1. Details of Recommendations 2. Report Summary Contains
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Report for: ACTION Contains Confidential No or Exempt Information Title CEX 419 Borough of Culture and Commissioning Culture Member Reporting Cllr Samia Chaudhary, Lead Member for Leisure Services Contact Details Victoria Lawson, Executive Director, Environment, Culture and Customer Services, [email protected], 020 8583 4463 For Consideration By Cabinet Date to be Considered 15th October 2019 Implementation Date if 28th October 2019 (and April 2020 for broader Not Called In commissioning of culture) Affected Wards All Keywords/Index Culture; Borough of Culture; Commissioning 1. Details of Recommendations Cabinet is asked to: 1. Endorse the London Borough of Hounslow’s bid to be London Borough of Culture 2021 and commit to match funding of up to £337,500 plus £67,500 in in-kind support in the event of our bid being successful. 2. Endorse a new approach to funding culture across the borough by approving the creation of a £175,000 We Are Hounslow cultural commissioning budget for 2020/21, the final design of which will be delegated to the Executive Director of Environment, Culture and Customer Services. 2. Report Summary The London Borough of Hounslow is bidding for Borough of Culture status in 2021. A successful Borough of Culture bid would bring c. £1.35m into the borough to support a year-long cultural programme and would need to be supported by match funding from the council and other partners. The benefits to the borough in terms of reputation, tourism, and cultural impact are significant and Cabinet are asked to approve the bid for Borough of Culture 2021. In addition to the Borough of Culture bid, Cabinet are also asked to approve the creation of a cultural commissioning budget which would replace the historic use of cultural grants. This ‘We Are Hounslow’ fund would be made available to organisations that would use cultural activity to support the delivery of a range of our corporate plan outcomes. 3. Reason for Decision and Options Considered This paper provides an overview of culture in Hounslow. It then sets out a twin- pronged approach to promoting culture across the borough, firstly by bidding for Borough of Culture status in 2021 and, secondly, by proposing a new approach to commissioning cultural activity. Culture in Hounslow The borough is blessed with a range of significant cultural infrastructure. In recent years, the borough has been able to bring significant investment into the borough to support the regeneration of key cultural sites, including Boston Manor House and Park, Gunnersbury, and Hogarth’s House as well as the recent success of winning Creative Enterprise Zone status in Brentford. Our cultural activity is diverse and dispersed across the borough. Two council-funded providers Feltham Arts and Watermans Arts Centre deliver a range of cultural opportunities across Hounslow. To take each in turn: Feltham Arts operates out of Feltham and provides a year-round programme of local community arts in Feltham, Hanworth and Bedfont, delivering a range of projects within several artistic disciplines including music, dance, drama, visual art and film. Watermans Arts Centre is based in Brentford and offers cultural workshops, cinema and exhibitions as well as outreach projects. It provides theatre and studio space in the borough and has also led the Creative People & Places Hounslow consortium. This cultural activity is not the limit of the borough’s cultural capital, however. Defining culture in broad terms, GLA and council research highlights a range of cultural assets – typically physical locations rather than specific cultural activities – that exists across the public, private and third sectors as well as broader civil society. Building on this data, LB Hounslow has also undertaken its own data-gathering activity as part of the co-creation of our Borough of Culture bid. Local residents have highlighted cultural assets that are of importance to them. This engagement – set out in the map below – provides additional cultural infrastructure beyond that captured by the GLA in its Cultural Map. Map - the Borough’s cultural infrastructure Source: GLA Culture Map open data and (red dots) assets proposed by August 2019 LBH Borough of Culture workshop attendees This cultural infrastructure notwithstanding, participation varies significantly. Taken as a whole, cultural participation in Hounslow is lower than many neighbouring boroughs and below the London average of 72%. The average resident in Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, or Richmond upon Thames all engage in cultural activities more than their Hounslow counterpart. The most recent Active Lives Survey (2015-17), a nationwide assessment of involvement in sporting and cultural activities, shows that across the borough fewer than two-thirds (64%) of adults attended an arts event or a museum or gallery or spent time doing an arts activity in the last twelve months. The 64% figure hides intra-borough differences. The east of the borough is better served by cultural opportunities and paying for cultural activities is much more common in Chiswick, becoming progressively less common as one moves further west. The most recent available ward-level evidence (Snapshot London Performing Arts data, 2012) suggests almost every other Chiswick Homefields household (48%) engages with the arts whereas only 3% of Cranford households do. What is more, there is relatively little cultural exchange within the borough; with local activity being focused in local areas. Most cultural participation happens close to home, and the same holds true for involvement in the broader cultural economy. Borough of Culture The Borough of Culture is a GLA-backed initiative to promote culture for all and to showcase culture across the capital. Hounslow will bid for Borough of Culture in 2021, following on from the successful bids from Waltham Forest to be Borough of Culture in 2019 and Brent in 2020. The Borough of Culture comprises two parts – a full Borough of Culture (which comes with up to £1.35m funding from the GLA to support twelve months of cultural activity in one London borough) and a smaller Cultural Impact Award (a total of three £200,000 grants given to three councils). In both cases, the winning councils will be expected to provide 30% of match funding – 25% in cash (£337,500) and 5% in kind (£67,500). Funding has been identified through the Performance Improvement Fund and other funding sources could include: existing/reallocated budgets (as long as it is towards new activities, specifically for London Borough of Culture); income from charitable trusts and foundations; income from public funding bodies (such as Arts Council, Youth Music and other lottery providers); business investment / sponsorship; crowd funding; or cultural partnership cash contributions / joint funding applications. The challenge for any bidding borough is to be able to provide sufficient structure to a bid whilst also allowing for projects and initiatives to develop over time once a bid has been successful. Our bid to be London Borough of Culture in 2021, based on the belief that culture sets potential free, will look to use culture both to showcase the borough and to create opportunities and connections across the borough. The deadline for submission is 28th October 2019 and the bid, whilst a partnership endeavour, must be submitted by a local authority. The GLA is clear that any successful bid must demonstrate ambition, amplification, and authenticity. That means a programme at scale, which runs throughout 2021 and is also relevant to, informed by, and engages with, residents. To that end, we have spent the summer months speaking with local residents, with arts organisations in the borough, and with other partners to understand appetite to be part of any bid and to articulate what culture means to them. This insight has shaped our understanding of the borough and our appreciation of the cultural assets that are valued locally. Our Bid We know that Hounslow’s geography, stretching from Zone 2 to Zone 6, combined with our transport infrastructure makes for a particular type of borough, one of many smaller communities and pockets of cultural activity but no centre of gravity. Our evidence base highlights a borough that is supremely connected to the rest of the world but surprisingly disconnected to itself. There is a clear perception that Hounslow is a place people move through on the way to somewhere else. This ‘connectivity of sorts’ plays out through stronger local identities, combined with weaker connections across the borough as a whole – conclusions informed by engagement with local people, by the Hounslow Together Policy Commission on promotion and identity earlier this year, and through quantitative data showing that 75% of residents feel part of a community, albeit a more localised community than that coterminous with the borough’s boundaries. We want to emphasise civic pride and to lay to rest the perception of Hounslow as a place one passes through on the way to somewhere else. Our bid will showcase the amazing things that happen within the borough. Against a backdrop of a disparate borough where cultural participation and cultural opportunity varies widely, our bid – shaped by our collaboration with residents, cultural organisations, and others – will explicitly set out three pillars: the movement of people, the movement of ideas, and the movement of opportunities around the borough via a culture superhighway. Hounslow, the most connected of London boroughs, will use the Borough of Culture to grow connections within Hounslow. Hounslow’s bid will focus on promoting what is unique to the borough and use culture to ‘create an unstoppable movement of people, ideas and opportunity’. This means submitting a bid that will: demonstrate how culture sets potential free; develop opportunities for residents across the borough; create a culture superhighway of events, initiatives, and projects; bring diverse people together to spark new ideas; and, crucially multiply the value of the Borough of Culture by ensuring a meaningful legacy.