Devolution from the ground up

When we talk about cultural devolution, we tend to discuss it in the wider context of devolution in general – restructuring administrative systems, or how funding flows and through whom. While this is, quite rightly, a key priority for any new government, this definition of devolution can, ironically, still sound very top-down. Something that is done to local places and communities rather than with them.

So what does devolution look like from the ground up? How might it be informed and inspired by the activities and successes of those whose daily lives are focused on delivering services to people in their communities? And this, of course, includes culture.

How we build a country that works

Through Five10Twelve’s work delivering the Cultural Development Fund (CDF) Network, we have the privilege of working on cultural regeneration projects across more than twenty local authority areas covering the length and breadth of England. These are largely in the smaller towns and cities which exemplify the need for cultural devolution and offer great insights into what, exactly, those needs are and how they might best be addressed.

At its heart, devolution is not about structures, it’s for and about people and communities. Fortunately, our new Secretary of State for Culture, Lisa Nandy, gets this. In fact, it’s the central message of her 2023 book, All In: How we build a country that works. On the face of it, Nandy’s All In manifesto could play nicely with Arts Council England’s Let’s Create to form the basis of an underlying ethos for cultural devolution.

Creative practice as community engagement

Good community engagement means connecting and speaking to people in places and spaces, not just about them. Community consultation events about town planning, regeneration or local funding initiatives needn’t be dry town hall affairs or conducted online through Facebook, monitoring hashtags or counting social media ‘likes’.

There are plenty of excellent examples of creative, place-based approaches led by cultural organisations and practitioners, including Barnsley’s excellent Storying Goldthorpe, Artswork’s Young Changemakers – both also great examples of including youth voice – and Rochdale’s entire CDF capital and revenue programme is now being built around a wider place-based vision informed by the creative sector and local communities.

Transformational change

How do you build ongoing legacy and sustainability into a publicly funded project? We tend to think of this in purely financial terms: what happens when the funding runs out? This skews the project drivers, so its primary focus becomes sustainability = revenue generation. But if we want to deliver truly transformational change, we might also ask, what actually is the project and who will keep it alive?

Council leaders tasked with delivering Cultural Compacts and CDF projects in Wakefield and Grimsby learned that the local cultural and creative community wasn’t the audience for their project … they were the project. By empowering the community to take ownership of local networks and frameworks, it becomes self-sustaining long after the funded project has ended, and project teams disbanded.

Continues…

CDF Network study visit to Touchstones redevelopment, Rochdale. July 2024

Supporting non-trepreneurs

Enabling and empowering local creative and cultural networks is at its best when it’s focused on finding and supporting great stuff that’s happening around you and those who make it happen. This cannot be forced or manufactured. Barnsley’s Head of Culture and Visitor Economy, Jon Finch, acknowledges that “the local authority is transitioning from a ‘big council’ approach where we’ve done most things. That shift to a more enabling environment is happening, but it takes some time”.

This means identifying and supporting the driving force of local-led cultural regeneration as those individuals, freelancers, community groups or small businesses who do what they do because they see a need first and a commercial opportunity second … if at all.

In this scenario, economic growth becomes a natural by-product of servicing that need, and it tends to reinforce and support the wider local economy and supply chain. There’s a truly inspiring case study here delivered by Lisa February and Matt Gray – two young leaders behind Grimsby’s Lowercase Theatre. Please, please just watch this.

Free-flowing finance

Larger cultural infrastructure projects with more significant capital funding tend to be channelled through local authorities. The rationale, in part, is that local authorities are seen as a safe pair of hands with large, experienced teams and the financial resources to cashflow the large sums involved – recent dire headlines about local council finances notwithstanding.

Some of the projects in the CDF Network – all with significant DCMS capital funds attached – offer interesting alternative case studies outside or in partnership with local authorities. These include third round projects led by the volunteer-run Morecambe Winter Gardens Preservation Trust and Kala Sangam’s ambitious plans for Bradford.

Similarly, two second round projects serve as examples of local authorities working as partners to projects delivered by local organisations, including Paignton Picture House Trust partnering with Torbay Council and an Arts Council NPO, Shademakers, revitalising a former high street department store in partnership with Isle of Wight council.

We all know that there is little or no prospect of any new public money coming into the sector. But we also know that the new government is going to be looking at new ways of channelling what money there is in more creative and effective ways. Cashflow support, mentoring and building capacity for smaller local organisations to deliver in partnership with or on behalf of local authorities is one way of doing so.

Inside out devolution

The Shademakers project is a great example of how culture can take a lead in regenerating our towns and high streets, as is Wakefield’s ambitious CDF-funded development of its former Market Hall. Devolution can operate from these inner locations outwards.

This is as true of Mayoral Combined Authorities reaching out from their metropolitan centres as it is of smaller authorities reaching out from town and city centres across their wider districts. This is the approach taken by many of the CDF Network projects, including Wakefield, Barnsley, Rochdale and others.

Wakefield’s Service Director for Culture, Julie Russell, explains this as “80% of funding going to 80% of the population” rather than previous approaches of channelling the lion’s share to a small handful of larger cultural organisations.

Advocates for culture

So here we are then. New government. New structures are being formed. New strategies being developed. If they are to truly connect with and respond to what’s needed at local level, it’s on all of us to help make those connections.

This is the very best time to shout out to local and national policymakers: here is what’s happening on the ground, here is how culture can deliver, and this is what you can and must do to support it.

Don’t expect to be noticed by policymakers or included in their thinking simply because you’re doing great things. Don’t wait for a new strategy to emerge and then wonder why it doesn’t include you. Make yourself visible. Better yet, be impossible to ignore.

Jason Jones-Hall is Director of Development at Five10Twelve.
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Jason Jones-Hall