Today, Culture Commons publishes a new Discussion Paper exploring how the creative, cultural sand heritage sectors have featured in the story of UK devolution so far.
Co-authored by Trevor MacFarlane FRSA, Founding Director of Culture Commons, Eliza Easton, Founder of Erskine Analysis and Jack Shaw, Senior Policy Advisor at Labour Together, this paper brings together a cross-disciplinary team of creative industries, cultural sector and devolution experts.
Just a few headline findings in the paper include:
👉 From 1997, successive UK governments have centred the 'creative industries' in their industrial strategies, and the strategic importance of the wider ecosystem in addressing policy priorities is increasingly recognised in all four nations.
👉 Since 2010, financial constraints across the UK has meant that many local authorities have under-invested in the ecosystem - particularly in the cultural and heritage sectors.
👉 Since 2014, the rise of combined authorities has opened up a new frontier for cultural policy in England. Metro Mayors have played a relatively peripheral role so far but that is now changing; they are moving their thinking on from ‘duties’ and ‘powers’ towards shared decision-making over the priorities and distribution of resources.
👉 In the devolved nations, the debate has tended to focus on what the UK Government should devolve to Holyrood, Senedd and Stormont, and comparatively little attention has been paid to ‘double devolution’ from those legislatures into their respective regions, sub-regions and localities.
Insights from this paper have already informed some of the policy recommendations that Culture Commons made earlier this year in 'The Future of Cultural Devolution in the UK' as part of a major four nations open policy development programme led by Culture Commons and 30 partners across the UK.
Over the coming year, the partners will continue to hold an independent space open for creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem stakeholders to engage in a national policy dialogue about devolution and increased local decision making. We'll be embedding the recommendations in the work of other organisations and bringing them to life in live projects too. If you'd like to be part of the programme, please get in touch.
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