Appendix 1

Economy Committee – 26 March 2018

Transcript of Item 5 – The Mayor’s Draft Culture Strategy

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That brings us to today’s main discussion item on the Mayor’s draft Cultural Strategy for London. I am now going to welcome our guests. We have Jenny Waldman CBE, Director of 14-18 NOW; Sharon Ament, Director, Museum of London; Ben Evans, Chair, Cultural Leadership Board; Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries; Shonagh Manson, Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, Greater London Authority (GLA); and Councillor Clare Coghill, Leader of the Council for the London Borough of Waltham Forest, now the Borough of Culture. I welcome you all. Thank you so much for coming to talk with us this morning.

I am going to start off with a very general question mainly for Justine, asking you to outline the Mayor’s vision for culture in London, how this draft strategy will help him to achieve it and how we would judge its success.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Thank you. Good morning everyone. Many thanks, Caroline, and the Committee for inviting me here to talk to you about the Mayor’s draft Cultural Strategy entitled A Culture for All Londoners. We really welcome today’s session, which is kicking off the consultation period. I really hope the discussions today will contribute to and inform the final strategy.

I would like to say a few words about culture to set some context and to look at why it is an increasing priority for cities all over the world, and then talk about the Strategy, our vision and how we will achieve it.

Sadiq [Khan, Mayor of London] has made culture and creative industries one of his top priorities. He is the first London Mayor to do this. Cities all around the world are also waking up to the power of culture. I chair the World Cities Culture Forum and every year 35 global cities get together to look at how culture can be embedded into urban policy. What has become clear to this group of cities is that cultural entities are no longer a ‘nice to have’. It has gone from nice to mainstream. Why is this? I put it down to five reasons.

Firstly, in an increasingly globalised world culture gives cities their own distinctive identity or brand, if you will. When global competition is fierce cities need to stand out. They need a unique selling point and they need an edge; culture can help with this. London has been defined through the decades by creative tribes, whether that was Mary Quant’s [Welsh fashion designer] miniskirt revolution, reactionary punks in the 1970s or grime music, making waves today on the world’s stage. London Fashion Week, the Design Festival, award-winning theatre, the Brits and the BAFTAs, all do an incredible job of showcasing our success as a capital city. Given the uncertainties over Brexit it is essential that London retains its competitive edge. We need to invest in the things that make this city a success.

Our success is in great part due to sustained investment in the creative industries. Film London, the film agency for London, has built partnerships and promoted London as a result. London is now the third-biggest capital for film after Los Angeles (LA) and New York. Forty films are shot on the streets of London every day. Film London now tracks over £1 billion of inward investment into film and high-end television (TV) every year. The same is true for fashion. London is now one of the top four fashion capitals, along with Paris, Milan and New York. London Fashion Week puts the capital onto the global map and lures overseas buyers. This means that London fashion businesses, the majority of which are small to medium enterprises (SME), make £100 million in new sales in London Fashion Week every year. Our culture and creative industries are often our

international calling card. We can look at how artists and creatives have helped us with the London is Open campaign, the now iconic David Shrigley [Artist] posters telling people that London welcomes you. Our theatre, dance and film industries have also got behind the London is Open campaign. Global reputation is important. London’s reputation for quality, creativity and talent attracts investment and positions London as a leading international city.

That brings me to my second point, culture generates money and jobs for cities. In London the creative industries bring in £47 billion a year. One in six jobs are in the creative economy. Jobs in the creative economy are growing four times faster than the economy at large. Throughout this period of austerity culture and the creative industries have kept on growing. The creative economy has helped London to weather the storm. Looking at the national picture, the creative industries are worth almost £92 billion to the United Kingdom (UK) economy. As we say in the Strategy, the creative economy is larger than the automated, life sciences, aerospace, oil and gas industries combined. There are a huge range of jobs, including the supply chains that are also supported by the creative industries. We mention some of these in the Strategy when we talk about jobs. When we talk about investing in culture the beneficiaries are not just creative people. We are talking about a huge range of jobs and supply chains that support the creative process. To give you an example, the producer of the Bond films, Barbara Broccoli, told me that every time she makes a Bond film she needs 1,000 carpenters; there are also caterers, drivers, electricians, accountants and all manner of jobs behind the scenes. As for the creative jobs, they are the jobs of the future because 87% of creative jobs will not be automated. Why is that? As I often say, you cannot automate the imagination.

The third reason for supporting culture is because it is a major driver for tourists. Research from London & Partners tell us that four out of five people say the main reason they come to London is culture, that is both visitors and those coming to live and work here. London is the most visited city on the planet; 31.2 million visitors came last year, four out of five of them coming for culture is therefore a big deal. Cultural tourists spend £7.3 billion a year in London. Increasingly tourists are demanding more authentic experiences, they want to live life as a Londoner. We must respond to this demand, particularly if we are going to appeal to second and third time visitors who now want something different. Visitors are not just staying in Zone 1 but further afield in outer London. Therefore, we need to get smarter about the visitor offer across the city, not just in the centre. Tourists are increasingly looking to social media when deciding where to go on holiday. What people say about London and how they rate the city’s offer on sites like TripAdvisor is increasingly how they are making the decision on whether to visit London. The reputation of our cultural offer is therefore crucial. To reiterate the point that I made a moment ago, with Brexit looming we must invest in our cultural offer. We need to remain ahead of the game. We need to build on our successes. We must remain innovative and competitive.

However, culture in cities is about more than these impressive economic figures and tourism potential. Reason number four, regeneration and place making. Creatives are often described as the ‘shock troops’ of regeneration, moving into unloved cheap spaces and breathing life into rundown areas of town. We have seen this cycle repeat itself all over London, from Camden Town to Upper Street in Islington, and more recently places like Shoreditch and Peckham. In the 1950s the Royal Festival Hall kick started major development along the South Bank. In the 1990s the Tate Modern did the same for Bankside. This is why we are planning a major new cultural quarter for the Olympic Park. The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian, Sadler’s Wells, the London College of Fashion and University College London will move in to create a new world-class destination for London. It is a brilliant legacy for 2012. It will create new jobs and contribute to the regeneration of East London. It will benefit Londoners and visitors for generations to come. We are also preparing a cultural vision for the Royal Docks in the east. English National Ballet and the London Film School have already announced plans to move to a new home there. This part of London - from Stratford to the Estuary - has also been identified as having £22 billion of development potential and our vision is for culture to

be at the heart of this. The Mayor has a bold vision for the Thames Estuary. We want to build a new generation of large production centres along the Thames Estuary that we call the Thames Estuary Production Corridor. This will include the largest film studio in London built in the last 25 years that will be in Dagenham East. The operator was announced last week, Pacifica Ventures, which is a major studio behind Breaking Bad and The Avengers. This is fantastic news for London and for Dagenham. We want this to be the first of many creative centres along the Thames Estuary. Our focus is not just on the east of London. We are embedding culture in plans for Old Oak and Park Royal. We want to develop a cultural quarter in the heart of the city.

Reason number five, finally, is that at a deeper level culture offers us something more profound. In our digital world - where our lives are increasingly run by algorithms, we spend hours distracted by the so-called ‘attention economy’ of social media, and we have a gig economy where many people work for apps these days - culture offers us something different. It offers us a human connection. Sitting in a theatre with your phone switched off following the same emotional journey of the play as 500 other people is a rare and beautiful thing these days.

The Mayor and I went to Hull a few months ago to see how the City of Culture had had an impact there. We went to learn from their experiences as we were preparing for our London Borough of Culture award. We were honestly completely blown away by how it had transformed the city of Hull. Aside from the actual art events, it had been a catalyst for major city pedestrianisation, including gorgeous fountains and public squares. The first four-star hotel was being built, independent shops had sprung up and businesses were finding it easier to recruit people. The renewed civil pride in Hull was palpable, from the volunteers we met at the station to the community workers on estates. 90% of the population had been to something in the programme in the first three months.

The response to our London Borough of Culture award has been pretty incredible too. Twenty-two boroughs put in bids and the competition was very fierce. Fifteen thousand people pledged their support for Waltham Forest’s bid. We heard from Brent that none of the young people consulted there had ever been to the Tate and had never heard of the National Gallery, Merton wants a new cinema, Kingston will celebrate its diverse musical heritage, Lambeth will work with young black and minority ethnic (BAME) leaders to develop their arts careers, looked-after children in Barking and Dagenham will devise a creative programme, older people in Lewisham will design an arts programme called the Festival of Creative Aging, and 12 housing estates in Camden will host cultural celebrations. Through the London Borough of Culture programme all these projects are now coming to life.

All over the city culture will help improve the lives of thousands of Londoners. Culture will help forge new relationships and friendships. Culture will help with social integration and fighting off isolation. Culture will bring Londoners together.

To recap, why Sadiq has made culture a top priority is because culture helps us beat off the global competition, it brings in millions of tourists, it creates jobs and money, it brings communities together, it breeds life into rundown parts of town and it builds a human connection in an increasingly disconnected world. All of this adds up to significant contributions to cities and this is a trend we see all around the world. Global cities are realising that if they want to be successful in the 21st century they cannot do it without culture. Cities like Barcelona, Kyoto and Berlin have used culture to put themselves on the map. Many other cities are cultural staples; places like New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Paris and Tokyo. It used to be the case that culture was at the bottom of the list, vulnerable when belts tighten. There are still many pressures but today businesses and policy makers have grasped the potential of culture to help deliver positive good growth and change in almost any context with depth and sophistication. Culture is being hardwired into planning, regeneration, health and social policy in imaginative and sophisticated ways. Today Sadiq talks not about growth but about

good growth and it is also a people-focused vision. As London grows it needs to benefit all Londoners. Growth and development should bolster communities and build neighbourhoods with character. Culture is an essential ingredient in this.

As much as we need great transport and roads, London also needs its soul, it needs culture and creativity. On the face of it culture in London is a brilliant story. We are a great creative capital. London is the most Googled city for culture and one of the most connected cities in the world. Museums are overflowing, awards are stacking up, tourism is booming and the economy is boosted. However, we cannot be complacent and I want to take a moment now to outline some of the challenges we face. Below the waterline there are significant systematic cracks and problems that we need to fix if we are to maintain our global position and reputation. Those creatives who have colonised cheaper areas, helped build destinations and raise land values are being priced out. We need creative tribes in London and we also need creative talent. All those pattern cutters, photographers, designers, animators and set builders are holding up this economic powerhouse that generates billions for London. People sometimes say to me that this is part of the natural cycle of things and creatives will continually move into new areas of town. However, as we know there is really no cheap space left in London and that is why you will see major new programmes in the Strategy to address this. Through our Creative Enterprise Zones (CEZ) we will build areas that offer incentives to help artists and creative businesses put down roots. Incentives will range from affordable workspace to business rate relief. Ten development grants of £50,000 each have recently been distributed to 11 boroughs. We are also setting up a creative land trust. This new trust will attract investment from public, private and social enterprise funders to secure affordable creative workspace in perpetuity because overseas competition is looking increasingly attractive. Lisbon and Athens have cheap spaces, better weather and they are also staying in the European Union (EU). Global competition is a serious issue that Brexit has amplified. Brexit is a challenge for the creative economy. The EU is the largest market for creative sector experts.

One third of creative jobs in London are filled by the EU and international talent. We will continue to lobby Government hard to get the best deal.

The unprecedented speed of development also puts pressures on the cultural assets of our city. Over the last decade we have lost 20% of youth clubs, 30% of artist studios, 35% of music venues, 50% of nightclubs and 58% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender venues. Because it is more profitable to turn cultural venues into luxury flats we have lost hundreds of thriving and well-loved venues. Our stock of cultural infrastructure is in danger of collapsing. These grass-root spaces, which sustain our successful creative economy, are disappearing. In a way it is a perfect storm, it is what finance people might call living on our capital assets. These creative spaces are the incubators for the next generation of artists, musicians and DJs. Adele [MBE, singer and songwriter] and Ed Sheeran [MBE, singer and songwriter] started in small venues before they became multi-million-pound recording artists. Londoners care about this too. When these cultural spaces close they are seen as symbolic. The granular and the gritty stuff matters to the character of our city. This is why we have taken such a broad definition in our Cultural Strategy, because the pub down the road, the skate park and the local greenspace are as important to Londoners as the British Museum and the National Gallery. This is why we will publish a Cultural Infrastructure Plan later this year. The Plan will set out what we need to sustain London’s future as a cultural capital. As part of this we are mapping the cultural infrastructure in the city on a scale never been seen before. A key part of the Cultural Infrastructure Plan is our Culture at Risk office. This helps with the stream of distress calls we get from artists, venue managers and club owners. The new draft London Plan will address these issues systematically. Culture is comprehensively threaded throughout the London Plan. Culture is our DNA in London so it does follow that it should feature in our planning system.

The Strategy sets out other challenges that we are seeking to address, such as access and diversity. We have just launched Culture Seeds that helps with grassroots organisations, particularly those from under-represented groups. We want to make sure the creative workforce reflects London’s diversity. We welcome feedback from all of the London Assembly Members on these programmes.

Before I close I wanted to finish by outlining briefly the range of plans and levers the Mayor can use to achieve his vision. I have mentioned the planning framework, which is crucial. There is also direct investment, for example, through the Good Growth Fund. The Mayor is investing directly in culture on a scale we have not seen. There is international promotion and support through London & Partners. There is business support. Advocacy is also very important. The Mayor champions culture in a number of ways, through his speeches, his travels and through attending many events. Finally, the Mayor’s convening power is also very important.

I want to finish by saying that working in partnership is absolutely crucial to delivering this strategy. We have set out a wide range of partners in the draft and working in partnership is key. I hope this sets the scene for why culture is such a top priority. We very much look forward to discussing it, the priorities and programmes in more detail.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. That was a very broad run through of the whole strategy that I hope the Committee had a chance to read over the weekend.

I want to ask, before moving on to a few more questions for Justine, our external guests - Jenny, Sharon and Clare - very briefly because we are going to move in detail to discuss the whole strategy, the one thing that comes to mind immediately as your response to what you have read in the Strategy.

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): I am very interested in creative participation being at the heart of broadening the diversity of participation in the arts. The draft strategy has a number of ways of reaching people; the idea of doing things outside, in public spaces, making sure those spaces are still available to cultural participation and the Mayor’s support for music in schools. There are a number of different aspects to making sure the arts are available and engage a much broader number and range of people. I absolutely salute that.

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): For me it is about balance and reach. What this strategy does is manage a very complicated cultural environment by both attacking infrastructural issues, facilitating and enabling - not just big but all - cultural players to engage. It is that facilitation and providing the right environment that is going to make this successful. As a cultural delivery person, I am very pleased with the opportunities that it will provide to organisations like mine, a museum, to do the best job we can for culture in London. Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): This strategy is a brilliant piece of work. You have asked for one thing, Chair, and what it does is make it very, very easy for me to clearly see the role my borough can play in supporting London’s strategic cultural objectives and that makes my life fantastically easy.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): For a Leader.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Exactly. Anything to help my life be a bit easier is good.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. We have positive responses in terms of participation, facilitation and being clear and easy to see how you can play a part in it.

We are going to have a lot of questions that dig into the relationship to the economy. I will start off with you, Justine. We have 19 policies here with 60 different commitments. They are very well-received policies by people working in the cultural sector. What we would like to know is how many of those commitments have actual programmes and funding so they can be delivered? Are they all deliverable and what are your timescales for doing that?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes, they are all deliverable and they all have budgets.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): They all have budgets within this mayoral term?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes, everything that is in the Strategy is deliverable. Because we work very closely in partnership with a range of people to deliver this strategy, there are some things that are within the Mayor’s direct gift - programmes we initiated and that we are managing and running ourselves - and then there are other things where we work in partnership that other people lead on. I am confident all the things we have set out that we will deliver will be achieved. They all have their own budgets and targets.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): The timescales for delivery, are you expecting everything that is in the Strategy to happen within this mayoral term?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Some things are longer-term projects. The Museum of London and the Olympic Park are long-term capital projects. The idea is that the Strategy sets out a vision and a programme that has a long-term reach and impact. We are interested in sustaining London’s cultural offer in the long term. These things that are deliverable in the short term, like the CEZs and the Cultural Infrastructure Plan, will be delivered but what they will do is hardwire culture into the way in which the city protects and celebrates culture into the future.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Another thing around delivery is that there is a huge number of partners that you are working with. On page 157 there is a massive list of different partners you are working with within the Mayor’s functional bodies, the advisory groups and boards the Mayor has, agencies and organisations. Then there are national, regional and local government partners, creative industry partners and wider partners. There is a whole page of different partners.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): It is two pages.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Two pages that you are working with. Printed out, it comes out on one. What is the risk in having all of those different partnerships in terms of the delivery of what you are trying to get done? How dependent are you on all these partners for everything that is in this strategy to be delivered?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Partnerships are key to delivering the Strategy. As you know, the Mayor has limited powers so everything he does is largely delivered in partnership. It is a general principle, everything we do in culture is in partnership. The cultural sector itself is a very collegiate sector and works together most of the time. We can deliver so much more in partnership. I do not think it is a risk, it is an opportunity. If we were to not work in partnership that would be the risk.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Chair, if I may, this whole building is built on partnerships. Although this is a Cultural Strategy, it is a strategy across this building.

It has been brought together in partnership with our Skills Team. It cross references our Social Integration Strategy, our Equality and Diversity Strategy, and the Transport Strategy. This building is built around working in partnership. The partnerships that are built around projects are very specific. They are based on expertise and are based around shared beliefs in what needs to be achieved. Therefore, there is great strength in the partnerships that are within here.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): The Committee made a visit to Hull and we saw the incredible invigoration for the whole city that had had come out of everyone within the different departments thinking that the City of Culture had something to do with them. Partnership working is obviously something that works.

The other question, Justine, for you is about the processes you have in place to make sure all these policies and commitments go forward and also the monitoring processes you have in place so we can see how you are delivering on everything with all these multiple partners.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): We have the Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Board, which is the guardian of the Strategy. It is the statutory advisory group on the Strategy. It has shaped the Strategy as it stands now and will hold us to account in terms of delivering that Strategy. That is one aspect of it in a statutory context.

Of course, every single project has its own milestones and own metrics. Each one has a delivery path programme attached to it. I can give you some examples, if you would like, to bring it to life. If you look at the Mayor’s Creative Industries Economic Investment Programme - which covers London Fashion Week, Film London, the Design Festival, the Games Festival - the target for that programme is to secure over £1 billion in new sales exports and inward investment. That target is broken down between those different creative industry subsectors. That programme will create over 9,000 jobs and 650 apprenticeships and traineeships. If you look at the Cultural Infrastructure Plan, that will be a ground-breaking new programme for the city.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): When will we see the Cultural Infrastructure Plan?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): It will be launched this year. Some aspects of it have been launched already. The pubs research is out already, and for music venues and dance spaces. The full thing will be launched later in the year [2018].

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Do you think that is the best way for, for instance, the Economy Committee to keep track of your progress?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Through the Infrastructure Plan?

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): You were reading out the details of one particular project. What is there that is published so we can keep track in terms of delivery?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): I will take that. We have put in place a culture performance monitoring process that we are measuring and reporting on, on a quarterly basis. It will come to the Assembly on a quarterly basis with a range of measures that have been agreed by this building and by the Assembly around output. That will be a mix of statistics that will feed into the figures, such as the ones Justine has just been referencing. Underneath that - as well as the more quantitative reporting coming through that process - we will be commissioning evaluations alongside the major programme. For example, we have a four-year evaluation with The Audience Agency that is running alongside

London Borough of Culture. Obviously, as we gain information through those evaluations we will want to publish those as quickly as we can so that is useful on a wider basis. That is why we have taken the decision around the Cultural Infrastructure Plan, that we will publish the data as we go along and bring that together as a suite of information with some reflection on that before the end of the year as well.

Fiona Twycross AM: This question is for Justine. On page 43 there is a list of other strategies that are not covered in this strategy but have some cultural significance; the likes of food, digital technology, immersive retail and I think sport is mentioned somewhere else. Obviously, these areas will also have significant cultural aspects to them. How will you make sure that your team is properly linked up with the teams covering those areas to make sure the cultural aspects do not get lost in the mix?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): We have a cross-GLA working group, the Cultural Delivery Group. Members from all of the different strategy teams come to that group. There is also a pan-strategy group. The Strategy Group makes sure that everything is correctly cross-referenced in the documents. The delivery group is about making sure that from a delivery perspective everything is joined up; for example, working with the [GLA] Health Team on pilots and working with the [GLA] Social Integration Team on various projects. There is a lot of joint working but it all comes together through those two meetings.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Great, thank you. We are now going to move on to look at the Love London idea that is threaded through the Strategy. I am going to bring in Tom Copley.

Tom Copley AM: Thank you, Chair. My first question is initially to Justine and Ben. How will the Strategy help to improve participation in culture and arts?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): This strategy is called Culture for All. Participation is absolutely at the heart of this strategy. What we know is that only a third of Londoners feel they are making the most of the capital’s culture, hence this being a core priority within the document. Some of the barriers people face are affordability; travel, a lot of people do not travel outside their local area and sometimes there are disability and mobility issues; and sometimes people feel that culture just is not for them. Lots of the programmes are about addressing access and participation, particularly to groups of people in London who do not access culture. To give you a few examples, the London Borough of Culture is the flagship programme. That will engage hundreds of thousands of Londoners in culture on their doorsteps, which is the key thing. It is about really celebrating local culture, local creativity and putting on world-class events that everyone can access and will bring people together.

Within the London Borough of Culture programme there are also these cultural impact projects. They are more targeted projects around particular ideas. We have projects we are funding with older people, on housing estates and with looked-after children in care homes.

The third element is the Culture Seeds programme that was announced by the Mayor on Friday [23 March 2018], which is £1 million of micro-grants. It is all about grassroots culture. It is targeting people in small groups who generally do not get access to the big funding schemes because they are just too small. It is £1,000 up to £5,000. We know from pilots we have done before that often if you can get a grant for £1,000 or £2,000 it can really make a big idea happen, it can be the renting of a space or the hiring of a tutor.

Tom Copley AM: Even smaller than that sometimes.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Even smaller, yes. A tiny amount of money can catalyse fantastic ideas. The micro-grants Culture Seeds programme sits as part of a pyramid. There is the flagship, London Borough of Culture, at the top of it, then these impact awards that are flagship programmes within other boroughs, and then across the whole of London the Culture Seeds is an invitation to local groups and individuals to come up and tell us about their creative idea.

Tom Copley AM: Under commitment 1.5 it said, “Launch two pilots to increase cultural engagement amongst Londoners”. Could you say a bit more about that?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Lots of different cities have discount cards; New York has one and Amsterdam has one. We are interested in whether there is something we can do in London in that format that would, again, add to this suite of ideas to improve access. We have not jumped straight into it because it is already a crowded market space. There are lots of discount schemes out there. That is why we are running a pilot. It will be with the Zip Oyster card.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): We have a second pilot in collaboration with the Team London Team here, looking at how we can offer rewards for young people to encourage them to volunteer and then to engage with culture as an outcome of that volunteering.

Then there is a third piece of research that we are just kicking off with the Communities Team here, which is running a citizen-led engagement programme. It is working with groups of different characteristics of people in different communities around London who are undertaking their own research. We have asked them to undertake their own research into what Love London could mean for them. As Justine says, what is most important is that, if we are to offer access, it is for those who need and want it. We are really targeting around that; taking time to understand that is key.

Tom Copley AM: Absolutely. One of the problems with a lot of the discount schemes is that it just goes to people who would go to the theatre, or whichever cultural activity, already but they are getting it at a discount.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): The move to take culture to different communities across London is very significant. Over the last 20 years there has been a lot of work to persuade - remember our cultural infrastructure is very centrally located - institutions to work with other parts of the city. It has been an uphill task, to be honest. This policy shift, to try to create new initiatives to take culture to other parts of the city, is quite significant, with the London Borough of Culture being the flagship initiative there. I think we will see a significant number of new partnerships now the first two boroughs have been awarded. I know of cultural organisations that were waiting to see who won before they offered help and support for that borough. How many new partnerships come out of that relationship will be very interesting.

Tom Copley AM: I would love to go into the London Borough of Culture but I think other Assembly Members will be bringing it up later so I will not go into that now, we will be coming back to it.

There is audience participation, but there is also workforce participation and diversity there. Could you talk about what the Strategy will do to improve participation in the workforce, whether it is in a technical sense or in a performing sense, across the board?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): The Mayor wants the creative workforce to reflect London’s population. Diversity is good for business. Gender diversity on senior teams boosts performance and ethnically diverse companies get better returns. We know all of this, it is

statistically proven. However, the creative workforce is only 23% BAME compared to 33% across London’s workforce as a whole and 92% of the creative workforce are from so-called advantaged backgrounds. Therefore, there is a job to be done. Some of the barriers are that there are not enough opportunities for young talent to engage with the arts; a lack of diverse role models at all levels; and the pay is very low, the average salary of an artist is £10,000. Recruitment processes also tend to not be so transparent. It is a very SME-type industry, it is very easy to pick up the phone and call the person you know. All of these things act as barriers against changing the profile of the industry.

What we are doing; we have recently included a new element into the London Borough of Culture Scheme, the Creative Entrepreneurs Programme, which means that young creatives in the winning boroughs will have support and be able to join fellowships to help them build their creative businesses. That is all targeted at BAME communities. The Culture Seeds I mentioned. The Cultural Leadership Board has a subgroup looking at this issue and we are commissioning some research on what is already out there. The industry realises it is a problem and there are lots of schemes out there. However, when you look at the global statistics they have not added up to shifting the dial, they have not created that sea change. Our question is: who is doing what? We do not want to duplicate but it is what the Mayor can do to add value to everything that is happening and shift the dial. The London Music Fund supports young musicians; 65% of recipients are BAME. We are doing a lot of advocacy. We have been working with [Sir] Lenny Henry [CBE, co-founder Comic Relief] who has a campaign around diversity with the Office of Communications. Film London, our film agency, has a new equal access network training initiative. There are lots of initiatives but we have not cracked it yet so this remains a priority.

Tom Copley AM: Do you think devolution of the Skills Budget presents a bigger opportunity for the Mayor going forward to try to improve diversity in that sense?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes, definitely. Already there is the Digital Talent Programme, which is £7 million to improve young people’s digital skills. Of that £300,000 is on the creative industries, and that work is targeted at BAME and women in the industry. However, as you say there is much more scope as the skills money starts to get devolved.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Could I add something on education? Many of the ideas and policies point to more work in education. In a previous role I was a Governor of the University of the Arts London, which is a parental body of most of the art and design schools in London. While I was there we faced the same issue, there was not enough talent coming through the different communities in London. Clearly there is a line from school education into higher education (HE) and into employment. We saw our role, as an HE institution, to try to encourage that. We did lots of work in schools, from primary schools onwards, and we encountered resistance from parents. People did not want their children necessarily to go and work within the creative sector so there was an educational role in terms of informing parents about the opportunities of the sector. It is a big issue that involves a lot of work across a lot of different organisations.

Tom Copley AM: One thing that has been put to me before is that people talk about, for example, the barrier of fees to go into HE, drama school or wherever. Sometimes it is more the average of three years [after people have left education] that people are essentially expected to work for free after that because they are not being paid. Have you have been engaging with, for example, Equity and the trade unions in this sector on the low- pay/no-pay issue?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes, we had a roundtable with all the unions on pay.

Tom Copley AM: Finally, to you, Justine, what do you think we can learn - we have talked about this a bit - from Hull and its experience of City of Culture?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): We can learn a number of things. One is how important it is to have culture champions at a leadership level. What was really clear was that the local authority held its nerve. It bid for Hull for City of Culture and won it. It did not spring out of nowhere. There were quite a few years of development. The whole of the city centre was dug up, everyone was getting annoyed about it, but they held their nerve. That made a big difference because it opened all the doors and gave confidence. The other thing we learnt about is volunteers. We were met by these great volunteers at the station. Volunteering was a really important part of the programme in Hull, we learnt that in the Olympics too. Civic pride, and the way in which people can get involved in their city, was really palpable. The commissioning as well, the ideas and work. You need world-class culture. You need great art as well. Those three things were the learnings.

Tom Copley AM: One of the things they said when we visited was they had only just started building housing for sale again because until recently the cost of building of homes was more than the value they could sell them for. Of course, you can go too far the other way and you end up forcing people out. You alluded to this during your opening statement in terms of how we balance these things in terms of regeneration. However, it was an interesting point that they made.

Sharon, can I come to you? In terms of engaging with more diverse audiences, what do you think we can learn from your experience at the Museum of London?

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): It is a relentless and enduring task. You have to be really creative as an organisation. It is really important that funding bodies, sponsoring organisations and government - like the Mayor of London, the Arts Council and other funders - really hold organisations to task so that embedded in our projects, in grant applications and all sort of things are very important commitments focusing on diversity so it is embedded in the funding mechanisms, which is really important. Then it is about partnership and being creative. Some of the things we are doing - working, again, with partners and funders - are small and replicate some of the elements of the Strategy we see here. Small amounts of funding can make a big difference. Simply providing about £300 to a school to make a visit to a cultural institution facilitates that. Focusing those small grants to schools that have a high percentage of pupil premium and schools that have not visited a cultural institution or attraction in central London for two years. In other words, you can facilitate - through quite rigorous but small mechanisms - engagement from broad populations. That is just opening access. I would advocate, and I feel very pleased about, the range of mechanisms that are being deployed in this strategy.

Tom Copley AM: Finally from me to Jenny, you have great experience of having mass participation with very diverse communities with the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Could you talk about how you think, from that experience, we can engage with more diverse communities?

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): Thank you. We have taken from the London 2012 Festival and the work there two big learnings. One is about free events and one is about creative participation. 14-18 NOW is another national UK-wide programme, as was the London 2012 Festival. It was led by London but was a UK-wide programme. We did projects such as Piccadilly Circus Circus with Justine and her team here. That was a hugely successful way of bringing very large numbers of people into the heart of London, into Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street, around a circus theme and extraordinary aerial work. The diversity of that audience was very noticeable, as was the diversity of the performers. Another example was

Jeremy Deller’s [artist] “Sacrilege”, where the bouncy-castle Stonehenge was taken to communities all around London and, indeed, around the UK. We have taken those as examples.

For 14-18 NOW - the programme around the centenary of the First World War, which is a very different topic and with a very different atmosphere all around it - we are looking at the same kind of things. Having had that success, we invited the artist Jeremy Deller to create a piece for the centenary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. His “We’re Here Because We’re Here” soldiers, who appeared in stations and shopping centres around the UK, were deliberately in places where people are. It was a modern memorial in a way, a modern form of commemoration. It went to where people are. As a result, 2 million people saw that project live and 2,000 volunteers participated in it. 63% of the UK population of 30 million people were aware of it by the end of the day. The reason for that is that it went all across London and all across the UK, to places where people work, where people play, where families go and people travel. The demographic of the audience - in terms of age, social class and cultural diversity - mirrors almost exactly the demographic of the UK; as you would expect because it was done for people, where they are. We did a lot of research through a YouGov poll in the week afterwards. The emotional engagement people felt - because they had seen the soldiers and engaged with them, had received it through social media with 330 million impressions by the end of that weekend, or seen it on TV - was equally profound in each of those cases. We felt we were reaching people of huge diversity with something that was able to bring people together. That is one of the things culture can do and why we are so interested in this particular Cultural Strategy.

Tom Copley AM: Thank you.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. This was a point about diversity increasing diversity. I was pleased to see that the Strategy mentions paid internships as an important way that the sector can be opened up. The next paragraph mentions the Good Work Standard. Will unpaid internships be a bar to people getting the Good Work Standard?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes.

Fiona Twycross AM: Good. OK, similarly, networks. The 92% statistic is quite scary really in terms of the amount of work that is going to have to be done to open up the sector. Would there also be an expectation then that internships would be advertised to avoid people using their networks?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): Yes, absolutely. I do not know if you saw that a few weeks ago the Mayor of LA announced an internship scheme particularly for the entertainment industry, because they found exactly the same thing that we found. The appetite is there but it is such a pick-up-the-phone and who-you-know type industry that is going against the natural grain of how it operates. We are actively looking at other schemes around the world on what we might do in London in this space. You are right, it is a really important priority.

Fiona Twycross AM: Are you getting buy-in from the sector on this point?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): We are just starting. Under Ben’s [Evans] leadership there is a subgroup looking at this in a dedicated fashion around the Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Board. We have commissioned our own piece of research. I am having lots of conversations, everyone knows they need to crack it. The question for us is what the most useful and powerful thing is that the Mayor can do in this space to galvanise the industry. I think we will end up with a series of industry-based roundtables on it. At the moment it is a series of conversations, a working group and research.

The next stage will be a series of roundtables. We will define out of that what the Mayor’s policy can be in a more delivery-focused way very soon.

Fiona Twycross AM: Obviously the GLA is not the only player in the field in terms of policy in this area. Has the Government bought into making sure that diversity is increased in the creative industries as well, does it have active policies to help promote this as well?

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): It is less of a priority for central Government, to be honest. I cannot think of an initiative at this point that has been led by the Department.

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): However, some of the big funders, such as Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Arts Council England really are committed to this.

Fiona Twycross AM: Conditions of grants might include it?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): The core criteria for the Arts Council is the creative case for diversity. You do not get funding if you do not meet that criteria, it is its number one. Sharon is right, lots of the quangos are embedding it into their work.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Part of that main challenge - in terms of the Mayor’s leverage there are limited ways in which we can respond - is access to creative education. We have seen a 30% drop in art subjects being studied. That is a huge issue for the talent pipeline for the sector, both on a social level and an economic level. That is something that needs to be addressed. Research shows that this is not just about studying creative subjects in order to go on to a creative career. It is about how it affects your chances in other areas, whether it is using music to improve your maths performance or theatre to improve your literature and other responses, they are absolutely entwined. Having creative thinkers in our future is key.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you.

Shaun Bailey AM: This is a question to all of you really about cultural diversity. London as a world city, probably has the biggest number of ethnic groups across it. How is this strategy engaging with different ethnic groups to express the culture from which they come in an artistic fashion? Could someone give me an idea of where that activity is?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): The London Borough of Culture has a dedicated programme, which I mentioned, called the Creative Entrepreneurs Programme. That is absolutely about targeting BAME communities and developing young talent. It is like a fellowship programme. The Schools Awards happen in every single borough. For the London Music Fund, 65% of the young musician recipients are from BAME backgrounds. That scheme is interesting. For example, what we find is that music in schools gets taught to a level, and once you leave primary school you have to start paying for tuition. The talented kids, who cannot afford to pay for the tuition, do not carry on. The Mayor’s Music Fund is a bridging scholarship fund. All the teachers in London identify young people with talent who are then eligible for a Mayor’s Music Fund grant, which bridges them into paid-for training. It means they get into conservatoires and are able to develop. It is quite a targeted programme.

Shaun Bailey AM: What I am looking for is whether there is any evidence that we are saying to our very, very culturally-rich city, “We respect your culture and want to add your experience, your cultural talent and

perspective to ours”. I met a kid recently who is Mongolian who spoke to me about the instruments he had learnt to play and his national dress and stuff. Is there somewhere for him to express that? My parents are Jamaican. My neighbour is from South India. Is there any place where this strategy picks them up if they have some artistic leanings?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries): You can see in the Strategy - not run by our team, run by the [GLA] Events Team but wrapped into our strategy - are all the cultural events and the festivals, for example Chinese New Year and Eid. That is a big platform. London has the biggest festival programme of any world city in that regard, I think. That is a growing programme. There are the big festivals and events and then it is embedded within all the individual programmes.

Shaun Bailey AM: One last tiny question about class. I could have this wrong and you will have an opinion but I am a Londoner, born and bred. My experience of the London cultural scene is that it is very dominated by the middle and upper-middle classes. Even if you see what is on in the theatre, all the heroes seem to be from a middle-class background.

Is there somewhere where, if I am of good working-class stock, I can find some place to express that, the different kind of music we like or the different things that are put on at the theatre or the arts? Could I truly go to one of the big galleries and see something that represents the class of people from which I come?

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): Come to the Museum of London.

Shaun Bailey AM: Is there anymore? Yes, because I want it to be celebrated, not only the poor of London, “Look how bad it has been for us”. I want, also, it to be celebrated. Our only cultural output should not be East Enders, if you know what I mean. Thank you, Chair. I am done.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Socioeconomic status is not a protected characteristic, but for us it is absolutely bound up in that. It is a core part of the research that the Cultural Leadership Board has been leading on. Where those places and spaces for engagement are and who gets to engage with them is running through every programme and output that we are touching. For example, with the Cultural Infrastructure Plan, we are working with the Communities team to think about the different kinds of spaces that people have and access and come together around. It is absolutely top in our priorities.

Shaun Bailey AM: Thank you.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): The other thing I would say is, as Jenny said, free culture is really important. Some people think, “It is not for me”. A gallery can be quite an intimidating place. Just as Jenny saw with her national statistics, when we did a range of free events for the Olympics, again, the demographic of Londoners was exactly mirrored in the audiences for all of those free events. What was the difference? They were free and they were all over London. They were on your doorstep. The London Borough of Culture really picks up on that.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Yes, absolutely. It was really key for us as part of our bid that we would be focusing on giving people opportunities for culture on every corner. I have seen - in my experience as a councillor, since I was elected in 2010 - people who are absolutely the people we want to be attracting into spaces, whether they are libraries or museums, walking past the front door because they do not feel as though it is for them. They do not feel a sense of entitlement in the way that other groups would. Really, for us, it is about making everybody feel included. It is not handing culture down to people. It

is celebrating events, like the one we had last weekend with Lake of Stars, showcasing incredible international talent in the borough and enabling people to see those absolutely stunning performances and really gelling the community together.

I was thinking before I came here today about the risks if London does not get this right and the risks if outer London does not play its full part. Paris is a really powerful example of the risks that you see when the outer communities in the outer ring, the banlieues, feel increasingly divided from the centre. Those socioeconomic groups and ethnic groups are increasingly excluded from what is a very rich and effective cultural offer in the centre that people visit, but those outer areas are completely detached and the divide grows ever greater. It needs boroughs like mine - and that is why it is so fantastic that we have been awarded this along with Brent - that are able to play our full part in London’s cultural life.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): As well, someone asked about what we learned from Hull. Hand on heart, the people of Hull think culture is for them. That is part of the legacy, “It is something that is for us” --

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Yes, exactly.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): -- and that is what --

Shaun Bailey AM: Do we have an additional challenge of just sheer size? You would say Brent is inner London. I would not because I live in Havering. I used to live in Brent. Brent is inner London. It is not outer London. We have a scale issue. We have more diversity, which is probably a strength.

Tom Copley AM: Brent is outer London.

Shaun Bailey AM: It is not, Tom. Take my word for it.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): There is a map. We can settle this outside.

Shaun Bailey AM: I worry because I live in Havering and we have a great local theatre, but how much are we encouraging people to build that up as well?

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): For me, that is exactly what the London Borough of Culture will achieve. That is exactly what it is doing. We have the Night Tube for the Central line and the Victoria line, and so we have the infrastructure. The investment has been delivered by the Mayor and that is a wonderful opportunity. I have just bought another theatre because that seemed like a brilliant idea and it certainly will be, but it is about how you make sure that every bit of land for all the reasons that Justine was setting out earlier. We have lost so many spaces. We have lost so many pubs. We have lost so many venues out of the centre for a whole host of reasons. If outer London then does not come forward - whether that is Havering or whether that is my borough, Waltham Forest - then you risk those spaces disappearing altogether. The city will lose out, our next generation will lose out, but also, we will lose out in terms of our economy.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): You may have already stolen my thunder, Shaun. Anyway, congratulations, Clare, on your new status as the London Borough of Culture.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Thank you.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): How is it going to help attract tourists and visitors beyond Zone 1, please?

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): People coming in from inner to outer or more generally?

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): More generally.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): We have an extraordinary cultural offer in Waltham Forest already with the William Morris Gallery. We have visitors from all over the world. We have recently opened Walthamstow Wetlands, which is 500 acres of incredible open space. It is over five times the size of Barnes Wetlands. We have great history. We have other museums and facilities across our borough. We have this opportunity to play a part in London’s cultural offer today and into the future. Also, our residents have an extraordinary range of talents that can be brought to the fore. For me, it is about how I connect those people with those opportunities elsewhere and how we connect the whole of London with Waltham Forest and Brent and other partner boroughs as we go forward.

London cannot survive if everything is just focused in the centre, as Justine was saying earlier about this. It is not a creep towards the east or the west. It is like these big statements and this significant investment. Having these new jobs in Dagenham will be incredibly exciting for me and my residents. They are a bus journey away. You could not say that before. It is about all of us playing our part, using the resources that we have, showcasing what we have, and then all of our residents feeling like they are involved.

I will give you an example. There is The Mill Community Space in my ward and my borough that I was involved in setting up and it has become a wonderful community hub. We give out very small grants of £500, £2,000, £3,000, and people feel included in that space. They feel as though they are allowed to go through that door and access the exhibitions, the arts and the culture. Before, they did not. Exact people we wanted to get in the door felt that they were excluded and had to walk past. It is about how we get people into these spaces because, otherwise, the talent is walking past the door and we cannot afford to see that continue.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): In terms of a lasting legacy, do you have a couple more examples? Also, I am a great believer in that awful thing - I know accountants always use it - that if you do not measure it, you do not achieve it.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Absolutely.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): Do you have any particular key performance indicators (KPIs)?

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Yes. For me, there are some significant steps that have already been taken following us being awarded the first-ever London Borough of Culture. I was then in a position to make a bold statement and to purchase a heritage cinema in the centre of Walthamstow that we will be transforming with the help of partners because you cannot do anything without your partnerships. Only last week, we gave permission for a further cinema to be restored in the north of the borough. Really, that is a clear statement that we would not have been able to make previously.

Officers will be aware of the detail and the KPIs that sit behind our London Borough of Culture bid. For me as a politician, it is about being able to see the physical difference but then also to have the experience of residents reported back to me as we see those projects delivered. As Justine mentioned, we had 15,000 residents who supported our bid and the response that we are already getting is about people feeling included.

Their response has not been, “You won, did you not?” It is, “We won, did we not? It is brilliant”. That has been really key for me. Yes, the sky is the limit. It is very exciting.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): Brilliant. Thank you.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Can I just add something to that if that is OK? It is about reputation. What we will get is a new portfolio of stories from Waltham Forest that can be told in every way across the city.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Totally, yes.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): There is this kind of latent pride in where you come from and we all try to frame our own neighbourhood and our own area. If the outcome of this is that local people have a much stronger cohesion and pride about being from Waltham Forest and have a series of stories that they can illustrate that, that is a massive gain. One of the pillars of this strategy of the World City is really about our reputation not just globally but to ourselves and our own domestic audiences as well.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Just a tiny example, if I may, Chair. When we handed in our bid here at City Hall, we brought primary school children from Ainslie Wood Primary School. We came with Bob and Roberta Smith, who makes slogan art, and he had make placards. We saw tiny children holding works of art and asking me questions about them like, “Does Sadiq Khan really work here?” and, “Am I really allowed to hold this?” and to see their excitement. Also, there was no sense that they were not allowed to join in. There was no sense that it was not for them. They were part of what we were doing and they were so excited by it. It was worth it. All of it is worth it to see that.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): Thank you. Moving on to Shonagh, what do you hope to achieve with the Culture Seeds programme, please, and how will you evaluate how public money has been well spent?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): This is a hugely exciting programme. As someone who is six months into my role here, it is a hugely exciting programme for City Hall to be undertaking. What we really want to build and show throughout this is that that money is going to those who are not engaging as widely in other programmes. We are going to develop as light-touch an approach to it as we can. There will be a range of 10 questions that people can apply into. We are working with a really reputable management company, which is experienced in this area, which we have appointed through a tender process. They are going to make sure that the accessibility factor on this programme is really high.

What we then want to do around that is work through, again, a number of partnerships. We will be road-showing, going out with different groups and asking them to represent that fund. We already have begun that process and so the launch on Friday of the Culture Strategy and the programme at Battersea Arts Centre also involved a range of community groups. They are our first best advocates for that programme.

Really, we have to make sure that it gets to those who are not benefiting in other ways, and I am confident that we have the right factors in place for that.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): In terms of spending public money well, if you are going out and public money is going to diverse groups, which is great, you always have to make sure the money is actually well spent. How are you going to do that?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Absolutely. There will be an evaluation piece in place around this as well. We will be looking at all sorts of factors and so as much of the qualitative information that we can gain, but also looking qualitatively about what those groups wanted to achieve and how they went about achieving that. We can bring all of that learning into other programmes as well and so it will be useful not just in assessing how well we did with that programme and the potential for that programme, but also thinking across our others as well.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): Could you write to us on the second point separately? It is one of those things. I will let you answer now, but how you spend public money is so important.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Absolutely.

Tony Devenish AM (Deputy Chairman): If you would reflect and come back, that would be helpful.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Of course.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Also, the team has contracted a grant management company, which has a great track record.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Yes. It is called Groundwork.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Groundwork is really good at robust analysis, antifraud, all that due diligence. They have a great track record. That is part and parcel of this programme.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Just picking up on the Culture Seeds, is there long-term support for the groups? These are very small groups and small projects. What kind of long-term support is there to help them keep going?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): It is a fascinating time for us because, when Culture Seeds was brought together, we wanted to develop a Culture Seeds Network around it and so we are using a ‘grant funder plus’ model to ensure that people who are applying and receiving money through the programme will also have a network to support them in thinking about how they get the most from that and how they network with each other. The Mayor has also launched the Young Londoners Fund, which is a £45 million programme across three years and culture, along with sport and education and youth engagement, is a huge part of that programme. I would hope that community groups and individuals who are being successful through Culture Seeds could also look towards this larger fund where they can apply for grants of £30,000 and up and could also look to other funds which we can signpost for them, like the Arts Council and other public funds, to take their ideas further. We really hope that we can build some confidence in receiving grants.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That kind of signposting is coming from City Hall?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Yes. We will be able to do that through City Hall and the other teams but specifically through the Culture Seeds Network as well.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That sounds like dealing with lots and lots of small groups, but you have the capacity within City Hall to be able to handle that scale?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Yes.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. I will now bring Assembly Member Twycross in on culture and good growth.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. My first question is primarily to Justine and Ben. We hear quite a lot about the Mayor’s ambition to achieve good growth and I just wondered - you did mention it in your introduction, Justine - in what ways the Culture Strategy contributes to achieving that objective?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Thank you. Good growth means that London should grow without leaving Londoners out. For us, good growth means not obliterating character and good growth means not undermining community cohesion. These ideas of people and places and prosperity are all part and parcel of good growth.

Of course, good growth is the guiding principle within the Mayor’s draft London Plan, and that is why we see a lot of culture embedded in the London Plan. It is the most pro-culture London Plan ever. Really, the London Plan is looking to support culture at all different levels. The Good Growth Fund has funded 19 projects with culture as a strong component. The Cultural Infrastructure Plan will support good growth because, at the moment, we do not know what the baselines are and so we need to know those baselines about venues, spaces, etc.

Then we will be supporting the boroughs and developers with evidence and tools. We are doing design guides. What does it mean to create a new workspace? What does it mean to create a new dance space or a new theatre? We will be giving advice and guidance.

Really, the London Plan is a fantastic document this time. We have all kinds of measures in there: the Cultural Infrastructure Plan, CEZs, the agent of change. All of these things help to support the principle of good growth.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. I wondered, Clare, if you could comment on what your interpretation of what good growth would be and how you feel that the Culture Strategy can support this mayoral ambition.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Absolutely. There are two really key examples in my borough that spring to mind. One is around the Lea Bridge Station, which we opened a couple of years ago. We have the potential for 4,000 new homes in that area, but it is our objective to make sure that culture is embedded there.

I am reminded of one developer who had an ambition. They came along and said, “Can we buy the whole site?” We said, “We do not own it. We have separate parts of it, but tell us what your idea is”. Their idea was that they would build a load of identikit flats in a load of identikit blocks and have one sculpture in the middle. Depending how much you paid for your flat, you could see either a bigger or a smaller bit of the sculpture. We did not see them again.

You can see when it is poorly done or is done in a tokenistic way. It is not real. It is not London. It does not reflect London’s history. It does not think about London’s future. It does not think about the future of our communities. We have this very large area where we have potential to embed culture.

To give an example, we were very lucky to get one of the Good Growth Fund pots for just over £400,000 to invest in one of our libraries in our most deprived ward in our borough, Lea Bridge Ward. It takes that library from being what is a very old-fashioned space that does not serve the needs of that community in any way, shape or form. It ticks a box for some middle-class parents who feel that they are free to use it and will do so, but in terms of being a cultural and community space it was not offering it. It was not doing anything. There was no space to have English language classes, for example. The Good Growth Fund will enable us to open that space out, to use the garden and also to build an extension. That will mean it is accessible for people with disabilities. That will mean it just breathes life into a whole chunk of my borough where people are generally left behind. That will be incredible.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. Justine, you mentioned the draft London Plan and the extent to which culture is reflected in it. Part of that is about protection of some of the spaces and venues and what is already there. Is it actually possible for mayoral policy to protect small grassroots venues and how would this be done in practice?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): That is one of those partnership questions. We are not a planning authority. We are a licensing body over small music venues. There are many different reasons why music venues are at risk at grassroots level. One is national planning policy. Permitted development has had a negative impact on grassroots music venues. Noise complaints have had a negative impact, licensing arguments and debates, and also the economic side of it. These are venues that are really vital talent incubators, but the model is quite tight. They are quite hand-to-mouth small venues.

What we are seeking to do is to use, where we can, the Mayor’s influence and powers. Through the London Plan, one of the things we have brought in for the first time is the agent of change. Before the agent of change, if you move in next to a music venue or a club, you can then complain that you have moved in next to a music venue or club. What the agent of change does is puts the onus on the agent of that change. If you are a developer building a block of flats next to a music venue, it is on you - the developer - to soundproof those flats. Equally, if you are a music venue moving into a new residential area, it is on you - the music venue - to manage your queues and make sure you have the correct soundproofing, etc. It is a much fairer planning policy.

We are seeing now that the national Government is very interested in picking that up. There has been a number of debates in the House of Lords. These are areas where the Mayor can lead the way and can have a leadership position on this stuff.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Perhaps I could illustrate that with one example. The Wapping Project had been in a much-changed area of London over a long period of time. Two new residents managed to close it down. It just shows you the vulnerability of venues because someone has moved into the area and they want it to be as if they were living in the countryside with no animation from the city around them. The agent of change is a wholly good thing, in our view.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): We have through the new Culture at Risk office also supported in lots of other ways. Sometimes it is about organisations that need help with a listing application or it is that we can put them in touch through our GLA Economics team with data that they might need for planning applications. There have been lots of other ways that we have - not just through convening powers or policies in the London Plan - been able to help with grassroots venues and some of the issues that they face.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Essentially, what we have is the immediate, the medium term and the long term. The immediate is, “I really need help with my venue today. I need to help negotiating my business rates, my licence, etc”, and that is the hotline in the team called Culture at Risk. Then there are lots of the policies in the London Plan: the agent of change and also the CEZ programme. They will protect venues. There is lots of different medium-term work. Amy Lamé, the Night Czar, works a lot with music venues to support them. Then there is the longer-term hardwiring of this into the planning system through agent of change.

Fiona Twycross AM: Is the Culture at Risk office, which was mentioned within the Strategy and Shonagh has just mentioned, a standalone team or do they have other responsibilities? That is a new team within the Mayor’s --

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes. We say “team” but it is part of the Culture Team. It is an officer within the culture team who is on the hotline.

Fiona Twycross AM: They basically work full-time on the Culture at Risk? How many members of staff is that?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): There is one dedicated officer who also works directly with the Night Czar, with our Music Team, for example, and with the Cultural Infrastructure Plan officer. There is a range of them for whom this is a big part of their job description and one dedicated officer who is on that fulltime.

Fiona Twycross AM: How many inquiries have they already dealt with? How long has this been in existence?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): I could bring you the number. We have anything up to 100 live cases. There is a caseload of up to 100 at any one time. I have a list of 30 or so successfully closed or overturned cases. We could bring you a figure for how many have been looked at in the lifetime.

Fiona Twycross AM: It is interesting because the strategy was the first time I had read about it, but it seems to be something that could play an important part in protecting some of the venues.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): Yes.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): It is like the rapid response hotline. Often, it is just, “How do I get an asset of community value registration? Can you give me advice on licensing?” Now that we have this one person, we have an intelligence set in the building. Often, it is just about advice. People do not know where to go.

Fiona Twycross AM: How do people find out about it? How do these cases come in? Is it just general queries to the GLA?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Because the Mayor has set out the importance quite publicly of grassroots spaces and of cultural infrastructure, we get a lot of letters, we get a lot of Twitter, we get lots of people writing in and calling us asking for help. There are all deferred to the Culture at Risk person.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. Going back to my set questions, Clare, I wondered if you could outline how the Cultural Strategy and the draft London Plan helped local authorities to support and protect cultural or small workplaces.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): Protecting workspace and developing new workspace is just so important to us and we have some nice examples. Starting with the draft London Plan, the way it is constructed is incredibly helpful. We can see the housing numbers, but also the way it is structured means that we can take elements of the Plan and just apply them within the local authority.

We have done a lot of work around agent of change, which I just applaud. It is absolutely brilliant. We have all had those complaints as local councillors about noise from a primary school of children laughing and it is like, “Really?” You are not going to please everybody. As Ben says, you live a city and you want it to be a fun place. Agent of change is absolutely brilliant for that. With the number of pubs that have been lost, we have brought in our own pub policy, but to have that guidance from the Mayor and to have that strategic support from various teams within this building is really powerful.

How the two fit together is really crucial. For me, it is a question of what we are offering to Londoners and what I am offering to my residents in Waltham Forest. People want a decent roof over their heads, but they also want to enjoy London for what it is because they are paying a premium for that roof over their head. How do you make sure that people have quality of life? For me, it has to be access to lots of stuff that is free. That is universalism. That is core to who I am politically. That is core to my borough. That is core to our belief in fellowship and that is our heritage from William Morris [19th century textile designer, poet, and socialist activist]. We have to have that type of offer.

Through the Olympic year [2012], we had a series of six events, cunningly called The Big Six, and that was really a test for us of how we were opening that up and they were all free of charge. We have carried on that legacy with the Walthamstow Garden Party and partnerships with Barbican and others. It is how we provide that offer and how we make it a really exciting place to live, but then we embed that premise around culture into our plans for development as we go forward. You cannot just build flats. You have to think about how you integrate. You have to think about the social and economic infrastructure that you bring with that because, whilst you are absolutely right, Shonagh, that socioeconomic background is not a protected characteristic, I believe it should be and so we act as if it were.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. Justine and/or Ben, the CEZ is quite a key part of the Strategy. How will the Mayor decide how many to set up and where they will be located? Is there a risk and how are you going to manage that risk about the Mayor being the person who ends up deciding what culture is worth promoting and practising? How are you going to mitigate that risk? Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): We are very excited about CEZs. It is genuinely quite a ground-breaking policy. We have to have more policy because the challenges are really significant. As I said before, we are set to lose 30% of artist workspace in the next year or so. We know this cycle of creative shock troops moving into slightly unloved, lower-priced areas, raising land values, building the character, etc, and then, as the land values rise, they end up getting moved out. This programme is all about the creative community putting down roots because, as areas grow, we want that balance maintained. We want good growth. We want character as well as rapid development. CEZs are about all of those things.

What we decided to do was, because it is a brand-new idea, we decided to do a test and do some research programmes to start it. Last week we announced 10 development grants of £50,000 each to 11 boroughs. It

is 11 boroughs because Tower Hamlets and Hackney did a joint bid. Barking and Dagenham, Bexley, Camden, Croydon, Harrow, Hounslow, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark as well all got these development grants. The idea is that they will then work up in their boroughs what a CEZ might look like. They will, of course, be bespoke and so it is everything from how we can protect Hatton Garden, through to Hackney Wick Studios, through to Harrow and Hounslow. What they will all be doing is working out what their story is as a creative hub in their boroughs, but there will also be some core themes and pillars within each programme. One will be the establishment and securing of new creative workspace in perpetuity. That will be a red line. One will be about the development of new creative jobs. The third will be opening up opportunities for young people. What we want is to create a porous zone where local people know this stuff is happening in their borough and can access it, they feel it is for them and the jobs are there. It is a porous programme rather than a parachuted programme. It is all about retaining creative communities, allowing them to put down roots and securing that space.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): The Board has spent a significant amount of time looking at this issue. As Justine says, it is a major policy of the moment. What we are interested in is the long term because not just the development grants but the actual CEZs will be planting and nurturing a cluster of activity in a particular part of the city. What we are interested in is building some momentum that lasts way beyond our support and involvement. It is placemaking. It is about creating a new like-minded group of people and a new identity for that particular area.

I come back to that point about reputation. If we are able to establish these communities in areas of the city, they act as a magnet for others to come and grow. We have seen this happen in an evolving way in places like Shoreditch in the past. Now, of course, that has changed significantly when you have Versace moving into Shoreditch, but originally that creative community created the identity for that area. That is what we would like to achieve in other parts of the city.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. Sharon, I wonder whether you could comment on how important a CEZ might be for a museum, or would museums sit outside that structure, do you think?

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): No. It is really interesting. We are in the City of London and our new site will be located in West Smithfield in an area which the City is developing with partnerships as Culture Mile. The interesting thing that happened recently was that the City, through Culture Mile, applied for a CEZ grant to look at how Culture Mile can evolve in this way. It was not successful. We have heard about other successful boroughs, but the mere process of that has created a commitment from Culture Mile to carry on with the proposal to look at a CEZ around Culture Mile. That is just an interesting aside. The mere fact of running a competition gets people going and fosters attention around particular things.

For the Museum, we consider ourselves - amongst many things - to be part of the creative industries and so we know that being part of an environment which is fostering fusion skills and bringing in a wide range of players in the field of creativity is really important. Just thinking about the Museum itself, we are a business and an educational institution. We will be in the process of regenerating an area. We have opportunities in terms of delivery of the Museum. The creative skills and talent that we need to draw on are as profound as the film industry. It is really in our interest to be in an area that brings that talent to the fore and to recognise the role that we play in that as well.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. My final set of questions is one question, but it is split into two, really. The final question for me is on the Creative Land Trust. Justine, you mentioned about having space in perpetuity. Is that basically the underlying idea of the Creative Land Trust?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes, it is. It is an idea that we learned about through the World Cities Culture Forum from San Francisco. San Francisco has very similar challenges to us. Land is really expensive over there and they are losing quite a lot of creative infrastructure, too. Their Mayor’s office seed funded a start-up to look at how it could facilitate access to finance for small venues and organisations. What they found and what we have found is that because in London the property market is so buoyant, often, if you are a workspace provider providing creative workspace or a venue, even if you can find a venue - in the first place, it is very difficult to find the space or the studio space - then you need to rapidly assemble the finance. You might need a bit of a mortgage, you might need some philanthropic, you might need a grant from perhaps the Arts Council or HLF. All of that takes a long time and, in the property market, you have to be there with your offer straightaway. The Creative Land Trust is really about bridging that gap and looking at social investment and the Mayor’s investment. We have lots of interest. The Arts Council is very interested in coming in as well to look at how we might create this new model, really. The idea is that the money would flow back into the Trust over time, but it really is an intervention to allow the creative space to be secured in the city in what is a very buoyant marketplace.

Fiona Twycross AM: What level of engagement have you had with the public and private sectors in developing the concept?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): There has been a whole feasibility study into it and lots of different models have been tested. We are in dialogue with our friends in San Francisco. Their version is called the Community Action Stabilization Trust (CAST). Through that process, there has been lots of engagement. In fact, particularly around the finance modelling we have taken advice from financial analysts and the business world to look at what investment models will work.

Fiona Twycross AM: Thank you. When will we see the first Creative Land Trust development in London?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): We are in the process now of getting the charity registration and that takes a while. As soon as that is done, we can be up and running. Shaun Bailey AM: You have partially answered my question. This is to Ben, Justine and maybe even the Councillor will want to chip in here. When you talk about setting up artists in places for them to work, etc, and you look at the history of London, we have lots of that, but they are in places that Chelsea and Shoreditch now, which are well beyond the cost of anybody. Do you have a model for protecting that enclave from property price uplift? Is there something that you can do to say, “OK, we have set this area up and we are going to try to keep it for many a year so that it does not just become the new Chelsea or the new Shoreditch”?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): What we cannot do is change the economic system we work in, but two of the programmes we just talked about are particularly addressing that issue. It is all about artists being able to put down roots in areas that they have helped to develop and play a role in. The first one is the CEZs, establishing zones where people can put down roots. There is in-perpetuity, long-term creative workspace. Then the Creative Land Trust, again, will be another vehicle to secure long-term creative space. Of course, within the London Plan, the third overarching policy tool really embeds creative workspace in the London Plan for the first time. Where there are big developments happening and there is a lot of creative workspace, we are signalling in the London Plan that there needs to be no net loss and that we do not want to see a loss of creative workspace as big developments happen.

Shaun Bailey AM: Is there an idea that the Land Trust would be almost the financial muscle and would be able to work with the London Plan to --

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes. It is access to finance, really. It is a bridging loan or it can buy property itself, but it is all for the charitable goal, really. It will be set up as a charity. It will not be for profit.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Each of these - and I hope each of these - were very distinctive from each other because they are formed from a consortium of local partners, public and private, and so we would hope that the local authority would support this, but we would hope that the local developers might participate in the CEZs as well. We want to embed the CEZ with a consortium of partners who have a vested interest in its long-term success. It is about longevity. They may not all succeed in the longer run, but we hope they all will. As Sharon says, each and every one of them is distinct and different from each other, and that distinctiveness will be a very powerful tool in encouraging more and more people to participate in them.

Shaun Bailey AM: I have just one tiny little addition. What can you do to cycle artists through? You talk about putting down roots. A group of people arrive and put down roots. How do the young come through? How can they be part of that conversation?

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): It is worth adding that it is not just artists. It is incubator creative businesses as well. That mix is a very important part of it.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): If I could just add, we have a really strong example in Walthamstow with Black Horse Workshops. We have been very grateful for GLA funding to help grow and maintain that project. It has just celebrated its fourth birthday and has a great deal of sustainability in it. It builds on a point that Justine referred to earlier: it is not just about the people whom you think of as artists, but it is the people who are the makers and creators as well. There is a huge chunk of our economy that is powered by those people.

There is really practical stuff that we can do as local authorities. There was a developer who was bringing forward a site in Leyton, which is not traditionally a part of our borough that has been as focused on creativity and making. We talked to the developer really early doors and said, “We need artist space and so that is what we want your ground floor to be”. He has no experience of doing that and he does not know people who have experience of doing that, but we know how to build those connections. Then, in the planning permission, we can enshrine the status of that ground-floor space.

Permitted development has created a great deal of risk and spaces have been lost and will continue to be lost unless we can put a stop to that. The tremendous risk across London - and across the country, frankly - of permitted development is really risky. It is the two sides of it. Some of the properties that have been turned into residential are awful places to live. They would be great spaces to work in, but you should not be living in those spaces. Anything that we can do to pull back control on that for local councils like mine would be fantastic.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): If I may just add to that, the aspects of skills development and how community access is brought in are absolutely crucial to the CEZs. As well as the space itself and the policy or the rates treatment that might go along with that, we are expecting of CEZs that they have a skills and development plan and that they are engaging with the community, and the applications will be assessed on that basis. There is European Social Fund money going into the skills aspects of those grants, too.

Tom Copley AM: Just quickly, protection and permanent space is incredibly important, but of course I know, Justine, you have also wanted to support meanwhile uses and things like that. In the London Plan, there is a section on meanwhile use in the housing section in terms of using land for popup housing. I cannot recall if there is anything in the culture and heritage section. Is there anything in the Strategy or in the Plan in terms of policies which are going to encourage meanwhile use, making use of empty buildings and things like that?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): We fully support meanwhile as part of the mix. We have had a lot of conversations in the past where developers and councils have said, “We are giving meanwhile space to artists”, or, “This is our solution”, but of course meanwhile space is short- term space. While it is a really important part of the mix and of the ecosystem, we have to have these longer- term in-perpetuity things going on alongside it. I would say yes --

Tom Copley AM: I am not suggesting it is an alternative. It is certainly something --

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes. I am just saying that sometimes we find that people see it as an alternative, but that is why we caveat it. We say that meanwhile space is an important part of mix, but the ultimate goal is the long-term security of cultural infrastructure. Thanks.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Yes, creative Londoners. Some of this was touched on earlier in the meeting, but, first of all, how do you, Justine, plan to improve the diversity in the creative workforce?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes, we have touched on this, but we can touch on it again. There are lots of different ways --

Tom Copley AM: Sorry, Chair. I am apologising to the Chair for going into this in my questions earlier.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Do not worry, Tom. Maybe, Justine, I can take you to something much more specific. In policy 13.2, you talk about supporting creative businesses to take up the Good Work Standard. I am just wondering if you could just expand a bit more on what that support looks like in practice.

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): We have been working with the [GLA] Economics team in the development and asking questions around the Good Work Standard as we go. Particularly, we were very interested in the status it would take around internships because, for our industry, that is a huge barrier to many people. For us, it will be about through our programmes us promoting to cultural organisations that the Good Work Standard will exist. We would really like to see a great take-up from the creative industries and from cultural organisations of the Good Work Standard. It is going to offer a whole range of ways of marking yourself out as an employer of choice through both the development you offer for your staff teams and the recruitment practices that you undertake. It would be a great flagbearer as an employer and we all know it is a competitive industry out there. We are really excited to work with creative industries on their take-up of that policy.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): I cannot find it, but there is a very carefully worded, “There are still pockets of bad practice amongst creative employers across the capital”. In the slightly hand-to-mouth way that some creative projects get going, you can understand why there is a culture of paying people what you can afford to pay to try to make a project that feels inspiring and that you really want to make happen. That feels like it is the bit where it is going to be really challenging to get that Good Work Standard embedded. Have you thought about how you can get to that last bit where good work practice and good employment practice is still absent?

Shonagh Manson (Assistant Director of Culture and Creative Industries, GLA): There has been a huge change in how the industries are approaching this area, certainly in the last decade that I have worked, particularly around diversity and employment. I do feel really positive that we have moved down the line and that we can take another step. However, you are absolutely right and I completely agree around how challenging that is and that is a really acute understanding of what it is like to be a small business, particularly an emerging business, which are hugely important to support.

Still, though, within small businesses, because of the human scale of it, some of them are some of the best at adhering to and being models of best practice in that area. One of the great things that we can do is point to that best practice. We can provide visibility for those organisations and individuals who are role models in that area. If we look at things like the way that Film London has developed its equal access approach, which I am very delighted that we are funding and involved in, they have been working with different community groups to raise awareness of the paid opportunities, internships and training opportunities that they offer. They have had great success in getting individuals from lots of different backgrounds through that programme and, through that, into ongoing work in the industry.

The more that we can point to ways that it works and how to make that manageable, the more chance we will have of rolling that out, even in challenging areas.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Then, just thinking about mass participation, we have heard about Hull and volunteering. I wonder, Jenny, if you might have anything to share on this. Is there evidence or experience that shows how increasing participation - perhaps possibly through volunteering - can be a stepping stone to getting a job within the creative industries?

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): Yes. Hull probably does have those statistics. I would say that the evidence that we have in terms of anecdotal evidence around our partners - and again, as Justine and others have referred to, this is a very much a partnership sector and so we work in partnership with many others - being involved in one thing leads to another.

The evidence of the volunteers, for instance, in “We’re Here Because We’re Here”, those 2,000 volunteers then pursuing roles within the arts is quite good. That is a very small number and so you cannot necessarily extrapolate from one thing to the other, but I would say that it gives a huge confidence as well as a network of others and as well as experience that you can add to your CV. A lot of organisations that we partner with are very good at making sure that they follow through with those volunteers. Our programme with the volunteers over “We’re Here Because We’re Here” has extended for the year-and-a-half since then.

I would say, looking forward to another participatory project that we are doing, which involves very many more - on 10 June this year, processions will celebrate 100 years of votes for women - we are inviting women from all over the country to participate both in banner-making workshops now with 100 artists working with 100 community groups, and also with wider partnerships with Women’s Institutes, with Girl Guiding, with This Girl Can. Those processions will take place in the four political capitals and London will be an absolutely leading part of that. The participation is both in terms of the voluntary sector but also in terms of workplaces and so corporate partners can involve all the women who work for them, whether it is Network Rail or a bank in the City or Battersea Arts Centre or whoever it is.

All of those things are part of building and encouraging a confidence in the ability but also in knowing more about how the arts and cultural sector works. Although they do not point to particular pathways, they are part

of the pipeline of talent and making sure that we are involving more and more people into getting into the creative industries in lots of different ways.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): We have heard that 92% of people in the creative industries come from advantaged backgrounds. Do you think that this kind of participatory event is moving beyond that 92%?

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): Certainly, the participatory activities are moving beyond that 92%. The big challenge is getting those people who have participated and enjoyed participating to the next stage. From our stats, we know that nearly 80% of those people are more interested in finding out more about their own heritage and finding out about their family and community links with the First World War because that is what our programme is doing. The next stage is getting people to consider careers in the cultural sector. The Cultural plan [Cultural Strategy] goes a long way to doing that and will be copied by many other cities.

It is a huge task. All the things that you have mentioned about unpaid internships and about the cost of courses in cultural activities as well as in other HE are all barriers to entry. The fact that it is quite a small sector and slightly haphazard in terms of career structure and all of those things are unhelpful. Having a plan that really helps to identify those pathways and identify areas of good practice is going to be hugely helpful.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Are you saying that what you see in the Cultural Strategy makes it look as if those pathways --

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): Yes, they have identified a number of different pathways and, through the partnership programme that the Mayor’s team has, that will really help. It is a very big task and it will take time.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Justine, slightly shifting topic, the Business Advisory Board, which is being established under policy 16, is to support creative production and export through a range of activities and funding. What exactly is that going to be doing?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): I am just looking it up. Yes. This is the Creative Industries Investment Programme. One of the ingredients in London really securing its place as a creative industries capital has been sustained investment from City Hall.

London Fashion Week is funded through that programme and that does a number of things. It makes sure we have the right buyers and influencers here at London Fashion Week. Over the course of the year £100 million worth of business is done. It focuses on apprenticeships through the British Fashion Council.

Film London is funded to promote London as a filmmaking capital. Before it existed 10 or 12 years ago, London had quite a bad reputation as quite a difficult place to make movies. There were different fee structures in the different boroughs. No one knew how to close a road. We had quite a bad reputation. Anyway, a concerted effort by establishing this new Film London agency over a decade ago has really shifted the dial. Now, as I said before, we are the third-biggest filmmaking capital outside of the [United] States and growth is 30% in filmmaking with 40 crews every day. We are now at the point where we have run out of space. All of that work is about bringing the investment in and then last week announcing the new Dagenham East Film Centre, which will boost the capacity that we need for major blockbusters. That is the film side of it.

London Fashion Week Men’s is also funded through that programme. We have really established ourselves as the men’s fashion capital. We are giving Milan a run for its money because historically it has been Milan, to

the point at which the Mayor of Milan told his brands not to come to London. We are doing really well on that.

It is also about supporting new talent in those schemes.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): How is the Board doing all of that?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Under policy 16, the Mayor will support creative production and export through a range of activities and funding. The things I am describing are the core work programmes and funding streams that will deliver that objective. Then London & Partners has its own Business Engagement Programme and it includes the creative industries in that. Then there is the Business Advisory Board here, overseen by Rajesh [Agrawal], the Deputy Mayor for Business, and they have creative industry representation there. There is a range of different advisory bodies, plus this core investment programme sitting in the middle of it. That is the programme that is delivering the concrete, measurable returns.

Shaun Bailey AM: The Cultural Strategy states that Brexit is a risk factor on the impact of London’s reputation. Can you outline for us what you think those risks are?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes. We are concerned for a number of reasons. The EU is the biggest market for the creative industries. Over 40% of creative industry trade in London happens with the EU bloc. A third of creative jobs in London are filled by international talent. Over 20% of creative businesses say that if there is a no-deal outcome, they are going to consider moving their businesses abroad. The Mayor commissioned some independent research that showed --

Shaun Bailey AM: Sorry. Are you saying that the businesses in our cultural sector are saying that?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes.

Tom Copley AM: What percentage, sorry?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Of creative businesses, 21% say that a no-deal outcome would make them consider moving part or all of their business abroad. That came through the research.

The other risk is around funding. Creative Europe has funded a lot of cultural projects. In the last couple of years, 283 UK cultural and creative organisations have been funded through EU funding. EU funding plays a really important role in the distribution of film. In the last four or five years, 115 UK films have been funded across European territories.

The other thing is talent, really. As well as the access to market and funding, it is the talent pool. We are really reliant on this great flow of talent between European cities and London: great museum directors, directors of fashion brands, models. There is lots of flow between talent and we want that flow to continue. There are some serious worries.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Can I add a couple of things to that? Justine has just alluded to it. You do not have to retrain if you are creative to go and work in another city. It is not like being a lawyer or from another discipline. It is borderless. People are very mobile as creative people. London has enjoyed - and we can say that we have - the biggest creative economy out of any global city at the moment.

We are at a high, and other cities are very envious about our dominance and our scale. We need to protect this.

One of the ways we need to protect this is to have continual access to the best talent. It is talent at all levels, but we certainly need the people at the top of their game to choose to live and work in our city because they act as a magnet to many others - and we talked about clusters earlier and we talked about reputation earlier - who are drawn to a place where they are full of like-minded people and there is a scale of opportunity.

The fear is that the pendulum could swing very quickly the other way. We are seeing already proactive schemes from other European cities to try to draw UK and London talent to their cities. Lisbon is pushing hard on the digital sector and offering a lot of financial incentives. We all hear about Berlin providing free space to artists and others and it is relatively cheap to set up and live in Berlin. How do we ensure that London stays at the top? How do we ensure that London is as dominant as it has been in recent years? All of the work that we have been trying to do is about maintaining that position.

Shaun Bailey AM: Are there any opportunities that London might better exploit once we have left the EU? Some of what you are saying cannot be changed. We are the only megacity in Europe by quite some way. People come to London anyway. Our tourist numbers have not gone down with all of this Brexit talk. Are there other things that we could be leveraging into the future to boost London’s standing in business terms, creative terms, any terms you like?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): One of the major programmes is the London is Open campaign and that was born off the back of Brexit, really, and what people were telling about the message we needed to send from London. London is Open has been a really successful campaign. It continues to run and is all about telling the world that London is open for business, for investment, for visitors, for creative talent, for ideas. It has had a number of different iterations. For the first iteration, we commissioned a lot of artists. That was a very public-facing campaign, all over the Tube system, fantastic. Throughout, we have had the theatre industry backers, the music industry, design. There is a lot of appetite to send a really positive message that despite us leaving the EU, London remains open and remains a world-class capital.

Shaun Bailey AM: When you say that London is Open has been successful, under what measure or what KPI? What is coming back to let you know it has been successful?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): If you look at the polling, it is up there in the consciousness of Londoners. Wherever I go, people talk to me about it. We are approached all the time about industry getting involved in it. It has continued to get traction. I do not have the KPIs here with me, but, if you want them, I can --

Shaun Bailey AM: I would like to see them.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Yes, for sure.

Shaun Bailey AM: My other question would be: is the London is Open campaign for us in London or for everybody else? Who is it directed at?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): It is for everyone, yes. That is the beauty of it as a campaign, really. It speaks to lots of different audiences. Londoners love it as much as it works in international markets.

One of the things about Londoners is that of course we are the most international city on the planet with 300 languages spoken here every day and lots of European citizens here. One of the really important things it has done is to reassure Londoners and EU citizens in London that we want them to stay and they are really important to the success of our city.

Shaun Bailey AM: Londoners have been very good with that and about that. A question I would like to ask: if we have a worry around talent, is this also an opportunity to order undeveloped talent in London? Some of the work you have spoken about before was about including other people who do not see the arts as something they could even be involved in. Is this an opportunity to be involved in employment? I work with a lot of young people who would be excited to work in creative industries if someone was to approach them.

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Definitely.

Shaun Bailey AM: Is this an opportunity for us to use some British-based workers to fill some of this worry that you have around employees?

Justine Simons OBE (Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries): Lots of the programmes we have talked about are all about opening the doors to Londoners who do not normally get access to creative jobs. Yes, the two things work in tandem. The doors are open to everyone, really. We have over 30,000 art and creative design students graduating every year in London and so there is a big talent pool, but we want to keep it open.

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): However, a significant number of them are from the EU. We have benefited from the best of European talent coming to be educated here and then staying and establishing themselves in our city. Post-Brexit, there is a fear that many of those will not come, partly because of the cost and partly because of the employment opportunities going forward.

In my sector, design, most of the stars of the sector do not have British passports, but they choose to live and work in our city. It is so important that that flow continues to come in.

Shaun Bailey AM: I agree with that, and Brexit will or will not affect that. It might be that something else will happen. When you say “cost”, are you suggesting that Brexit will directly change the cost of being here?

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): Your status as an international student will be much more expensive. At the moment, you pay the same as what a UK-based student would pay to come here and do an HE degree. Post-Brexit, you will pay the same as an international student, which is three times as high. If you are a German student, for example, you can be educated for free in Berlin, but to come here would cost you perhaps £25,000 per year. You need to be very motivated and rich to be able to come and educate yourself here.

Shaun Bailey AM: Does that uplift in cost for some students - and I would argue that no matter what happens London will be significantly more exciting than Berlin as a place to be - provide more money to our university sector or to your sector because people are paying more to be trained by you?

Ben Evans (Chair, Cultural Leadership Board): It provides more places, potentially, but the other issue is of course - and we have touched on this earlier - people making conscious choices within secondary education to go into the creative sector. That is still a big task for universities and indeed education where creative

subjects are being marginalised at the moment. We need to find ways to broaden that domestic talent coming through the system.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Clare, you looked like you wanted to come in.

Councillor Clare Coghill (London Borough of Waltham Forest): If I may, it is such a shame that it has to turn into some sort of negotiated choice because it should not have to be with the strength that has been very well articulated by these colleagues who are far more expert than me. This part of Brexit is not just an economic risk but is a human and personal tragedy. It is about having the very best people here from around the world in order that Londoners and people across this country can benefit from that expertise, and that will have a transformative effect. Those cross-cultural conversations are what make me very proud to be here and to be a Londoner. Anything that jeopardises that, we have to use every tool at our disposal and every fibre of our beings to make sure that that does not create division and that we continue to redouble our efforts to bring communities together. I saw the community devastation of members of staff who work for the Council from other parts of Europe who wept the day after the referendum result. The human cost and the human impact of Brexit cannot be underestimated. We have to do everything that we can to minimise that risk.

Shaun Bailey AM: Whether I might agree, Londoners did not vote that way, did they? I do not think anybody on my road comes from this country originally and our community cohesion has funded a different conversation. We have spoken about our community much more than we would have done because of Brexit and we have come to whatever conclusions we have. I am quite happy about our local conclusion, but I wonder. I do not know if it will stop the conversation or if it just changes it. I just wonder, Chair.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Thank you. Can I just bring in Sharon? I wonder if you could comment on the risks and opportunities from the decision to leave the EU in terms of a big cultural institution in London?

Sharon Ament (Director, Museum of London): There are a number. We have 250 people at the Museum of London and 25% of my employees are from outside of the UK. There is, again, that real talent pool. Also, as we said, there is the personal impact and so there is that playing out.

For us, we are embarked on a big fundraising campaign to raise £70 million towards our project. That is a large target. We need to make sure that philanthropists and investors still see the worth of investing in London and cultural institutions in London. Many philanthropists are international and so that is really important. Of course, then, the economy is important for our fundraising.

Also, going back to the values, I really firmly believe that London’s position in the world is reliant on us always promoting the values that have almost always pertained from being a diverse city absolutely right from the beginning, from AD 52. The Romans who invaded Britain were not all Italians. They came from all parts of the Roman Empire and North Africa, right across the Roman Empire. Londinium was a very diverse place and it has been ever thus. The values around that that were embedded in London - embodied almost in London is Open - are something that is an opportunity for our Museum as the Museum of London to espouse and to be very strongly put into the DNA of the Museum. It is there already, but it is more poignant for the Museum of London. I believe there has never been a more urgent time for the Museum of London to talk about these values, to talk about who we are, to bring communities into our Museum.

It is the need for the Museum. There are worries about it from talent and funding. However, as I said, the need for the Museum of London has never been stronger.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): That probably brings us pretty much to the end of our discussion. I just wondered. Does anyone have anything that they are burning to say that has not come out through the questioning that they think is important that we take note of as we respond as a Committee to this Strategy? Jenny?

Jenny Waldman CBE (Director of 14-18 NOW): I would say, as a UK-wide programme, our programme and pretty well all other UK-wide programmes depend a great deal on the vibrancy of the cultural sector in London and the leadership that London arts organisations, community organisations, heritage organisations and museums play within a UK-wide sector. It is incredibly important and a huge relief to hear the conversation today and to be part of it and the scrutiny and dedication on all sides of this lovely round table about how important the cultural sector and its growth and development is in London. I am hugely relieved to hear all of this. Thank you.

Caroline Russell AM (Chair): Great. Thank you, everyone. That does completely bring us to the end of our main discussion item on the draft Culture Strategy for London. Can I thank all of you for your contributions.