosystem in their area. The requirement for a plan, should come with a commensurate uplift to local government finance settlements to make this possible.

National governments and arm’s length bodies should make nation-specific guidance available to all local authorities on potential approaches to the development, delivery and evaluation of high-quality plans. The guidance should place an emphasis on moving from ‘outputs’ to ‘outcomes’; public participation in plan co-design and decision-making; and appropriate evaluation methodologies.

Combined authorities in England should pay particular regard to the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem plans developed by constituent local authorities when developing their own regional strategies, and/or negotiating future devolution deals with the UK Government (including any enhanced cultural devolution deals as set out here). UK Government should only agree to situate new powers and responsibilities for culture, creativity and heritage with combined authorities that can clearly demonstrate how constituent local authority plans have informed their regional strategies.

An increasingly wide range of stakeholders both within and outside the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem, see the potential benefits that investments in cultural infrastructures can bring to local sustainable development goals.

Building on the recommendations of the 2019 Cultural Cities Enquiry, we now ask national arm’s length bodies to establish or extend programmes to aid more areas that want one, to set up and sustain a creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem decision-making forum – or ‘Cultural Compacts’.

The next iteration of Culture Compacts should be specifically built to convene stakeholders that are usually excluded from decision-making associated with culture, including: the creative industries (including micro and small creative businesses); the night-time and leisure sectors; the workforce (including freelancers); and the local public.

Private sector stakeholders are playing an important role in bolstering the influence and capacity of Cultural Compacts. All Cultural Compacts should make a concerted effort to engage and include representatives from the wider private sectors in their area, for example property developers and Business Improvement Districts.  

Cultural Compacts provide an ideal vehicle to support local authorities to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem cultural plans for their area (see recommendation).

For some places, convening ecosystem stakeholders in this way will be an important first step towards a more coordinated approach to local provision. For others, bringing existing networks and bodies together will open up opportunities to test new deliberative decision-making processes, coordinate cross-sector and muti-agency programming and explore more sustainable operating models.

The New Towns Code should explicitly encourage developer teams to make suitable provision for creative, cultural and heritage infrastructures, including physical assets (such as galleries, museums and libraries and permanent workspace for the creative workforce) into the master planning processes. This will help replace and maintain accessible and sustainable cultural infrastructures that have been lost to many communities in recent years.

The New Towns Taskforce overseeing the UK Government’s programme of work should be expanded to include representation from arm’s length bodies associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem (e.g. those sponsored by DCMS) and independent experts in culture-led place shaping.

Expected future residents of New Towns should be brought into decision-making associated with creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem infrastructures as early as possible and on an ongoing basis, including in the pre-planning, delivery and post-build phases of development.

Public involvement in decision-making associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem is still in its infancy. Nonetheless, there are some innovative programmes running in communities up and down the country.

The public can interpret ‘decision-making’ associated with creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem locally as ‘having a say’ as opposed to participating in formal governance processes. The public want to have different intensities of decision-making engagement depending on a range of factors. Some want to see local decision makers and experts in the field engaging with them more transparently about how decisions are made, but do not want to take on decision-making responsibilities themselves.

The public we spoke to feel that what is programmed or supported locally is best decided at the local authority level, as opposed to the regional (e.g. combined authority) or national level. This is due to regional and national policymakers being seen as too distant from them or a lack of understanding about how regional governance mechanisms operate.

Nonetheless, groups from marginalised and under-represented groups appear to be more eager to participate in local decision-making associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem – potentially because they are currently uncatered for by local cultural offerings.

More research needs to be done to better understand which tier of governance the public might meaningfully contribute to and what enabling policies will be needed to break down barriers to opportunities for those from underrepresented groups.

National arm’s length bodies and grant giving bodies – who are already supporting initiative in this space – should come together to fund a new national programme led by policy specialists, researchers and the public to pilot new decision-making forums at different tiers of government and spatial scales.

This should involve consideration of pilots at street, town, local authority (which could contribute to the co-creation of a creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem plan – see here), regional (which could include the co-creation of a Culture Forum – see here) and national levels. In-person, digital and hybrid decision-making activities, as well as the types of mechanisms and platforms that work best for certain communities, should also be explored.

These pilots should also test models across the devolved nations, developing a supportive knowledge exchange to monitor and evaluate different models and approaches.

Regional

e.g. Pan-regional, regional, multi-/combined/unitary authority

Combined Authorities in England are supporting local authorities in their area to work collectively, rather than competitively, to develop the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem across a wider than local area.

However, these forms of regional approaches are not yet developed within Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales for the creative, cultural and heritage sectors.

Areas such as Dundee, Fife and the wider Tayside region in Scotland, as well as most of Northern Ireland, feel they could benefit from more coordinated regional decision-making structures, to ensure local areas are working together to support their ecosystems.

The devolved governments should work with local government to develop and mature regional decision-making structures for to the creative, cultural and heritage sectors. Governments should ensure these are adequately resourced, do not place additional burdens on stretched local authority teams and align – or ensure culture is better positioned within – pre-existing regional governance structures (e.g. City Deals).

Any such structures should continue to build legitimacy by including the public and workforce in key decision-making moments alongside industry players, harnessing the political capital of local leaders as necessary.

There is a growing appetite in all four UK nations to explore pan-regional approaches to the development of the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem – approaches that span more than one region. Work is already beginning to point towards the potential value-add that central government backed pan-regional working can bring about.

In England, ‘One Creative North’ looks set to connect city regions across the northern parts of England into a ‘creative corridor’. In Wales, there is growing ambition to develop a Cardiff – Newport – Bristol ‘triangle’ which would bring forward an important multi-nation collaboration.

National governments should build on the momentum being generated by existing and proposed programmes by setting out a clear plan for pan-regional coordination that is backed up by meaningful national level support. This support should be contingent on ‘creative corridors’ explicitly driving towards UK Government’s new national missions, with a particular emphasis on breaking down barriers to opportunity.

A refreshed Inter-Ministerial Group (see recommendation here) could explore partnership-based approaches for multi-national pan-regional programmes.

Leaders of new pan-regional approaches, should pay close attention to building legitimacy for their programmes by securing buy-in from metro mayors and elected regional leaders as well as micro and small organisations, the workforce and the general public from the outset and as part of all key decision-making moments.

Current and future combined authorities in England are embarking on a long-term journey towards increased devolution and localised decision-making. Now is the time to begin building a new tier of regional governance capacity to bring these new decision-making units together, to maximise outcomes for residents.

Building on the informal meetings already taking place between senior officers covering the creative, cultural and heritage portfolios within the ‘M12’, combined authorities should establish an officer-led, pan-regional network incorporating elements of democratic decision-making.

The network will provide a regular platform for combined authorities to discuss priority policy areas, facilitate knowledge exchange (e.g. cluster development, planning and zoning, safeguarding infrastructure, finance and operating models and participation and inclusion); spotlight collective successes stories on the national and international stage; and consider pan-regional commissioning and procurement opportunities.

The network should be formally constituted, be supported by an independent secretariat and incorporate elements of democratic decision-making where appropriate. Recognising the considerable imbalance in infrastructures (including those associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem) in play between different combined authorities, particular attention should be paid to creating an equitable network for all participating regions.

The network should establish a reciprocal engagement with UK Government departments and arm’s length bodies. In time, the network could transition into a new specialist advisory body to the UK Government’s proposed Council of Regions and Nations to ensure that the creative, cultural and heritage sectors are appropriately positioned within evolving national debates and constitutional settlements.

As increasingly well-established regional governance structures, confidence is building in the potential for combined authorities to take on more decision-making powers and responsibilities for the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem in their areas.

A small number of combined authorities should now work with UK Government and DCMS arm’s length bodies to test an advanced cultural devolution deal.

These vanguard areas should receive all funding that would have come into the combined authority from multiple DCMS arm’s length bodies over a financial year, to create one ‘single settlement’ pot ringfenced for the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem. As soon as national budget cycles allow and combined authorities are ready (expected 2025/26), the arrangement should be based on a multi-year settlement.

These combined authorities should be given responsibilities for setting priorities for the distribution of investments associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem across their area.

The arm’s length principle that currently exists at the national level should be maintained at the combined authority level, where possible. Combined authorities should set out a clear plan to maintain the arm’s length principle through an appropriate structure, with support from national arm’s length bodies who have expertise in this area.

Staff from DCMS and national arm’s length bodies should also be seconded into vanguard combined authorities to ensure national level expertise is ‘crowded in’ to new advanced devolution deal areas.

Combined authorities wishing to take this recommendation forward, should be required to establish a Culture Forum (see recommendation here) to ensure that all parts of the combined authority (including the general public and workforce) are represented in key decision-making moments.

Combined authorities should be required to evidence that the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem plans (see recommendation here) of their constituent local authorities have been incorporated into any regional plans and strategies.

Combined authorities should be accountable for upholding any new Cultural Rights that accrue to the public in time (see recommendation here).

As combined authorities take on more powers and responsibilities, attention should turn to building appropriate regional governance mechanisms.

Individual combined authorities should establish a Culture Forum taking a ‘whole place’ approach by bringing representatives from all parts of the region together with other sectors and policy areas, including health and social care, transport and education.

Critically, a Culture Forum should incorporate civil society groups and members of the public, identified through an open sortition process, to ensure that a representative sample of the regional population is part of all decision-making processes.

The Culture Forum should be a nexus for developing coherent regional strategies, acting as an interlocutor between commercial businesses, local government policy levers and national funding bodies.

The forum could recommend policy to the combined authority in areas such as business and operating model development, and working with national arm’s length bodies and grant giving bodies to advocate for research & innovation funding and support.

The Culture Forum could, in time, participate in decision-making associated with the distribution of funds associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

The Metro Mayor (or equivalent elected regional leader) and a prominent industry figure based in the region, should co-chair the Culture Forum to ensure that the body has both a democratic and sectoral accountability.

National

e.g. UK Government, devolved governments, cross-border

As part of stated ambitions to ‘reset’ relations between the four UK nations, Ministers, Cabinet Secretaries and Secretaries of State covering relevant portfolios in each of the four nations, should make the most of opportunities to collaborate and develop a shared vision for the UK’s creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem. 

This should be achieved through an update to the terms of reference for the existing Culture and Creative Industries IMG, and the equivalent body for officials, to ensure it is providing a meaningful space for joint working on objectives of national significance.

This could pave the way for closer four nations working, including consideration of the potential delivery of some of our other recommendations, including:

  • An agreement about how any new funding mechanisms that remain at the UK Government level to support the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem, and that are to be distributed to the devolved governments are designed and distributed (see recommendation here).
  • The coordination of the development of a new approach to mapping cultural infrastructure in different parts of the nation (see recommendation here).
  • An exploration of the opportunities for pan-regional and cross-border collaborations e.g. in the Cardiff, Newport, Bristol triangle and UK cultural mega events and festivals (see recommendation here).
  • The building of a UK level export and investment platform for the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem (see recommendation here).

Income and financial incentives associated with the UK’s creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem are derived from a wide variety of sources (e.g. earned income, grants, investments, loans, tax reliefs) – testament to the broad spectrum of potential outcomes that it can bring about for stakeholders operating across different tiers of governance, parts of the economy and wider civil society too.

However, the positive outcomes accruing from the existing ecosystem, and the financial model that underpins it, are not being felt in those parts of the country that could benefit from investments most. This is partly because of the markedly uneven distribution of the infrastructures and opportunities associated with the ecosystem across the UK.

At the same time, national and local governments have been rapidly reducing their investments in the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem over a several years – often in response to austerity policies set at the UK level. Relevant national arm’s length bodies have seen their budgets reduced and non-state grant giving bodies report an increased demand which they can’t meet.

‘Culture’ is a devolved competence of the devolved governments of the UK. However, the complexity of the ecosystem, the ways that funding flows into the ecosystem and the outcomes that flow out of it, means that policies implemented at UK level as well in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, can have a tangible impact on the ecosystem as a whole.

UK Government and the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should now work together urgently to build up a considerably fuller picture of the funding associated with the UK’s creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

This review should move beyond an assessment of national arm’s length bodies in isolation and bring the private sector (including foreign director investment – see recommendation here), trusts and foundations and local government funding into scope. The UK City of Culture programme and cultural mega events should also fall into scope of the review to enable their effectiveness in delivering against national policy objectives to be considered in the round.

The review should apply a ‘place first’ principle to allow for a more accurate picture of what funding streams are currently flowing into which areas. This will aid decision makers and local communities to develop more sustainable operating models that respond to very different contexts. It will also enable the development of a new set of methodologies that could inform where investments are prioritised (see recommendation here).

There are now several ‘Data Observatories’ associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem emerging at the regional level. This is an indication of the growing interest in, and capability of, the ecosystem to synthesise complex data sets that can inform policy.

However, multiple initiatives could lead to fragmented data sets that are not easily comparable across regions and nations, which could also risk compounding entrenched understandings of what constitutes cultural infrastructure and exacerbate regional inequities.

Drawing on a new taxonomy for identifying infrastructures (see recommendations here) and a review of the funding landscape (see recommendation here), the UK Government should set about building a comprehensive map of the UK’s creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

The data collated should be managed by a national creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem data observatory, which could be established as a new public body, or be woven into an existing one.

The data should be made accessible to national, regional and local stakeholders through a series of open-source data dashboards that make it possible for anyone to understand the ecosystem and inform local decision-making in their locality.

Data sets without analysis is meaningless for most people. It is therefore important that any national data observatory is able to commission reports on findings, to help inform policymaking processes.

The UK Government should establish a dedicated team bringing high level expertise from across DCMS, DSIT, MHCLG, the Cabinet Office and their equivalent departments in the devolved nations, data specialists from the combined authorities, local government associations, trade unions, representatives from relevant arm’s length bodies and higher education institutions.

Local communities are undoubtably best placed to map the infrastructures that are most important to them, particularly if we are to develop more nuanced understandings of what constitutes a creative, cultural and/or heritage asset.

Understandings of what constitutes ‘cultural infrastructure’ differs across stakeholder groups, as well as from place to place. Areas with less physical and/or traditional infrastructure or historically low levels of investment are not cultural ‘cold spots’. The ‘Everyday Creativity’ taking place quietly in homes and community settings, in a voluntary and not-for-profit context, also rely on infrastructures that are often unnoticed.

Some local governments have already begun to audit cultural infrastructures; in some cases, this is enabling policymakers to make more strategic investments. However, limitations in existing taxonomies means that intangible, less traditional, subcultural or non-cultural institution infrastructures, that play a considerable role in the lives of people and places, are not necessarily being considered in current mapping exercises.

In line with the principles of devolution, it is for national and regional governments to set the policy priorities associated with infrastructures in their own contexts, but there is a clear opportunity to develop a new taxonomy for cultural infrastructure that could be applied in all nations and all regions of the UK, to enable well-targeted interventions.

Wales is home to a range of geographies and demographics, and experiences significant within-region disparities when it comes to the distribution of cultural infrastructures. Welsh Government has already stated an intention to better map both tangible and intangible creative, cultural and heritage assets as part of its recent consultation on the draft Priorities for Culture in Wales 2024 – 2030. Wales is now well placed to lead the co-design of a new taxonomy for identifying cultural infrastructure, which should include experts, the public and sector representatives.

The programme should, where feasible, seek to bring representatives from the regions and nations of the UK together as part of the co-design process, in-keeping with the spirit of four nations working. Such a project could be monitored at the political level by a refreshed Creative and Cultural Inter-Ministerial Group (see recommendation here), and managed by a four nations working group made up of civil servants from national and regional governments. Work emanating from this activity would naturally feed into the work of any new National Data Observatory (see Recommendation here).

Freelance, self-employed and atypical workers (‘freelancers’) operating within the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem are under-supported by state level protections and workers rights. This needs to be urgently addressed by UK Government through the ‘New Deal for Working People’ policy agenda.

At the same time, freelancers experience something of a postcode lottery when it comes to the level of support and infrastructure they can access locally. Whilst some freelancers live and work in a specific place, others engage in work peripatetically or even move home frequently to maintain portfolio careers – including across the four UK nations. This means that inequity could be exacerbated if devolution is not carefully deployed.

Increased local decision-making associated with the ecosystem to localities is likely to have very different impacts on freelancers depending on the subsector they work in and where they are based. Devolved decision-making will also not address the structural barriers that freelancers experience, which are primarily the purview of UK Government (through tax and employment legislation, for example).

A new national body should therefore be established to ensure that freelancers are able to access support wherever they are across the UK. The body should adopt a federated regional structure incorporating chapters for each of the nations and regions of the UK. The body should provide freelancers with a connection to support in the regions they are primarily based and working within, whilst also providing access to a national platform to advocate for their needs with policymakers.

The body could collate a database of the new decision-making platforms being established around the country as devolution evolves and provide training and support to freelancers on taking up a place on them effectively.

In time, the body could work with our proposed new National Data Observatory (see recommendation here) to coordinate data on freelance workers.

Addressing inequities caused by an uneven distribution of the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem is felt by many within the ecosystem to be a matter of Social Justice.

However, Cultural Rights are not widely recognised within public policy discourse and are a neglected area of Human Rights law in general in the UK. Significantly, there is a noticeable deficit in public policy concerned with Cultural Rights at the local and regional levels.

As powers associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem are transferred to local leaders, consideration must now be given to how commensurate responsibilities to uphold Cultural Rights might flow with them. National oversight mechanisms will need to be established to ensure that national governments are not inadvertently outsourcing international and national obligations to local leaders, without opportunities for appropriate recourse.

A consultation into Cultural Rights in the UK should bring legal and constitutional experts together with citizens, sectoral stakeholders and civil society more widely, to co-design a new framework to help individual citizens, communities and local governments (wherever they are based in the UK), to express and uphold their Cultural Rights.

This could ultimately provide the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem and citizens at large, with a way to challenge persistent regional disparities through legal routes.

Scottish Government is well placed to coordinate this work in partnership with the other three UK nations, because it has already begun to explore how Cultural Rights at the international levels can be protected domestically and articulated in local contexts.

There is real potential for a new wave of place-based regeneration funding to harness the transformative potential of creativity, culture and heritage and support the social, economic and environmental development of local places and spaces.

There is a widespread belief that blanket competition-based models of funding have contributed to the inequitable distribution of the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem across the nations and regions of the UK. National governments will need to take a different approach to produce a different outcome.

Following a review of the funding landscape (see recommendation N2) and the development of a four-nations infrastructure map, national governments will have a clearer understanding of how the ecosystem is currently distributed. This will enable policymakers to identify areas characterised by less cultural infrastructure and historically low levels of investment.

National governments should develop a transparent methodology for distributing new longer-term and multi-year funds to areas based on need, not competition, that will maximise investments and unburden local authority teams. There are several methodologies already out in the field that take a ‘place first’ approach that could be enhanced and deployed across a variety of contexts.

The new fund would be structured to facilitate the development of local ‘cultural infrastructures’ as defined by a wider definition (see recommendation here).

The fund should be flexible enough to deliver a blend of both capital and revenue grants, designed to deliver physical infrastructure, programme activity and place-based capacity as necessary in different areas. This will ensure that places have the chance to prioritise investments based on local need, as opposed to benchmarking for nationally set funding criteria.

The new funds would not necessarily require ‘new’ money. A partial harmonisation of several existing pots associated with the ecosystem that are currently distributed via competition, and/or by bringing funds that are not designed specifically for the ecosystem, but that are nonetheless drawn down for it.

Such an approach for this fund would not replace wider competition-based models of funding that could still be deployed into certain areas to drive innovation.

To ensure public investments are protected, local authorities identified for funding should ensure they have developed a clear ‘culture, cultural and heritage ecosystem plan’ (see L3) that sets out the vision, implementation and monitoring of the funding approach, supported by the local Cultural Compact (see here).

To support harmonisation of funds and their delivery on the ground, National arm’s length bodies associated with the ecosystem should develop national and/or regional ‘one-stop-shops’ for local authorities across different parts of the UK identified for investment, in-keeping with a multi-agency approach.

International

e.g. Global collaboration, foreign policy, international trade

The UK is rightly seen as a powerhouse in culture, creativity and heritage on the global stage. Nonetheless, the UK is some way behind other nations when it comes to effectively coordinating decision-making associated with our sectors across national, regional and local tiers of government.

A new international network should be established to enable UK stakeholders to learn from other countries around the world, about how they organise and involve citizens in decision-making processes concerned with our sectors at different spatial scales.

The UK often projects soft power through its world-leading creative, cultural and heritage assets to achieve foreign policy objectives. A platform of this kind could help flip that story and open up new channels for more reciprocal cultural relations, that would demonstrate the UK’s respect for the expertise held by other countries operating in more devolved contexts.

If devolution is to become a central pillar of the UK Government’s policy agenda, the ongoing empowerment of local communities should now form part of the story that the UK shares about itself outwardly.

Early engagements we’ve had with international partners, co-convened with British Council, suggests that there is appetite for a new International Cultural Devolution Networks.

The export of goods and services and inward investment potential associated with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem is significant, and UK Government has already identified sectors within the ecosystem as a priority for the incoming Industrial Strategy.

However, it is currently unclear how the regions and nations of the UK will have a say in setting the strategic direction for developing overseas market opportunities and investment relationships.

As part of the UK Government’s commitment to championing the trading opportunities for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the UK Government’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT) should establish a better platform for engaging these decision makers in export and investment opportunities.

This should include developing a more publicly available sector trade plan, DBT participation in Cultural Compacts (see recommendation here) and combined authorities regional Culture Forums (see recommendation here). Work in this space could be aligned with the DBT objectives to engage with new sectoral focused trade agreements and encouraging more equitable inward investment across regions.

Part 5: Next Steps