Living Places

Hello, I’ve been invited to be a guest blogger and my connection to the project is through my work -  I’m involved in a national programme – Living Places – whose ambition is to support creative places.

Living Places is a partnership of the 5 cultural agencies (Museums, Libraries and Archives, Arts Council England, English Heritage, Sport England and CABE) with 2 government departments DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) and DCLG (Department of Communities and Local Government) and this is the first time that these organisations have come together formally to work on supporting the role of culture in communities.

In a sentence, the programme focuses on joint working   between the partners to support the development of quality culture and sport infrastructure across the country.

The main focus for Living Places is to advocate for change within the Planning System to ensure that all places benefit from adequate cultural facilities.  While sport and heritage have certain powers in the planning system, there is no statutory role for all cultural activity. This means that when decisions are made about the plans for how your place/community will develop during the next 10- 20 years – the focus mainly rests on infrastructure that will provide: good transport, affordable housing, healthcare etc and there is not such a focus on what the cultural infrastructure will look like – how many galleries, libraries, museums, artist studios, rehearsal space etc.. are needed.

What would your ideal place look like to you?  And what kind of cultural spaces do you think are important?  It’s a minefield coming up with a definitive answer of what a place looks like and this is in part because each place/community is different and quite rightly they have their own ideas of what they would like to see built.

Living Places has launched a culture & sport planning toolkit to help local authorities and the cultural sector advocate for quality cultural infrastructure for all places (www.living-places.org.uk ).  A focus of the toolkit is the importance of consultation with the community to make sure a place reflects what they want.  But the success of every consultation rests on people getting involved.  Do you know what the plans are for your community? And do you have access to the right kind of creative spaces?