The Future of Cultural Devolution in the UK​

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was founded in 1956 from the will of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, an Armenian philanthropist with British citizenship who lived and died in Portugal. The Foundation’s headquarters are in Portugal, and a UK Branch was established in 1956.

The Foundation works with organisations to identify needs and consider novel and innovative ways to tackle them. The Foundation is not a funder in the traditional sense, seeing its approach as “interactive, rather than reactive or proactive.” In that way, it acts as the catalyst for new initiatives and supports the sharing of learning to facilitate change – the reason why the foundation is a core funding partner on this programme.

The Foundation’s purpose is to improve the quality of life for all through art, charity, science and education. Its 2023-27 strategy includes six multi-year grant-making programmes, including Access to Culture and Democracy and Civil Society. The Access to Culture strand stimulates participation in culture to address deep-rooted inequality of access. Through grant-making, partnerships and other cultural initiatives, the Foundation bolsters the civic role of the arts, with community engagement and co-creation at the heart of the work it supports.

In 1956, on the back of work by a committee to research the UK’s post-war cultural needs, the UK Branch of the Foundation published its ‘Help for the Arts’ report which made ground-breaking recommendations for arts policy. Since then, the UK Branch has continued to investigate issues, make recommendations and disseminate its influential work to policymakers and the sector, including via the seminal ‘Arts in Schools’ book in the 1980s and a reimagined report in 2023, and the Inquiry and Learning reports from its Civic Role of Arts Organisations programme.

Themes of citizen empowerment and citizen leadership drive the Foundation’s cultural grant-making today; and increasing access to culture through community-led approaches remains a priority, an agenda that is shared with the report findings.

Funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and their passion for a co-designed cultural ecosystem, has helped the partners connect with innovative programmes here in the UK and internationally through roundtables co-convened with the British Council.

The Arts Council is a major funder of the arts, museums and libraries, distributing grant-in-aid and National Lottery funding across England. From 2023 to 2026, they are set to invest over £467 million of public money and an estimated £250 million from The National Lottery each year to support the sector and to deliver on its vision. Arts Council England funds just under 1,000 organisations in its National Portfolio, as well as distributing:

• £116.8 million of National Lottery Project Grant funding, including a strand of over £100k to fund large scale ‘Place Partnership’ projects;
• £14.4 million of National Lottery funding each year through the Developing Your Creative Practice fund, supporting individual creative practitioners;
• £50 million in Development Funds that support a range of place-based activity, including capital investment and UK City of Culture programmes.

As the biggest public investors of the sector after local authorities, the success and sustainability of the cultural sector depends on effective and strategic partnerships between Arts Council England, councils and mayoral combined authorities. Despite a challenging financial backdrop, Arts Council England continue to work with partners in places to strategically tackle the challenging economic landscape with innovative programmes such as Creative People and Places.

Arts Council England has shared unprecedented sector knowledge and a deep understanding of how devolution and increased local decision making has evolved in England over time and how this has impacted on Arm’s Length Bodies.

Art Fund is an independent UK charity that has been connecting museums, people and art since its inception in 1903. Through the support of donors and funders, and its 135,000-strong National Art Pass membership, Art Fund provides millions of pounds in grants every year to support museums, galleries and historic houses. This funding enables cultural organisations to invest in their art collections, keep them accessible to the public and inspire future generations to engage with culture. Art Fund priorities span cultural funding, including philanthropy, increasing access to museums and improving cultural education for children and young people.

The charity’s annual Museum of the Year prize champions the work of UK museums and galleries. Through policy, research and advocacy, Art Fund is taking an evidence-led approach to championing the positive impact of museums on communities and economies at central and local government levels. Art Fund’s recent YouGov survey revealed that 89% of UK adults think museums are important to UK culture, and 76% believe that having a local museum adds value to their area. And Art Fund’s Museum Directors research showed that 56% of museums receive local authority funding and almost one third of those museums have seen funding decrease or stop altogether.

The imperative to address the challenges facing the museum sector has driven the organisation’s involvement in the programme. Art Fund has helped the partners to explore the some of the core themes through the perspective of the museums and galleries sector, including through senior leaders who run them. Insights from museum and gallery professionals led to a sector-specific insight paper, which explores the levels of engagement between independent organisations and local authorities.

Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales is a charity that runs seven nationally significant museums and a collection centre across Wales. Their collections span history, archaeology, natural sciences, textiles, art, industry and much more. They are funded directly by the devolved Welsh Government and operate as a public arm’s length body representative within the Social Justice and Culture portfolio.

The work of Amgueddfa Cymru is a critical part of the museums ecology in Wales and the wider UK and they regularly participate in partnerships and projects internationally too. The organisation puts community engagement at the core of its work with a guiding principle that the national collection “belongs to everyone and is here for everyone to use”. They are custodians and champions of diverse Welsh culture, and address issues of social justice by ensuring “poverty, social disadvantage, ill health and disability are not barriers to participation” through programmes in museums, out in communities and digitally too. They are the biggest provider of education outside of the classroom in Wales and are a part of the Museum Association’s ‘Anti Racist Museums’ Programme

This unique position managing local and regional relationships, alongside those at both the devolved nation and UK-wide levels, has brought a valuable perspective into the programme. Amgueddfa Cymru has been pivotal in connecting the programme partners with the rich creative, cultural and heritage sectors in Wales – from the Capital cities and urban centres to the rural communities and post-industrial towns.

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) is a membership body that represents some of the UK’s most popular, iconic and important visitor attractions, helping to support their excellence and growth. The membership spans museums, galleries, palaces, castles, cathedrals, zoos, historic houses, heritage sites, gardens and leisure attractions. Members operate over 2,200 sites, hosting over 119 million domestic and overseas visitors each year – around 28% of the visits made annually in the UK.

ALVA was established in 1990 to fill a perceived gap in the framework of national tourism representative bodies. As well as acting as a convenor for its members, enabling them to better collaborate, ALVA represents its members to politicians, policymakers, industry and the public, securing the support the sector needs to flourish. In addition, ALVA provides training, benchmarking and advocacy support to members with a view to improving the visitor experience.

Co-operation, networking and information sharing are at the heart of ALVA’s work, as is a focus on the valuable contributions these cultural and heritage assets make at a place-based, national and international level.

ALVA has brought over 33 years of UK-wide policy development and advocacy experience to the programme, including insights into the value of local visitor economies, the need for investment in the infrastructure supporting cultural and heritage attractions and the importance of high-quality provision, both for audiences and local communities to be able to sustain the UK’s international reputation as a cultural and heritage powerhouse.

Belfast City Council

With a population of over 330,000, Belfast City Council is the local authority responsible for providing public services in Northern Ireland’s capital city. Its responsibilities include tourism, culture and heritage, as well as the social, economic and physical regeneration of the city. It is the largest local government district in Northern Ireland, serving a city of two halves – some of the most affluent communities in the country and some of the most deprived.

Belfast City Council operates within a complex, and often uncertain, devolved context, with national responsibility for culture sitting with the Northern Ireland Assembly. Over the last decade, national political leadership has been intermittent and which has led to a reduced focus on cultural policy and persistent low levels of national arts funding. Despite this challenging backdrop, Belfast City Council have continued to prioritise creativity, its role in inclusive and sustainable growth and in place-shaping. 

Belfast has a strong industrial and maritime heritage and recent and accelerated growth in the creative and cultural sector, Belfast City Council’s Cultural Strategy (2020 – 2030) builds on these rich assets. In 2017, Belfast began the bidding process to become a European Capital of Culture and embarked on a cultural conversation with residents. The council’s cultural strategy builds on that conversation, making community engagement, and community value, central to its success. From Belfast’s year of culture in 2024, to its designation as a UNESCO City of Music, the city’s cultural strategy recognises the value of culture-led inclusive growth, community engagement and the importance of place. Cultural investment is aligned to priorities in the plan, providing many cultural organisations with multi-year funding. 

In recent years, Belfast has boosted inward tourism and investment, through the Titanic Belfast and it has become a hub for the film and high-end TV industries with Belfast’s Harbour Studios, and the surrounding countryside has been used in blockbuster productions. In the Autumn, Studio Ulster, a state-of-the-art virtual production studio will open at Belfast Harbour Studios, cementing the city’s reputation as an important creative centre with a growing creative economy. The City Council is also developing the Belfast Destination Hub, which will bring together these different assets, build on the city’s growing visitor economy and share the “Belfast Story” with the world.

Belfast City Council were instrumental in bringing the Northern Ireland perspective to the programme. They made connections with the arts, culture and heritage community, shared their perspective as a local authority working in a unique devolved context and, alongside the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, helped us explore the appetite for more community involvement in citizen decision making in different parts of Northern Ireland.

Wigan Council is the second most populous borough of Greater Manchester and the largest geographically, with a footprint of 77 square miles. Situated at the most westerly point of Greater Manchester, Wigan Council is a constituent borough of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and also has has historic links to Lancashire.

The council represents a population of over 320,000 residents, which is expected to grow to nearly 350,000 by 2030. While two thirds of the borough is covered by countryside, the council area is also home to the towns of Wigan, Leigh and Ashton-in-Makerfield. While the borough faces many challenges, including high levels of deprivation and worklessness, residents are proud of their communities, greenspaces and cultural heritage.  

For many years, Wigan Council has been at the vanguard of collaborative, asset-based public service reform, best exemplified through the creation of the ‘Wigan Deal’, a form of social contract between the council and its residents – inviting them to commit to support their local community in exchange for the provision of services and improvements by the council. The council’s new Progress with Unity plan builds on the work of ‘The Deal’ putting community partnership at its heart and seeks to create fair opportunities for all at a place and neighbourhood level. Its innovative approaches to community engagement provide a valuable context to the programme’s consideration of local decision-making in culture.

Research carried out by Nesta identified Wigan as home to one of England’s top 20 largest creative clusters. An estimated 7,000 people are employed in the creative industries in the area, and Wigan’s Cultural Manifesto – The Fire Within – emerged from deep engagement with local community groups, creators and cultural organisations. The Manifesto is firmly embedded in council plans to improve health and wellbeing, grow the local economy and boost tourism. As an Arts Council Levelling Up for Culture and Priority Place, Wigan now has the strategic attention and financial support to develop culture-led place-shaping, including funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the development of Haigh Hall and Park. 

The University of Warwick, based in the West Midlands, and has international reach and impact. 

The university is globally renowned for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation and for its links with industry – including the creative industries. As well as housing the Warwick Arts Centre, the university provides world-class research and teaching through its Faculty of Arts which has forged strong links with cultural partners locally, regionally and nationally, including flagship cultural institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

In 2023, the university published its own Warwick’s Culture strategy, announced a local Coventry Culture Works partnership and launched a place-based research and culture funding call to enable “Warwick researchers to work with cultural organisations, creatives, public and third sector organisations to co-create and deliver research and impact projects that address regional, local and community challenges.”

University of Warwick’s contribution to the programme comes via a team of experts based at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, who seek to better understand the “power, possibility and value” of the creative and cultural sectors. In 2021, the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) rated the Centre as number one in the UK for research power. Expertise spans cultural management, cultural and media policy, media and communications, culture and development, creative and social enterprise, digital cultures and broader research dedicated to the creative and media industries. A key research theme for the Centre is the role of localities, cities and other environments in culture, including understanding a sense of place, access to and participation in culture and place-based cultural resources and infrastructure. 

Researchers from the Centre have brought findings from across a range of research areas into the programme, including: potential models of increased localised decision-making; the impact and opportunities of devolution for the creative workforce; and have shared their knowledge of City of Culture and other major cultural events. In particular, the programme supports the Centre’s interests in “how public policies for culture promote democracy, as much as creativity, and how creativity and democracy are related in major cities as well as non-urban communities”.

The School of Performance and Cultural Industries had it’s origins in Bretton Hall College, near Wakefield which was founded in 1947 and played a leading role as a training college for teachers of music, art and drama as well as in the disciplines of art, music, education, social studies and drama in the second half of the twentieth century. The school became part of the University of Leeds in 2001.

The University of Leeds, founded in 1904, is one of the largest and most prestigious higher education institutions in the UK. Located in West Yorkshire, the university is renowned for its excellence in research, teaching, and its strong links with industry and global partners. As a member of the Russell Group, Leeds excels in a broad range of disciplines, with a particular focus on interdisciplinary research that addresses major global challenges.

The university’s mission is to create knowledge that has real-world impact, making a difference locally and globally. It has a diverse community of over 38,000 students from more than 170 countries, and its research is internationally recognised, with Leeds ranked consistently among top universities worldwide.

With initiatives like the Cultural Institute, the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries, and Heritage, the Centre for Cultural Policy, The Cultural Value Centre, the latter two being based on the school of performance and Cultural Industries. Leeds plays a vital role in nurturing creativity and advancing the ecosystem. What all these centres share is a commitment to enhance collaboration between researchers, students, and external cultural partners, focusing on projects that leverage the arts and humanities to address societal issues and improve public engagement with culture. They work across sectors, from theatre and literature to digital innovation and heritage conservation, and  work in partnership with other disciplines including civil engineering and public safety initiatives connected to public art, medicine, using the arts to explore issues around health and well being, earth and environment, developing community strategies through participatory art.

The School of Performance and Cultural Industries sits within the University’s Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Culture a hub for creative and cultural research.

The University’s Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Culture is a hub for creative and cultural research. The school research is characterised by its interdisciplinary breadth across performance and the cultural industries. Their research is collaborative with diverse communities of interest, from the individual artist to the public via creative practitioners, producers, managers, leaders, audiences, participants, and policymakers. They pride themselves on being socially engaged – deeply rooted in and connected with the diverse cultures lived by citizens, and cognisant of the roles that arts and culture can play in society, addressing local and global challenges. 

The University of Kent, established in 1965, is a leading institution with a reputation for research excellence and high-quality teaching. With a diverse student body of over 20,000 students from around the world, the university prides itself on its international outlook and commitment to producing globally-minded graduates.

The University is home to the renowned Gulbenkian Arts Centre, which is a major cultural hub in the region. Kent’s Centre for Creative Writing is another example of its deep connection to the arts, alongside the Centre for Heritage which is a leading research centre for the interdisciplinary study of heritage from the conceptual, and the virtual to the material fabric and its sustainable conservation.

From 2021 to 2024, the School of Architecture, Design and Planning worked on a major teaching module with a High Street Heritage Action Zone in Chatham in Medway, Kent. The Intra High Street Heritage Action Zone (IHAZ) project involves Medway Council, Historic England, and in a recent evaluation of the project found positive outcomes for integrated place shaping and for the future of this applied pedagogical approach.

The Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries (iCCi) is an important cultural research organisation within the University. They are a “catalyst for culture and creativity – enabling new ways of researching and teaching and playing a key regional role in the development of these innovative and fast-moving industries.” The iCCi team have found the programme enormously helpful, as they get to grips with the relationship between the university’s cultural work and its regional place-shaping agenda. This vital thinking comes at a critical moment for both Higher Education and its civic agendas, and arts and culture in our communities. The team have produced new research for the programme into culture-led capital projects.

The University of Dundee, located on the east coast of Scotland, is globally recognised for its academic and research excellence, and contributions to innovation and enterprise. Social purpose was intrinsic in its founding principles, and the University continues with its mission to transform lives, locally and globally, through the creation, sharing and application of knowledge, working together with communities to deliver positive change.

The University’s prestigious art school, The Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD), stands as a leading force in the creative industries and is in the top 10 for Art and Design in the UK (Complete University Guide 2024). DJCAD offers programs in contemporary art practice, communication design, architecture and urban planning, design and making, fostering a thriving creative environment that enables students and researchers to work at the intersection of art, design, technology, and social impact. The School has trained numerous globally recognised artists and designers. Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz and nominees, David Mach and Luke Fowler, designers David Salariya, Johanna Basford, and Russ Nicholson, film directors David Mackenzie and Clio Barnard, architect Farshid Moussavi, and photographer Albert Watson are among those who have studied at the Perth Road institution.

In 2014, the city earned a UNESCO City of Design distinction, thanks in part to the university’s influence and reputation in fields like digital innovation, art, and design. The V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first design museum, strengthens this connection between the University and Dundee’s vibrant cultural scene. The museum’s collaboration with the University enriches local and national discussions about design, creativity, and heritage, and provides a platform for public engagement, including for this programme. The University initiated the discussions to bring the V&A to Dundee and is a founding partner of the museum.

Through its strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, cultural partnerships, and creative research, the University of Dundee pushes the boundaries of how academic institutions can contribute to the creative and cultural sectors. Academics from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law conducted research into topics related to the programme: on interventions to make cultural offerings more accessible, and on cultural engagement for young people.

Established in 2014, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) is a formal partnership bringing together Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield local councils, and is led by an elected Mayor. SYMCA spans an area of over 1,300 square miles and has a population of over 1.8 million. 

With a shared purpose to create a stronger, greener, fairer South Yorkshire, the combined authority has developed its Strategic Economic Plan – a blueprint for transformation and the prosperity of its people, businesses and places. At its heart is a commitment to inclusivity, sustainability and good growth. 

While it has been given devolved powers including skills, infrastructure and housing, the combined authority collaborates on wider activity including arts, culture, and heritage. Culture is now seen as a key driver of the local economy and prosperity of the region, with the South Yorkshire arts, culture and heritage sector generating £200 million Gross Value Added and employing over 6,400 people. As SYMCA itself recognises, “South Yorkshire has a rich and varied arts and cultural offer, born out of a global heritage of creativity, making and innovation.” The Mayor, Oliver Coppard, made a region-wide cultural programme a key pledge in his latest manifesto and the executive team are in the process of translating the ambition into a new cultural strategy for the region.

Given the richness of its cultural assets, the SYMCA is committed to bolstering its creative organisations, supporting its talent and unlocking the untapped potential of the sector. In 2021, SYMCA invested £1 million in culture, “with the intention of safeguarding the future of the cultural and creative industries across South Yorkshire,” following the impact of the pandemic. The fund has supported freelancers, creative projects and cultural organisations. In addition, the SYMCA, in conjunction with Showroom Workstation, coordinates the South Yorkshire Cultural and Creative Industries Network – a forum connecting creative professionals with organisations and industry and provides opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-exchange. 

The combined authority has supported the development of the programme in a number of ways, including co-hosting the Culture Commons summit meeting in Sheffield in March 2024. Oliver Coppard welcomed the Steering Panel, reinforcing culture’s role not only in economic growth, but in regeneration and health and wellbeing.

The Culture Collective is one of 33 Art’s Council England funded ‘cultural compacts’ , a cross sector governance body, recommended by the work of the Cultural Cities Enquiry in 2019. In 2021 Sheffield Collective launched Sheffield’s Cultural strategy, which was formally adopted by the council in 2023. Uniquely, Sheffield’s Culture Collective include the private sector in their membership.

The Culture Collective is part of an initiative to deliver a new cultural strategy for the city funded by the Local Authority, the Arts Council England and University of Sheffield.The Collective has worked closely with Sheffield City Council supporting each other to ensure the new culture strategy is informed by national best practice, and academic insights.

The Culture Commons open policy development programme, has helped reinforce and given strength to the early ambitions of establishing the compact in the city and some of our consultation findings around the future role of a Culture strategy in Sheffield. This includes the importance of local, collaborative cultural governance, connecting the city with our regional context and ensuring both the grass roots sector and the public have a say in what happens locally.

The relationship with the business sector is vital and also needs developing – Sheffield Culture Collective has made headway on this and has focused on multi agency with some success, which we know Culture Comms advocates.

We look forward to collaborating further as we launch and activate our new cultural strategy for the City of Sheffield in the coming months.

The RSA (royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce) is a social change organisation with a unique global network of RSA Fellows, enabling people, places and the planet to flourish. Since 1754, the RSA has brought together a “diverse mix of ideas and expertise to give people the confidence, skills, ideas and connections to make a positive contribution to the places we live and regenerate the planet we all share.”

Its vision is for a world that is resilient, rebalanced and regenerative, where everyone can fulfill their potential. Supported by a network of over 31,000 Fellows, each known and respected for their contribution to the arts and industry, the RSA is led by Andy Haldane, economist and former advisor to the UK Government on Levelling Up, and presided over by Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal.

In 2023, the RSA and Newcastle University joined forces to co-host the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC), demonstrating its commitment to growing the evidence base for the creative and cultural sectors and supporting the adoption of evidence-based decision making by UK policymakers. It does this through a dual-hub model, with RSA House serving as a South Hub and Newcastle University as its North Hub.

The RSA, Creative PEC and Arts Council England came together to explore the potential of ‘creative corridors’ that connect existing creative clusters together across the North of England. Driven by a steering group of senior creative leaders interested in narrowing the creative gap between the North and the South East, work on creative corridors has also given rise to plans for ‘One Creative North’ – a bold, new vision for the north of England’s creative industries led by combined authorities.

This RSA team, experts in the intersection of place, creativity and innovation, have brought invaluable insights to the programme and helped the partners to explore questions surrounding the devolution of cultural decision making in Knowledge Exchange sessions.

Paul Hamlyn Foundation was founded in 1987 by the publisher and entrepreneur Paul Hamlyn. He arrived in the UK as a migrant in 1933 and made his fortune in the publishing industry, when Paul died in 2001, he left the majority of his estate to the Foundation to further its vital work.

Motivated by a commitment to social justice, challenging prejudice and opening-up arts and education to everyone, the Foundation provides grants to individuals and organisations working to overcome inequality. PHF’s vision is for a just society in which everyone, especially young people, can realise their full potential and enjoy fulfilling and creative lives.

As an independent funder, the Foundation uses its resources to create opportunities and drive social change. It works in partnership with inspiring organisations and individuals, putting them in the driving seat of change and supporting them to design solutions that address inequality.

The Foundation enhances quality of life through engagement with arts and cultural activities, delivered through many focus areas, including arts, education and young people. Its Arts Fund resources organisations working at the intersection of art and social change and its Arts-based Learning Fund supports partnerships between cultural organisations and schools that put the arts at the core of children’s education.

This interest in policy development, coupled with a focus on increasing arts engagement and building meaningful relationships with communities, has made the Foundation a valuable partner on the programme. The team has been particularly critical in helping the programme partners connect with other grant giving bodies from across the UK.

The North East Combined Authority (NECA) came into being in May 2024, with the appointment of a new elected mayor and as a result of the dissolution of the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA). The NTCA existed for one five-year term and was superseded by the new arrangement set out in the 2022 North East devolution deal – a landmark deal on a larger footprint and worth over £1.4 billion over 30 years.

NECA brings together the elected mayor, as Chair, and the seven local authority areas of County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland. NECA serves a population of just under 2 million, with a regional economy worth more than £40 billion. The Combined Authority has put the culture, creative, tourism and sport at the heart of the regional economy and is a key priority area led by a Cabinet member. As well as being home to major cultural centres including Newcastle/Gateshead and Sunderland, the region is home to two UNESCO World Heritage sites.

With a vision to maximise the potential of the region, Mayor, Kim McGuiness, has set out three pillars of her economic plan. The third, focused on regional pride as an economic driver, has investment in arts, music and culture at its centre. In July 2024, a coalition of supporters, led by New Writing North and the Mayor, announced its ambition to make the North East a centre of creativity for the writing industries – helping to close the gap between those industries in the North and South. And in July 2024, the Mayor and local leaders gave the green light to invest in the region’s creative industries – with £25 million agreed for Sunderland Riverside, the future home of Crown Works Studios, a world-leading film and TV production studio. 

The combined authority is developing its cultural strategy, with support from Durham County Council. NECA values the role that culture plays in supporting growth, and it is in a good position to build on the foundations put in place by the NTCA – who provided over £2 million for festivals and events, invested over £5 million in three Culture and Creative Zones and supported 207 cultural and creative businesses. In its new form, NECA is investing in business support programmes, skills bootcamps, cultural events and tourism activity that will grow the sector over the next few years. These include the North East Create Growth Programme and Creative People, a sector-specific skills programme. 

As one of the newest combined authorities in England, and one borne out of a previous entity, its experience in achieving greater devolved responsibilities from government has brought a unique perspective to the programme as they consider in real-time the role that cultural, creativity and heritage play.

Established in 1997, the Local Government Association (LGA) is a national membership body for local authorities in England and Wales.

Core membership is made up of 315 councils in England, and 22 Welsh councils are part of the membership via the Welsh Local Government Association. With its cross-party political leadership, the LGA works on behalf of councils to ensure local government has a strong, credible voice with national governments. As well as promoting the work of local government, the LGA offers packages of support to councils to help them make a difference to people and places, including via sector-led improvement frameworks, the ‘Inform’ benchmarking service and leadership programmes. 

A central strand of the LGA’s work is focused on culture, recognising local government’s role as “custodians of both national and local culture, supporting arts and crafts, maintaining heritage sites, local history and folk-lore and encouraging public celebrations and festivals.” With political oversight from the Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, the LGA culture team supports local improvement and national policy change.

In Autumn 2022 the LGA-convened a Commission on Culture and Local Government and published ‘Cornerstones of Culture’, a report setting out the social and economic contribution of culture to different kinds of places, identifying the four cornerstones of a healthy local cultural ecosystem and barriers to further development. The report’s recommendations include increasing capacity for culture within place, empowering councils to deliver meaningful place-led strategies for culture and a shift towards place-led approaches that enable a greater number of voices to shape local decision making. In 2024, they published a series of infographics highlighting the fragmented culture funding system and the urgent need for reform. Nevertheless, councils continue to be the biggest public funders of culture, spending over £1 billion a year, and put culture at the heart of place-shaping and communities.

In recent months, LGA have published a series of think pieces exploring the future of local publicly-funded cultural services and devolution. The LGA has brought the collective experience of local council officers from right across the country into the programme.

Libraries Connected champions the vital social and cultural role libraries play at the heart of communities – trusted spaces that are free and open to everyone. Libraries are a vital part of every local cultural ecosystem, and alongside offering free access to books, they provide vital community infrastructure – acting as social hubs, hosting a range of events and activities and offering access to a range of public services.

Libraries Connected is a charity and a membership body for public library services across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It receives funding from Arts Council England as an Investment Principles Support Organisation (IPSO), in recognition of its strategic role in supporting, and advocating for, libraries. Its membership spans over 175 library services, with around 3,000 library branches serving over 61 million people.

As Libraries Connected states, libraries receive “more visits each year than any other cultural service, with a reach that extends right across income brackets, ages and ethnicities.” Its vision is for “an inclusive, modern, sustainable and high-quality public library service at the heart of every community in the UK.” It does this by acting as a convenor and a catalyst for the sector, supporting libraries to harness the power of collaboration and innovation. Its 2023-27 strategic plan places a particular focus on cultivating a more diverse workforce, growing the evidence base on the impact of libraries and boosting sector voice. 

The involvement of Libraries Connected in the programme has ensured the views and experiences of local libraries – the only statutory cultural service – have been reflected in this report.

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s historic environment. As an executive non-departmental public body, Historic England is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and is the government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment. The organisation is governed by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, made up of 17 individuals appointed by the Secretary of State for DCMS. It was established by the National Heritage Act 1983, and began operating in the following year under its previous name, English Heritage.

Historic England’s vision is “for a heritage that is valued, celebrated and shared by everyone.” It achieves this by understanding historic places and advocating for them, identifying and preserving heritage, supporting change, and providing local expertise. In doing so, it protects, champions and saves the places that define who we are and where we’ve come from as a nation. Its specific responsibilities include supporting building owners, communities, planning authorities and the Secretary of State on conserving and protecting heritage (including listed buildings, conservation areas, scheduled monuments, registered parks and gardens and protected wrecks) including through advice on planning and technical conservation, through grant giving and in-extremis as an owner of last resort.

From managing the National Heritage List for England and advising the SoS of additions, which contains over 400,000 entries, to giving advice on over 20,000 planning applications each year – Historic England’s work is vital to local cultural places and to local communities. Last year alone, the organisation provided over £14 million in grants to reduce the amount of heritage at risk – heritage that “should be respected, cherished and enhanced as part of the very soul of our nation.”

The three focus areas identified in Historic England’s Future Strategy – Connected Communities, Thriving Places and Active Participation – have given rise to six priorities in its 2023-26 Corporate Plan. These include: 

• boosting civic pride, prosperity, wellbeing and opportunity for local people and places;
• diversifying engagement with heritage, and Historic England’s work;
• mobilising communities to discover, help and protect historic places.

These priorities align well to the policy questions at the heart of the programme – including how we might increase public engagement with culture and heritage and how we secure heritage a key component of local place-shaping initiatives. Historic England works within England has helped forge connections across the UK heritage ecosystem, and its perspective as an arm’s length body has been invaluable in shaping the programme’s work and informing this report.

The Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place is a research and policy institute based at the University of Liverpool. Named after Lord Michael Heseltine, a former UK Deputy Prime Minister and champion of regional development, the Heseltine Institute brings together academic expertise from across the University with policymakers and practitioners to support the development of sustainable and inclusive cities and city regions. It focuses on public policy related to economic development, governance, and civic engagement, with a strong emphasis on place-based strategies.
The Heseltine Institute have four key purposes:
• Lead: lead debate on how to respond to contemporary urban challenges and opportunities, informed by critical, high-quality research.
• Convene: create spaces where research, policy, practice, and community stakeholders can come together, build relationships and foster collaboration in response to urban challenges and opportunities.
• Broker: identify opportunities to connect high-quality academic research at the University of Liverpool with urban policy actors and those with a stake in particular urban challenges and opportunities.
• Inform: act as a conduit for research and evidence to frame and inform urban policy-making.
The institute draws on a legacy of urban regeneration, particularly the role in revitalising cities like Liverpool and in 2024 they produced a Manifesto for Liverpool City Region, bringing together evidence-informed contributions from leading University of Liverpool researchers in order to stimulate debate on the defining issues for the city.
The Heseltine Institute is interdisciplinary in its approach, and its projects span a wide range of themes including health inequalities, housing, social policy, and urban regeneration. A key aspect of the institute’s research is the concept of “place”—understanding how specific local conditions shape broader social and economic outcomes and how policy interventions can be tailored to reflect local needs and opportunities. It’s this expertise coupled with their policy work on devolution that makes them an invaluable partner to this programme, and the team have conducted research into the preparedness of local authorities for increased cultural decision making.

Harlow Council is a district council on the Westerly edge of Essex (bordering Hertfordshire) which serves a population of over 90,000 people. Harlow is also part of Essex County Council – an upper tier body representing 12 local government bodies across the Essex region. 

At the heart of the district is the town of Harlow, a post-war new town created as part of the New Towns Act,1946. Harlow’s new town ambitions have resulted in good access to green space, with over a third of the district being parkland, fields or foothpaths, and a major collection of public art, including sculptures by Rodin and Hepworth, many of which are owned by Harlow Art Trust. The lead architect of Harlow new town, Frank Gibberd, believed Harlow should be a place where people could enjoy good-quality art. In 2010, Harlow became the world’s first ‘Sculpture Town.’ Gibberd’s legacy is also reflected in the town’s venues, the Gibberd Gallery and Gibberd Garden.

While Harlow is a key part of the Cambridge-London innovation corridor, and home to several leading businesses, it also grapples with higher than national average levels of unemployment and pockets of socio-economic deprivation. 

Harlow Council has continued to value and invest in culture and heritage as part of its broader regeneration plans. As an Arts Council Levelling Up for Culture and Priority Place, Harlow has received over £23 million from the Government’s Towns Fund, and in October 2023, it announced its successful bid for £20 million Levelling Up funds to create a new arts and culture quarter in the town centre. Funding will revamp Harlow Playhouse, provide a new home for the Gibberd Gallery, create a new live performance and music venue and see College Square and Playhouse Square transformed in “a pedestrian-focused amphitheatre and plaza for the community, artists, performers and creatives.”

Harlow Council has brought important perspective into the programme, specifically around how district and county council tiers can work together to support culture, creativity and heritage in a region. Whilst discussions about a potential ‘Greater Essex’ devolution deal were recently shelved, dialogues about how local cultural decision making could take place in the region have been especially valuable. 

Supporting a population of over 2.8 million people across ten metropolitan boroughs, and with a budget of over £2.6 billion, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is an upper-tier administrative and strategic governance body with devolved powers across a range of policy areas.   

GMCA was established in 2011 as a pilot combined authority and then formalised with the signing of a devolution agreement in 2014. It seeks to give “local people more control over issues that affect their area” and better enables the city-region to speak with one voice.   

GMCA’s groundbreaking 2014 devolution deal was built on years of collaborative working among local leaders in Greater Manchester, and borne out of partnership structures like the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA). In spring 2023, the UK Government agreed a level four trailblazer deal with GMCA, giving it greater control over existing responsibilities and the assurance of multi-year funding settlements. This latest deal cements GMCA’s critical role in devolution in the North, where health and social inequalities persist and the productivity gap between Greater Manchester and London is pronounced. These inequalities exist in the creative, cultural and heritage sectors too, with thriving creative clusters in Greater Manchester still outstripped by those in the South East, and disparities in cluster growth reflected within the city region. The ‘trailblazer’ deal itself includes a section dedicated to culture which signals the direction of travel – for the city region to have greater control over decisions that effect people locally, laying the groundwork for cultural devolution in future.  

Greater Manchester has strong and diverse creative, cultural and heritage assets and a distinctive cultural voice that supports a thriving visitor economy and helps to build pride in place. In 2023, the GMCA confirmed a budget of over £4.4 million to support its new cultural investment approach, with funding coming from both district contributions and retained business rates. The GMCA recently published its culture strategy – Create GM (2024-2030) – and has already established cultural governance structures, including the Greater Manchester Strategic Cultural Partnership. Its work supports a Greater Manchester Town of Culture programme, as well as a thriving array of arts, culture and heritage organisations – including the innovative Factory International, housed in the flagship Aviva Studios, the People’s History Museum, which engages visitors with the city region’s rich social and political history, and Z-arts, a community-based arts centre for children and young people.  

As a well-established combined authority with a deeper devolution deal, the GMCA team has helped the programme partners to consider how cultural policy might be embedded in a trailblazer devolution deal, reflect on the appropriate level of decision-making and consider what the added value of a combined authority might be for the constituent boroughs. 

Durham County Council (DCC) is the local authority for County Durham in the North East of England. The council is the largest in the region – covering 862 square miles and serving over 530,000 people. Previously, DCC was the upper-tier local authority in a two-tier area, and since 2009 it has operated as a unitary council, providing the majority of services to its residents.  

The Council’s ambition – for an, Altogether Better Durham – builds on the county’s rich cultural heritage and historical importance. Through the County Durham Partnership, the council came together with partners from across the local public, private and voluntary sectors to create a shared vision for the future – the County Durham Vision 2035. This vision has been translated into the council’s own delivery plan for 2024-28, with both documents recognising the value of culture in regeneration, local economic growth and place shaping. Durham County is described by the Leader and Chief Executive as “the jewel in the North East’s crown” and “a place with a strong cultural identity and pride in place built over the generations.” The council has maximised its strengths, using its cultural assets to power its transformation.  

County Durham is known as “The Culture County”, a moniker that resulted from being the first county shortlisted for UK City of Culture status. The City of Culture bid highlighted the county’s ambition and gave birth to a new cultural partnership – Culture Durham. While the bid was ultimately unsuccessful, key elements have since been embedded in the council’s Inclusive Economic Strategy and will support its regeneration and community plans. In October 2023, the council committed £2 million towards plans for a three-year programme of world-class events and community activities. The council and its partners will leverage additional funding to the same value – creating a £4 million budget for 2024-26. The programme will include a spotlight year in 2025, a major new programme of events, exhibits and experiences exploring art, science and space, and the introduction of cultural hubs to enable residents to develop their own creative projects.   

In recognition of its ambitious and strategic approach to culture, DCC has been nominated as the cultural lead for the newly established North East Combined Authority. The council’s approach of embedding culture in local community development and place-shaping and using culture to drive inward investment and inclusive growth, has brought a wealth of experience to the programme. 

Culture Counts is a network of over 70 representative bodies and cultural organisations from across the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem in Scotland, working to put culture at the heart of policy making. Formed in 2011, Culture Counts works to develop the cultural sector and advocate for the development and protection of culture as fundamental to the future of the nation. Culture Counts provides guidance to decision-makers in the Scottish Government and Parliament on how to achieve sustainable and inclusive goals through culture. At the same time, Culture Counts provides the sector with crucial advocacy-related resources, including a how-to advocacy guide, a ‘useful facts’ database and information on current UK and Scottish government consultations and reports.

The organisation’s mission is to promote the public benefit of culture, protect the Scottish ecosystem through policy change and demystify governmental and parliamentary processes. This mission is achieved through its networks. Alongside its core member network and strategic steering group, Culture Counts supports an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion network and a Creative Economy Recovery Group, the latter tasked with mapping the features of a future-facing creative economy for Scotland, as a way to secure resilience.

In addition, Culture Counts provides support to two cross-party groups in the Scottish Parliament. The Creative Economy Group exchanges ideas and learning around the development of the future creative economy in Scotland. The Culture & Communities Group shares knowledge and increases understanding between the Scottish Parliament and the nation’s creative sectors.

Culture Counts has collaborated with other campaigning organisations to address significant cuts to cultural funding by the Scottish Government. These cuts have reduced the budget of Creative Scotland, the public body for culture in Scotland, leading to the closure of vital funding streams including the Creative Scotland’s open fund. Culture Counts’ campaigning work has been crucial in minimising the scale of the cuts: in February 2024 £100 million of cultural funding was secured for Scotland as a direct result of their efforts.

Culture Counts operates within the devolved nation of Scotland, and thus interacts with different local and national structures, compared to other nations. The organisation’s involvement in the programme has ensured that Scottish sector voices have been considered. Alongside the University of Dundee, Culture Counts convened an insight gathering visit in Dundee. Showcasing the cultural strengths of Tayside, the visit also brought together local cultural leaders, local authority officers and other local cultural governance bodies. 

The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC) supports the growth of the UK’s creative industries through independent research, robust policy analysis and evidence-based insights. Established in 2018, the Creative PEC is funded by the UKRI via the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Originally hosted by Nesta, in 2023 the Royal Society for the Arts and Newcastle University became new co-hosts of the Creative PEC.   

Since its inception, the Creative PEC has worked to address gaps in the evidence base for the creative and cultural sectors. By providing high-quality data, research and policy advice, it supports the creative sector to thrive and contributes to the wider research community. Partners are engaged via the organisation’s three networks – the Global Creative Economy Council, the Industry Champions group and the Research Fellows Network.   

The Creative PEC consults industry on needs and then mobilises its research and policy units, and its Research Consortium, to generate evidence and feed policy advice back to policy-makers. This unique model ensures its research and policy recommendations are timely and relevant. Since 2018, the Creative PEC has published over 60 in-depth research reports across a range of fields – from innovation and technology, to education and diversity.  

Between 2023 and 2028, the Creative PEC will produce a series of reports, as part of its State of the Nations research series, led by four research partners and spanning four themes:   

• Internationalisation  

• Research and development, innovation and clusters  

• Creative education, skills and talent  

• Arts, cultural and heritage sectors.  

This work has already given rise to the important reports ‘Arts, Culture and Heritage: Audiences and Workforce’, which uses census data to provide a comprehensive analysis of these groups; and ‘Geographies of Creativity,’ which explores different levels of the UK’s creative industries geography (microclusters, clusters, and corridors).  

This focus on geography provides an important backdrop for this programme, with increased powers and decision-making at the local level providing an opportunity to further support creative economies across the UK. Creative PEC research shows that regional inequalities persist within the creative industries across different economic metrics – from GVA to productivity. These inequalities have continued to grow over the last decade. The Creative PEC has assisted the programme by providing evidence-led advice on challenges and opportunities facing the creative industries. This has informed our thinking on how further devolution could provide additional support to local creative economies. 

The Creative Industries Council (CIC) is a joint forum bringing together the UK Government and the creative industries. It is chaired by Government Ministers with an industry co-chair Sir Peter Bazalgette. Membership includes leading figureheads drawn from across the creative and digital industries including TV, video games, fashion, music, arts, publishing and film. 

The CIC seeks to address the challenges and capitalise on the opportunities facing the UK’s creative industries . It plays a central role in working with Government on policies and programmes to further strengthen the creative sectors, across key areas including boosting growth supporting talent and developing creative skills 

The CIC addresses growth barriers through several working groups and initiatives, covering topics as broad as education and skills, diversity and inclusion, intellectual property and innovation. In 2018, the CIC established the Creative Industries Trade & Investment Board, to spearhead efforts on exports and inward investment. More recently, the CIC, in partnership with the Audience Agency, launched the Creative Industries Council Place Forum to bring together industry, local and national government, and other participants, to encourage greater collaboration on place-based creative skills. 

UK Government data, published in April 2024, showed that the economic contribution of the UK creative industries grew by 6.8 per cent in 2022 to reach £124.6 billion. This growth, which outstrips many other parts of the UK economy, has put the creative sector front and centre as a key industrial sector capable of delivering on the Government’s growth ambitions. 

The CIC has a deep-rooted interest in identifying the policy levers to unlock growth in the creative sector at local, national and international levels. At the same time, it recognises the value that clusters and micro-clusters of creative organisations bring to places. Through its broad networks, the CIC has helped broker rich dialoges with cultural leaders across the UK, and in doing so helping to shape the development of the overall programme. 

The ambition of Creative Estuary is simple: To transform 60 miles of the Thames Estuary into one of the most exciting cultural hubs in the world. 

As the creative development agency for north Kent and south Essex, Creative Estuary works to forge a new future founded on creative energy and innovation. Their deeply networked development programme builds leadership, capacity and space for creative production, and accelerates the growing cultural impact of the Thames Estuary region. They understand and use culture as the catalyst for sustainable growth, resulting in the provision of much needed space for expanding creative businesses. This delivers the scale of services, skills and infrastructure sought by both UK and international creative producers and organisations. 

Creative Estuary is part of the Thames Estuary Production Corridor (TEPC) partnership, initiated by the South East Creative Economy Network and Greater London Authority. TEPC was recognised as a key part of the Estuary’s future in the 2018 Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission report, which unlocked investment from the UK Government including the first delivery programme by Creative Estuary. In 2021, Creative Estuary became a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network – a network committed to improving the quality of urban life through culture. Creative Estuary’s second programme is supported using public funding by Arts Council England as part of their Place Partnerships Fund. 

Creative Estuary is delivering on its vision through focused initiatives, including promoting a shared sense of identity for the Thames Estuary and co-commissions with the creative sector which attract diverse participants and develop sustainable creative workspaces. The idea of culture as a catalyst for sustained growth and community engagement is central to Creative Estuary’s work, and they are working with local partners to embed culture in local planning decisions, particularly those in housing, community facilities and the public realm.  

Creative Estuary’s cross-sector and multi-partner model brings public and private resources together in an exemplar model of local creative leadership. Their unique perspective, rooted in place and community engagement, has brought valuable insight to the programme, particularly around pan-regional cultural governance approaches. In turn, this programme has helped inform Creative Estuary’s sustainable approach to its work and reinforced its belief in an expansive approach to partnership development, in order to support and grow sub-regional creative corridors. 

The Centre for Cultural Value is a national research centre based at the University of Leeds, who strive to enrich lives by building an equitable, confident and sustainable cultural sector. The Centre are dedicated to understanding and demonstrating the impact of arts, culture, heritage, and screen activities on society through research and evaluation.  

The Centre wants cultural policy and practice to be based on rigorous research and evaluation of what works and what needs to change. They achieve this by working alongside cultural practitioners and organisations, academics, funders and policymakers to:  

• Summarise existing evidence to make relevant research more accessible  

• Support the cultural sector to develop skills in research, evaluation and reflective practice  

• Convene discussions around questions of cultural value; and shape policy development.  

The Centre is funded by the United Kingdom Research Institute (UKRI) Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation for a five year period.  

Collaboration and partnership work underpins the Centre’s research and enables them to draw on a rich range of insights, evidence and practice. The team have contributed to the programme by bringing in unique and cutting-edge research perspectives from across a range of subjects aligned with the programme’s themes. Members of the Centre have also facilitated the programme’s engagement with individuals from the creative workforce through a series of paid workshops. 

Cardiff Council is the local authority serving Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. Cardiff is a major commercial, cultural and retail centre in Wales, accounting for 21% of Welsh GVA. Cardiff has a population of over 350,000, and the wider city-region is home to 1.4 million residents – just under half the population of Wales.  

Stronger. Fairer. Greener. are the key themes underpinning Cardiff Council’s work. The council has consciously and deliberately put culture at the heart of the city’s growth and community wellbeing ambitions – investing to cement Cardiff’s position as a leading destination for sport, music and culture.  

Culture is at the heart of the council’s investment in communities, with funding available for culture at a community level, and for major cultural organisations and their events programme. Over recent decades the city has invested significantly in cultural infrastructure in Cardiff Bay, including in the iconic Wales Millennium Centre, alongside the Arts Council of Wales.  

The council takes a strategic approach to cultural development, and a new cultural strategy and tourism and events strategy are in development. The current Music City Strategy has given rise to the Cardiff Music City Festival.  

The creative industries are also a key growth sector in Cardiff, and particularly screen industries with the BBC, ITV, and S4C who all have a base and produce work in the city. In 2018 Cardiff University led a successful bid for Clwstr Creadigol, one of nine creative economy research projects in the UK to be funded. Cardiff Council are a partner in this five-year funding programme, alongside Welsh Government, all major Welsh broadcasters and more than 60 screen industry businesses.  

The council’s focus on the creative, cultural and heritage sectors has seen visitor spend nearly double over the last decade, strengthening the city’s move away from heavy industry to a knowledge and service-based economy. This shift is reflected in the Council’s Shared Prosperity and Levelling Up projects that both have cultural elements, such as the revitalisation of the Cardiff Market, a historic cultural and community asset.  

Cardiff Council’s position as a leading cultural city operating within the devolved governance structures of Wales, has brought an extensive understanding of how culture-led strategies can support wider social and economic goals at a local and sub-national level. The programme has benefitted from the council’s insights and strong connections to the sector from across the country. 

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) in the East of England was formed in 2017 and is made up of seven local authorities that serve a population of just under 900,000 people. With a level 3 devolution deal, the CPCA joins up the work of the Local Enterprise Partnership with the various levels of local governance – Cambridgeshire County Council, two city councils and four district councils. This multi-layered partnership embodies many of the contrasts at play in the area. Major urban centres, like Cambridge and Peterborough, with their education, innovation and manufacturing strengths, sit alongside large expanses of farmland, countryside and heritage-rich market towns.  

Mayor Nik Johnson’s ambition for compassion, co-operation and community, and the CPCA’s mission to deliver inclusive growth, demonstrate its commitment to putting local decision-making in the hands of communities. The different levels of local governance in the area have helped inform programme discussions on how, and at what level, cultural decision-making could effectively take place.  

The CPCA is on the way to developing its first region-wide cultural strategy, as well as new cultural data indicators, making its involvement in the programme especially timely. The combined authority is building on strong creative and cultural assets, with an estimated 7% of the workforce engaged in creative employment. According to a recent Local Government Association report, the CPCA has one of the largest proportions of creative industries employment, as a proportion of all employment across all combined authorities (6% versus an average of 3%).  

The area is home to 12 Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisations, including Jumped Up Theatre in Peterborough and Wysing Arts Centre in South Cambridgeshire. The CPCA also supports wider cultural activity across the combined authority, one example being support for Cambridge Community Arts, who work across the area employing 61 creative professionals across 48 local venues. Earlier this year, £3 million was ring-fenced to support the development of a creative and cultural hub at Cambridge Leisure, which will support start-up creative businesses and others working in the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.  

Through the programme, the CPCA has helped the partners to explore how a mid-stage combined authority is navigating devolution, how local and combined authorities collaborate together and how combined authorities can connect with the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem on the ground. 

With a population of over 330,000, Belfast City Council is the local authority responsible for providing public services in Northern Ireland’s capital city. Its responsibilities include tourism, culture and heritage, as well as the social, economic and physical regeneration of the city. It is the largest local government district in Northern Ireland, serving a city of two halves – some of the most affluent communities in the country and some of the most deprived.  

Belfast City Council operates within a complex, and often uncertain, devolved context, with national responsibility for culture sitting with the Northern Ireland Assembly. Over the last decade, national political leadership has been intermittent and which has led to a reduced focus on cultural policy and persistent low levels of national arts funding. Despite this challenging backdrop, Belfast City Council have continued to prioritise creativity, its role in inclusive and sustainable growth and in place-shaping.   

Belfast has a strong industrial and maritime heritage and recent and accelerated growth in the creative and cultural sector, Belfast City Council’s Cultural Strategy (2020 – 2030) builds on these rich assets. In 2017, Belfast began the bidding process to become a European Capital of Culture and embarked on a cultural conversation with residents. The council’s cultural strategy builds on that conversation, making community engagement, and community value, central to its success. From Belfast’s year of culture in 2024, to its designation as a UNESCO City of Music, the city’s cultural strategy recognises the value of culture-led inclusive growth, community engagement and the importance of place. Cultural investment is aligned to priorities in the plan, providing many cultural organisations with multi-year funding.   

In recent years, Belfast has boosted inward tourism and investment, through the Titanic Belfast and it has become a hub for the film and high-end TV industries with Belfast’s Harbour Studios, and the surrounding countryside has been used in blockbuster productions. In the Autumn, Studio Ulster, a state-of-the-art virtual production studio will open at Belfast Harbour Studios, cementing the city’s reputation as an important creative centre with a growing creative economy. The City Council is also developing the Belfast Destination Hub, which will bring together these different assets, build on the city’s growing visitor economy and share the “Belfast Story” with the world.  

Belfast City Council were instrumental in bringing the Northern Ireland perspective to the programme. They made connections with the arts, culture and heritage community, shared their perspective as a local authority working in a unique devolved context and, alongside the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, helped us explore the appetite for more community involvement in citizen decision making in different parts of Northern Ireland.