New insight paper explores sector views on local cultural decision-making
A new insight paper, produced by Art Fund in partnership with Culture Commons as part of a major open policy development programme, brings together views from the independent museum and gallery sector on local cultural decision-making.
The UK government and devolved governments have made commitments to give wider and deeper decision-making powers to local authorities and citizens.
They have also set out policies that centre the creative and cultural sectors within their national economic growth strategies, with an emphasis on addressing geographic disparities that we see both between and within regions across the UK.
‘The future of local cultural decision making’, an open policy development programme led by Culture Commons, is exploring how new policies and local governance models might interact with the creative, cultural and heritage sectors to deliver more equitable and sustainable growth in local communities.
As part of this programme we’ve partnered with Culture Commons to produce an insight paper, with views from across the independent museum and gallery sector, which explores the levels of engagement between independent organisations and local authorities as well as views on political promises to increase local government control over decision-making.
The paper draws on findings from Art Fund’s Museum Directors Research and 16 museum directors across the UK, who generously shared their insights with us.
Findings from the insight paper
The key findings are:
Relationships between museums and local authorities look very different from place to place. On balance, there is significant room for improvement in how museums are supported and involved strategically to benefit places and communities.
Political churn at the local level can be a major barrier to the effective involvement of independent museums in local cultural decision-making process. Within local authorities, this churn includes changes to political appointments and overall control, moving political goalposts and changes to internal staff and departments that disrupt relationships, shared goals and collaborative working.
Without increased resources, a focus on the hyper-local in deciding how budgets are spent could pose a threat to the support for independent museums, as they tend to have a wider remit. Greater devolution to regional structures may prove more beneficial to museums in delivering these wider remits.
You can read the insight paper on the Culture Commons website.
More information about the open policy development programme can be found on the dedicated digital hub.