A new research paper, produced by the Centre for Cultural Value in partnership with Culture Commons as part of a major open policy development programme, highlights the growing importance of inclusive, sustainable and locally tailored approaches when developing and evaluating cultural strategies.

The Centre’s John Wright highlights the complexity and evolving nature of cultural strategy development in this new paper. This research forms part of a series commissioned and published by Culture Commons as part of the future of local cultural decision making, an open policy development programme bringing together creative, cultural and heritage sectors, local governments and leading researchers to explore the future of UK devolution and increased local decision making.

What are the key findings?

From carrying out a rapid review of recent research into cultural strategies, followed by an analysis of three live cultural strategies from Wigan Council, Belfast City Council and Sheffield City Council, John highlights the following key findings:

• Local authorities are increasingly developing cultural strategies with participatory methodologies, aligning with recent trends in local and regional cultural policymaking. However, fully embedding such approaches into higher management structures remains a work in progress where creative, people-centred evaluation processes remain rare.
• Cultural strategies are more than just internal documents. They serve as dynamic tools and critical drivers for local decision-making. However, maintaining relationships post-delivery of the strategy is challenging.
• Research identifies significant gaps in formal methodologies or robust frameworks for evaluating the impact of cultural strategies. Current evaluations focus on outputs rather than outcomes, limiting understanding of the strategy’s effectiveness and impact on communities.
• Research suggests that trust and effective participation in cultural strategy development is fostered through long-term programmes. There is a crucial need for wider collaboration beyond the traditional cultural sector stakeholders to sustain relationships and avoid imposing power structures.
• There is potential to develop more localised and collaborative evaluation processes, including place-specific methodologies that integrate a broader range of data sources and more effectively capture the diverse impacts of cultural strategies.

Moving forward, the key findings from this paper will be submitted as formal evidence as part of the policymaking phase of Culture Commons’ open policy programme.

You can read this paper in full [PDF download] on the Culture Commons website, along with the other insight and research papers published as part of the programme.

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