ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND: Shaping the next ten years

In December of this year Arts Council England will publish their next 10-year strategy. It will come into effect in 2020 and take over from their current strategy, 'Great Art and Culture for Everyone'. 

The new strategy will extend and develop the Arts Council’s support for our country’s artists, curators and librarians, cultural organisations and their workforces, and the communities they serve.

"The Arts Council identified a set of key issues facing the arts and culture sector that they believe a new 10-year strategy should address. Together, these issues made up the ‘case for change’. They were:

• that across the population, there are significant differences in how ‘arts and culture’ are defined, understood and valued; many people are uncomfortable with the label ‘the arts’, and associate it only with either the visual arts or ‘high art’, such as ballet or opera. At the same time most people in this country have active cultural lives and value opportunities to be creative
• that there are still widespread socio-economic and geographic variances in levels of engagement with publicly funded culture
• that the opportunities for children and young people to experience culture and creativity inside and outside school are not equal across the country
• that although awareness of the issue is greater than it used to be, there remains a persistent and widespread lack of diversity across the creative industries and in publicly funded cultural organisations
• that the business models of publicly funded cultural organisations are often fragile and generally lack the flexibility to address emerging challenges and opportunities, especially those relating to operating within the digital economy and in the context of declining public funding
• that many creative practitioners and leaders of cultural organisations report a retreat from innovation, risk-taking and sustained talent development."

Over the next decade, the Arts Council want England to become "a country where the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a rich and remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences."

We know from research, evidence and case studies that "when we have the time and the tools to develop our own creative potential we feel fulfilled and empowered. Whenever we encounter culture, whether through museums or libraries, theatres or galleries, carnivals or concert halls, it uplifts and entertains us, increases our knowledge and understanding, unites us and brings us joy. Culture and creativity help us make sense of the world and of ourselves: they provoke and inspire us, offer us moments of transcendence, encourage us to empathise and bind us more closely together.Arts Council England’s strategy for 2020-30 is built around three outcomes and three investment principles. They are designed to work together to enable more people to take advantage of more opportunities to develop and express their creativity, to support them to access the widest possible range of high-quality culture, and ultimately to help create a country in which creativity and culture enrich the lives of every one of us."

"The outcomes focus in turn on individual creativity; the role of culture in shaping the places where we live, work, learn and visit; and the type of professional cultural sector we think will be needed over the next decade." 

"The principles set out what the Arts Council will look for in the cultural organisations, individual artists and creative practitioners that they invest in over the coming decade. The outcomes and principles are fundamentally interlinked. People are more able to develop their creative potential if they have easy access – off and online – to high quality cultural experiences, and the knowledge, expertise and collections in their libraries and museums. Such provision must be locally accessible but part of a national ecology: one that is ambitious, inclusive, collaborative, dynamic, environmentally sustainable, relevant, internationally connected and highly innovative. And that national cultural ecology must in turn be driven by people from all of our communities who have been given equal opportunity to develop their individual creative potential. Taken together, the outcomes and principles depict the creative and cultural nation we all want England to become by 2030."  Interesting times.... watch this space!