Governance

Putting the right governance structures in place is an important element of planning for and securing the cultural infrastructure that communities need. This chapter sets out a proposed model governance structure that is both strategic and place-based.
‍

Developing suitable governance structures

In most areas there is no wider governance framework in which culture readily fits apart from the more traditional general governance framework within local authorities. This works for council-wide decisions, but it does not allow wider positive participation by cultural interest groups, individuals and communities, and it certainly does not reflect the fact that the market area for many cultural activities and the audiences involved are more subregional and cut across individual council or development corporation areas and boundaries.

The actual governance structure will require much discussion and debate with the local authorities, development corporations and the cultural community. There is, however, a real need to build and reinforce this scaffolding and there are a number of key principles to guide this.

• It needs to have a subregional element to reflect the wider market and audience areas of many cultural activities and the fact that in many instances cultural activities cross local authority boundaries.
• It needs a strategic element – to be able to:

• Determine wider cultural priorities and lead the development of a robust evidence base.
• Provide an authoritative, credible and skilled gateway to potential funders – from government agencies and private sources – to bring projects and funders together.
• Share and pool partner skills and resources some of which may be specialist skills, for example in audience development or viability.
• Enable joint commissioning of schemes and support.
• Provide shared support including in relation to developing the business case, evidence and data and monitoring, etc.
• Provide a fund to support the development of schemes.
• Steer the development and management of a cultural ecosystem.
• Have representation from the cultural sector, cultural champions, key funders and local government.
• Lead on major projects of subregional importance.
• Provide a lead and a conduit for exchange of exemplar ideas, schemes and marketing.
• Provide a place for the strategic interaction with both county and borough councils or development corporations.

• While it needs to be sufficiently strategic, it also needs to have ‘place-based’ components as culture is a key element in local regeneration and city and town centre reimagination. This is to:

• Enable local individuals, communities and cultural entrepreneurs to be positively involved, including through the co-design of local projects, and to help secure local buy-in.
• Provide a conduit for cultural project ideas and schemes alongside input for the local cultural community into policy development, masterplanning and regeneration schemes.
• Enable local prioritisation and then lead local project development and delivery.
• Build an audience, capacity and activity from the bottom up and harness local creativity.
• Enable local cultural entrepreneurs to interact with key council politicians and officers, both from the cultural team if there is one and planners.
• Coordinate a local cultural network.
• Provide a conduit for the interaction between developers and local people in the co-design of their Cultural Wellbeing Action Plan and the schemes arising from them.
• Own and/or manage key facilities as required.
• Collect local monitoring and performance data.
• Provide direct interaction and partnership with councils and development corporations.

This place-based component can be at the city or town level, at borough level, or a combination of boroughs level. This depends upon the scale and nature of the geographic area, the cultural market and audience areas, and travel patterns.

This leads to a proto governance structure (see figure 2 below), which includes two major components.

• A sub-regional Cultural Infrastructure Investment Board – this Board has the strategic role set out above and a clear ‘manifesto’ for cultural development and planning, and overseeing, promoting and coordinating the wider cultural ecosystem. It forms an authoritative body for culture in the sub-region with shared support and tools to enable local activity. A champion body for culture and nurturing the cultural ecosystem, it sets the strategy, but also convenes, coordinates, enables, facilitates and supports. It should also look to jointly commission schemes and undertake a promotional and marketing role.
• A network of place-based partnerships and boards – the bodies within this network take the lead and coordinate a local cultural strategy and delivery programme, project delivery and provide a conduit to local co-design of cultural policy and schemes. In addition to this delivery role, they will engage, nurture and interact with wider cultural networks and may well be involved in managing local cultural facilities.

Building the governance infrastructure

In relation to planning for culture, the Thames Estuary area is fortunate with its governance infrastructure as it has Creative Estuary as the basis of the subregional element of this framework. This has the benefit of extensive skills and expertise in cultural activities and infrastructure alongside the added benefit of being neutral in the world of two-tier local government. It is already acting as the authoritative and trusted voice for culture in the subregion and already has some of the coordination and support components required for such a strategic board.

Such a governance framework for culture is currently being constructed in the Cheshire West and Chester area, for example. On the back of the successful Storyhouse cultural project (see section six for more details of the project itself), which helped create a strategic partnership covering the whole of this large single tier council area and place-based cultural partnerships for each city and town area. The key message from this exemplar is that establishing infrastructure should not be rushed and should be built from the bottom up. A key to progress in Cheshire West and Chester, was to foster discussion and debate, and the start for them was the formation and nurturing of the more place-based elements. This is somewhat different for Creative Estuary as the proto strategic partnership because the Creative Estuary already exists. Creative Estuary could, therefore, be the active enabler for this bottom-up debate.

The other message from the Cheshire West example was to not rush too quickly into building cultural buildings. The starting point in Chester was to build the local place-based partnership, Chester Performs, the local cultural network, sector and audience, and start with more easily achievable wins. In their case, this was Theatre in the Park and outdoor cinema and events programmes. Over time this grew into the £37m Storyhouse, a shared space multi-use cultural hub. The Theatre in the Park, outdoor cinema and the events programmes continue and together with the Storyhouse Hub the Chester cultural scene has dramatically changed and these are forming a fundamental plank to the reinvention of the City Centre. Once built the Storyhouse building was transferred to Storyhouse (Chester Performs), now a cultural charity, which manages and runs the facility.

Planning policy process

Successful cultural planning requires an alignment of planning policy, governance and investment. This section provides an overview of the planning policy process components from end to end, drawing on much of what has already been set out in this toolkit.

Download this section