The core cities, the UK’s Capitals of Culture
Liverpool’s spectacular year as European Capital of Culture has just drawn to a close, the most recent in an incremental series of achievements that despite the challenges ahead, have helped set a seal of success on the cities’ future. As in other Core Cities, Culture has helped reposition Liverpool as an attractive place to live, visit and do business.
In fact, it has been so successful that there is now talk of a ‘capital of culture’ every year in England and certainly you would anticipate the Core Cities to be in the vanguard if this happens. Each of the Core Cities is already an important cultural hub, containing the cultural assets and infrastructure you would expect of a great regional city and which draw visitors in to the city region creating wider benefits.
Core Cities recognise the importance of culture to social and personal development, quality of life and place, learning and skills, and more generally, to the local economy. To reflect this, the Culture Group will be discussing how its remit could cover the Creative Industries more closely. As Gordon Brown commented recently, this is one of the few sectors that are actually expanding during the recession.
Income for culture can suffer during hard economic times, which has a ‘double negative’ effect, as the sector has an even more important role to play at moments like this in supporting learning, inclusion, and stimulating the creative economy. Therefore the Core Cities Culture Group will also be working closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and proposing specific ideas for joint work with funding bodies like the Arts Council and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Association, in the build up to the next spending review.
It is important that funding programmes like Renaissance in the Regions are maintained so that the Core Cities can continue to play a strong cultural role during recession. But on the economic front, there are a number of other related areas where the Culture Group feel there is strong benefit in working together with national bodies.
Understanding more about the effects of cultural activity and assets, particularly on the competitiveness of places, by gathering information across the Core Cities, will help to build a collective pool of evidence, sharing best practice more widely. This in turn will help to explore how cities can get more ‘added value’ from investment in culture, including through tourism and employment, working with national and regional partners. The Group are also proposing to take a long hard look at how we might achieve additional funding for the cultural sector through innovative financing methods, examining different models from other countries that might be used here, in addition to current funding.
Yes, there are tough times ahead, but in many ways this is an exciting moment for culture in the Core Cities. There have been significant successes and the Culture Group will build on these, taking an innovative approach and showing leadership for this essential component of a cities’ life in coming months.