Arts Council England Releases New Ten-Year Strategic Plan

Image: Arts Council England.

In order to inform our local advocacy efforts, the BC Alliance reports on arts, culture and creativity news from around the world. Here’s some arts and culture news from across the pond: Arts Council England (ACE) has released its new ten-year strategy, Let’s Create. which emphasizes supporting individuals to explore their creativity more equitably.

The strategy was developed after a year and a half of workshops, consultations and interviews, involving more than 6,000 community members.

The strategy’s four guiding principles, which ACE will use to determine which projects it invests in, include “ambition and quality” (an organization’s commitment to improving the quality of its work); “dynamism” (ability to respond to the challenges of the next decade); “environmental responsibility;” and “inclusivity and relevance” (reflects the diversity of England’s population).

According to ACE Chair Sir Nicholas Serota, the strategy aims, in part, for “the dissolving of barriers between artists and the audiences with whom they interact.”

The strategy places emphasis on establishing a broader definition of culture, strengthening support for libraries, and supporting every “village, town and city” to create their own cultural opportunities.

Among the issues it seeks to redress, Let’s Create names:

• differences in how ‘arts’ and ‘culture’ are understood, with many associating the word ‘culture’ with ‘high arts’ like ballet and opera as opposed to inherent human creativity;

• widespread socio-economic and geographic variances in levels of engagement with publicly funded culture;

• unequal opportunities for children and young people to experience creativity;

• persistent and widespread lack of diversity across the creative industries and in publicly funded cultural organizations;

• inflexible business models of publicly funded cultural organizations; and

• lack of risk-taking and innovation.

ACE will release a document on how it plans to implement its new strategic plan in April. To read the full strategy, click here.