Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery: A New Multidisciplinary Mapping
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Sch of Humanities
Abstract
In 2019, the Government identified 100 towns that qualified for additional support in four key areas: transport, broadband connectivity, skills and culture. The latter three, in particular, are closely aligned. Culture, and the skills and digital connections necessary to develop, promote, and sustain it, help build the civic infrastructure to tackle urgent social and economic issues. Equally, a vibrant and diverse cultural life grows the creative economy, attracts and retains the young people who can revive depleted town centres, and bridges socially or fractured or divided semi-urban communities.
The case for regeneration in our towns has been radically strengthened by the ongoing crisis of COVID-19: the economic challenges faced by SMEs, retail organisations, and the culture, heritage and creative industries have quickly become urgent. Yet this might also herald a moment of reflection and transformative opportunity in smaller communities in particular, as the new local and digital networks shaped by the collective social, mental, and economic challenges of the pandemic start to emerge. The behavioural and organisational adaptations by governments, businesses, and individuals may well also create a seismic shift in our understanding of how rapidly we can effect change by rethinking long-standing strategies, structures, or practices.
This project will scope the role that that emerging and innovative multidisciplinary methodologies can play in allowing us to better understand and develop the contributions that culture can make to civic and economic regeneration. Working at the intersection of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the project team will frame the research in relation to the ongoing changes to the social and economic landscapes of towns, and their immediate challenges post-COVID-19. The project will produce a scoping study and report proposing future research directions, opportunities and priorities which will underpin and drive culture's role in the economic recovery and renewal of towns across the UK. It will focus on four case-study towns, identified from the government's '100 Towns' list, and through the robust local community networks of the Victoria County History project, developing transferable, extensible insights, cross-disciplinary methodologies and approaches.
The project brings together researchers in the Humanities with Social Sciences specialists at the Centre for Towns Think Tank, with partners Historic England and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre led by NESTA. It also includes collaborations with Triodos and Starling banks. At the forefront of applied practice, innovation and disruption in their fields, these partners and collaborators will help us think in radical new ways about the research agenda, and identify mechanisms for dissemination and impact.
The case for regeneration in our towns has been radically strengthened by the ongoing crisis of COVID-19: the economic challenges faced by SMEs, retail organisations, and the culture, heritage and creative industries have quickly become urgent. Yet this might also herald a moment of reflection and transformative opportunity in smaller communities in particular, as the new local and digital networks shaped by the collective social, mental, and economic challenges of the pandemic start to emerge. The behavioural and organisational adaptations by governments, businesses, and individuals may well also create a seismic shift in our understanding of how rapidly we can effect change by rethinking long-standing strategies, structures, or practices.
This project will scope the role that that emerging and innovative multidisciplinary methodologies can play in allowing us to better understand and develop the contributions that culture can make to civic and economic regeneration. Working at the intersection of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the project team will frame the research in relation to the ongoing changes to the social and economic landscapes of towns, and their immediate challenges post-COVID-19. The project will produce a scoping study and report proposing future research directions, opportunities and priorities which will underpin and drive culture's role in the economic recovery and renewal of towns across the UK. It will focus on four case-study towns, identified from the government's '100 Towns' list, and through the robust local community networks of the Victoria County History project, developing transferable, extensible insights, cross-disciplinary methodologies and approaches.
The project brings together researchers in the Humanities with Social Sciences specialists at the Centre for Towns Think Tank, with partners Historic England and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre led by NESTA. It also includes collaborations with Triodos and Starling banks. At the forefront of applied practice, innovation and disruption in their fields, these partners and collaborators will help us think in radical new ways about the research agenda, and identify mechanisms for dissemination and impact.
| Title | Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery: Place-Based exhibition |
| Description | We employed a creative practitioner in each of our four case study towns to facilitate the workshops: they allowed members of the community to find alternative ways of exploring their town's and how they imagined their futures. The artists then used these workshops to create art objects - that represented the towns and the process of consultation - that were then located in each town centre. These installations created prompts for workshops which were directed toward the general public in each location. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The creative products drew attention to the narratives and images that people associated with place and offered us the opportunity to ask what their broader implications, possibilities and limitations might be. |
| URL | https://www.andtowns.co.uk/gallery |
| Description | The scoping project followed the government's 'Towns Fund' initiative which became one of the central planks of the 'Levelling Up' agenda during the 2021. The Towns Fund targeted 101 'left behind' towns for additional support in four key areas, including skills and culture. Culture proved to be central to national investment yet our research revealed that what culture means in these contexts is complex, under-researched, and that towns themselves often lack capacities in key areas. Our research demonstrated the long term effects of austerity on the capacity of local communities to undertake evidence-informed planning around culture and regeneration and also pointed to several key areas in which interventions of the arts and humanities research community could collaboratively work with local councils to address these issues. |
| Exploitation Route | We specifically identified areas in which arts and humanities collaborations could intervene to develop this missing capacity. These included: o EDI and inclusive practice. Cultural decision making in towns is not representative: we are suggesting interventions for sharing models for practice-based research enabling creative and participatory decision-making and governance. o Medium term planning. A central issue for many of the Towns that we surveyed was that the short-time frames of applying for funding assumed the existence of 'shovel ready' plans and/or privileged capital investment ('glass and steel') that made understanding and supporting community needs difficult to achieve. We are suggesting medium term co-production with Towns on self-evaluation, planning and imagining futures would alleviate this. o Meaningful community engagement. Towns approached community engagement in very different ways: we are advocating for the sharing of models that can better connect diverse communities; encourage meaningful civic participation; build community cohesion. o Alternative and innovative modes of evaluation and need for longitudinal research. The need for new kinds of interdisciplinary and creative evaluation methods and new models for longitudinal research was apparent in nearly every area that we examined. Towns ecosystems: The interconnectdness of less mobile communities are complex and deeply embedded, and often raise issues about volunteers, belonging, social authority, norms and contested collective memories. We think comparative academic research into these dynamics would enable us to shift the cultural policy debates in ways that better reflect the longer term needs of smaller urban locations. Skills and Mentoring: Arts and humanities researchers are well-placed to contribute to an expansive understanding of what underpins creative and cultural vitality, from mentoring, creative collaboration, leadership training, shadowing, to peer-to-peer networking. We advocate closer ties linking cultural participation to skills development and the adoption of successful models (such as that suggested by the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan) for linking local authorities and professional bodies and for bringing HEIs into dialogue with external partners. Place shaping and placed-based research: The focus on economic and geographical histories for the emerging typologies for towns (market, coastal, de-industrial etc) requires expanding. We found towns that operated as a centre for a range of neighbouring settlements in a hub-spoke model, towns whose bidding capital and ambition had been strengthened by strategic networking with neighbouring counties or regions, as well as towns whose regeneration plans were focused on specific areas, neighbourhoods, or streets. While towns often have shared challenges, their wider ecosystems are unique. We are advocating for new kinds of cultural typologies that can explore the roles played by differential connectivity, regional status, and patterns and types of cultural investment. Local versus national metrics: We discovered metrics and evidence for place-based regeneration and development are most valuable if they are as locally-focused and granular as possible. However, national funding and government bodies agencies need generalised data which can be aggregated and compared across regions. We are proposing the need for new research, across and beyond the arts and humanities, to help to bridge this disconnection, and imagine and develop new and more flexible idioms for translating between local and national objectives and indices. Material and digital places: New research into digital place-making and digital place interpretation, intersecting with current 'Smart Cities' research and development, would help to expand place-shaping strategies beyond the literal and material, moving beyond the limitations and vagaries of surviving tangible heritage, and enabling more diverse, multi-layered, and inclusive stories to be told. Alternative Economics: Pioneering research in the economic humanities can help councils and local government rethink models to growth. Better connections between local and national debates about the meaning of money itself are needed to enable local aspirations for alternative measures of economics and wellbeing. New models for economic innovation are emerging from the social cracks and closed shops created by austerity and crisis: more understanding of what these short-term local responses bring to communities and how they can be sustained is needed. Affect, Participation and Place: It was clear that affect and emotion - such as civic pride and place attachment - play a vital role in ecosystems and governance. We suggest that a critical account of these factors will allow for a sharper understanding of the values and aspirations that local governments pursue and represent. The renewed emphasis on pride and place, for example, has meant that the monitoring and evaluation of residents' civic pride to evidence policy success has become commonplace. Yet the tools for understanding and measuring civic pride are, like other affective metrics (such as wellbeing), often relatively undefined and unexamined in policy documents, practice and evaluation. Creative methodologies: Towns appear to have a narrow collective vocabulary for imagining renewal or transformation, and places with an emphasis on a single narrative about themselves struggle to imagine the futures in plural or inclusive ways. We have underlined the value of creative methodologies in opening up alternative spaces, modes and idioms. Facilitated creative activities are vital not only in allowing for a range of voices across the community to engage but also for allowing researchers to see in 'real time' how relationships and cultural ecologies operate in each place. Such methodologies and their inductive toolkits can allow the researcher to remain alert to (and to support) non-traditional, relational assets such as (though not limited to) experience, networks, ideas, innovation and creativity. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://www.andtowns.co.uk/ |
| Description | This research resulted in a report for the AHRC that made a series of recommendations regarding the ways in which arts and humanities researchers might work more closely with local authorities and the cultural and creative sectors (our partners included ACE and Historic England) in order to address some notable capacity shortages regarding cultural development, especially in the so-called 'left behind' towns. We suggested that Arts and Humanities research could be valuable in co-producing projects with local authorities and with developing capacities in networking, grant-bidding, longitudinal research and social and cultural capital. These findings were used - alongside that of a number of other projects - to inform the AHRC's development of a place-based Knowledge Exchange Programme. We also used our findings, particularly regarding the ways in which evaluative metrics for 'pride' and 'place-engagement' were being sought, and are now working on a second project called 'Feeling Towns: the role of place and identity in governance and local policy' that is extending our work with the case study towns from TCER and with Historic England. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Evidence from this research was used by the Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda report |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| Impact | Our evidence demonstrated the ways in which local governments often lack evidence and capacity for cultural decision making. This evidence was apparent in the report's recommendation for more support a continuation of the Government and Arts Council England's "cultural compacts" initiative, which aims to bring together local cross-sector stakeholders in pilot areas to enable better engagement and strategic planning.' |
| Description | Feeling Towns: the role of place and identity in governance and local policy |
| Amount | £124,639 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2022 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | Towns and Historic England |
| Organisation | Historic England |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We worked with HE to better understand the role that heritage assets played in developing Town Investment plans and the ways in which cultural and heritage sectors operated together in small communities. |
| Collaborator Contribution | HE introduced us to organisations within each of our case study towns and they also facilitated conversations in the wider sector at a national level |
| Impact | We have extended our relationship with HE and are now working with them on developing evaluative metrics for 'pride' in another AHRC grant. |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Description | Towns and Historic England |
| Organisation | Historic England |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We worked with HE to better understand the role that heritage assets played in developing Town Investment plans and the ways in which cultural and heritage sectors operated together in small communities. |
| Collaborator Contribution | HE introduced us to organisations within each of our case study towns and they also facilitated conversations in the wider sector at a national level |
| Impact | We have extended our relationship with HE and are now working with them on developing evaluative metrics for 'pride' in another AHRC grant. |
| Start Year | 2008 |
| Description | Workshop at Being Human festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was an online workshop that was part of the Being Human Festival. Using a series of creative prompts from commissioned artists exhibiting in the high streets of Bournemouth, Darlington, Hereford, and Southend the workshop used poetry and visual culture to explore how people felt about their high streets, what they valued, what they would like changed and what the future could be. We led participants through a series of creative tasks and collaborations to create and curate their own shop-front exhibition. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.southamptonartshumfest.co.uk/wider-festival/whats-on/?id=65 |