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 .

Our cultural activity is diverse and dispersed across the borough. Two council-funded providers 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 , 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.

We will highlight the cultural capital – in its broadest sense – that exists across the borough and create a culture superhighway that will:

 highlight & connect our culture hotspots;  create new culture destinations;  work with partners and outsiders;  encourage Hounslow people to travel the borough; and  take culture content on tour along the highway.

The Borough of Culture provides an opportunity for the borough to benefit from additional direct investment of c. £1.35m for cultural activity.

More broadly, to be successful our bid must leave a legacy that extends beyond 2021. The Borough of Culture provides a chance to raise Hounslow’s profile as a borough with a sense of self, with something to say, and a place where – in the words of our bid – culture sets potential free.

Specifically, the Borough of Culture can help:

 increase our reputation as a cultural destination: by achieving Borough of Culture status, we send a signal of our cultural worth across London.  showcase existing cultural assets across the borough: by making the most of what we currently have and ensuring more people are aware of what is here.

 connect disparate cultural activities and organisations: by building connections across and beyond Hounslow, strengthening organisations’ capacity to thrive.

 develop a stronger cultural offer: by maximising Borough of Culture status as a hook upon which to hang an ambitious range of broader cultural activity.

Self-evidently, a legacy extending beyond the end of our tenure as borough of culture, must be part of our ambition for Borough of Culture 2021. It would be a great opportunity to get investment into the borough, to showcase what makes Hounslow special, and to use culture as a catalyst for other good things.

Commissioning Culture beyond 2019

Alongside our bid for Borough of Culture status in 2021, we also want to reset the way in which the council considers culture and the commissioning of cultural activity.

Historically, the council has used grants to arts organisations as the primary means to develop cultural provision across the borough. The proposed new approach would provide £175,000 of funding for cultural programmes that use culture to deliver against a set of commissioning outcomes.

The London Borough of Hounslow would make a ‘We Are Hounslow’ fund available to organisations capable of delivering cultural activity. A commissioning brief would be developed and organisations, including those currently in receipt of cultural grants, would be able to bid for funding to deliver impactful cultural programmes. Delivery against the brief would be monitored against a light-touch qualitative and quantitative performance measures.

We would want our commissioning activity to focus on the movement of people, ideas and opportunities, building further community and cultural capacity in Hounslow – very much in keeping with the ambitions we want to see the Borough of Culture support.

Our commissioning intentions will look to:

 increase Hounslow’s profile and reputation as a cultural destination – by providing quality cultural programming that draws people into the borough;  to showcase extant cultural assets – by engaging new audiences with the borough’s cultural offer.  to extend cultural participation – by making a diverse range of cultural opportunities available and attractive to a wider range of local residents; and  to connect and strengthen the community-based cultural offer – by building connections and capacity amongst local cultural groups across the borough. In addition, we would look for providers to demonstrate impact against one or more of our corporate outcomes, viz.:

 residents are at the heart of what the council does;  people live in good homes and pleasant neighbourhoods;  people feel proud to live and work;  businesses flourish, and local people enjoy good quality local jobs;  children reach their potential;  people are safe;  residents are healthy, active and socially connected; and  residents receive the right help and support.

We anticipate the commissioning contract going to market in November / December 2019 with delivery commencing in April 2020.

In addition to the ‘We Are Hounslow’ commissioning budget, we will also continue to investigate a variety of ways in which we can leverage additional resources into the borough - positioning the council both as a funder of cultural activity and as a shaper of place and convenor of coalitions of interested parties.

4. Key Implications

Achieving Borough of Culture status would provide a significant fillip to the borough – showcasing the borough and increasing awareness of cultural activity. If successful, the London Borough of Hounslow would need to secure match funding of at least 30% (£405,000).

Regardless of the Borough of Culture, a direct commissioning revenue budget for culture would replace a culture grant which has been in place since 2012. This commissioning budget would stand at £175,000 for 2020/21.

5. Financial Details a) Financial Impact on the Budget The bid to become Borough of Culture has £385k funding allocated to it from the Performance Improvement Fund. This funding has been approved on the basis of £325k to be treated as match funding in the case that the bid is successful with £60k to support the bidding process. If successful a further £12.5k will be needed to meet the match funding criteria there are a range of opportunities available to close this gap as outlined in the report.

The budget available for supporting the cultural commissioning programme is £275k in 2019/20 expected to be reduced to £175k in 2020/21.

b) Comments of the Assistant Director Strategic Finance This report seeks Cabinet endorsement of the Borough of Culture bid currently being developed and a new approach to cultural commissioning.

The budget to support the Borough of Culture bid has been allocated from the Performance Improvement Fund. This leaves a shortfall of £12.5k to be met from existing/reallocated budgets, donations from charities or businesses, crowd funding or other cultural partnership cash contributions and joint funding applications. This may require some of the cultural commissioning budget to utilised if no other source is identified.

The future approach to cultural commissioning will be enabled by the budget of £175k planned for 2020/21.

6. Legal/Comments of Head of Governance

The Head of Governance has been consulted on this report, and there are no legal implications

7. Value for Money

A successful Borough of Culture bid would bring £1.3m of external funding into the borough. The Borough of Culture would also provide a fillip for a range of cultural organisations, in terms of visibility, visitor numbers, and further funding opportunities. This would be supplemented by an, as yet, unquantified increase in visitor numbers and associated additional spend in the borough.

The commissioning of culture will also look to ensure value for money, making clear requirements for cultural activity to deliver against a range of corporate outcomes.

8. Sustainability Impact Appraisal Not Applicable

9. Risk Management Not Applicable

10. Links to Council Outcomes

This report addresses a number of the Council’s outcomes, particularly people feel proud to live and work; businesses flourish, and local people enjoy good quality local jobs; and residents are healthy, active and socially connected.

11. Equalities, Human Rights and Community Cohesion

The Council must take account of its Equalities Duties under the Equality Act 2010, to: (a) Eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by the Act; (b) Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and person who do not share it; (c) Foster good relations between equalities groups.

Both the Borough of Culture bid and the development of a ‘We Are Hounslow’ cultural commissioning budget have been developed with an awareness of the need to meet the council’s equalities duties. Activities flowing from these programmes of work should also be informed by, and cognisant of, equalities duties.

12. Staffing/Workforce and Accommodation implications: Not Applicable

13. Property and Assets Not Applicable

14. Any Other Implications None

15. Consultation Extensive consultation, engagement and co-creation has taken place with a broad range of stakeholders for the development of a Borough of Culture bid.

Whilst not formal consultation, our approach has been informed by engagement with a range of cultural organisations. Through a public workshop, we have considered cultural assets across the borough. By going onto the street in Hounslow Central, Chiswick, Feltham, Brentford, East Bedfont, and and asking residents of the borough their opinions – to date, c.300 residents have provided perspectives on what they value culturally in the borough and the role culture and cultural spaces could play locally. We have also used social media to pose a range of questions relevant to both the borough of culture and to culture in the borough.

Consultation with the organisations who are current recipients of culture grants has also taken place over the last six months. If Cabinet agree this new approach, further consultation will take place prior to implementation of any new commissioning arrangements.

16. Timetable for Implementation If approved, Hounslow’s Borough of Culture bid will be submitted by 28th October 2019. The commissioning of culture will commence in April 2020.

17. Appendices None

18. Background Information None.

REPORT ENDS