Community

2020 vision

Peterborough boasts a rich cultural scene thanks to its programme of festivals, galleries, museum and heritage attractions. However, there is still a way to go to encourage more people to take advantage of the city’s cultural offerings. Peterborough City Council’s five-year culture strategy hopes to get us there

Peterborough is certainly a vibrant city, with plenty going on in the arts and culture sector. Driven by its dynamic and multicultural population, the city can hardly be said to be a dull place! Take the festivals scene as just one example. Peterborough enjoys no fewer than six cultural festivals, including Italian, Portuguese, Latvian, Polish, Diwali and African.

Then there’s the Arts Festival, Willow Festival, the annual Beer Festival, Heritage Festival and, on the literary side, the We Love Words Festival. The city has a wide musical offering, with choirs such as the Peterborough Young Singers and the Male Voice Choir, independent groups like the Blok Collective and Peterborough Music Makers, and the city’s Music Hub. Heritage attractions include Peterborough Museum, Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre, Longthorpe Tower and, of course, the cathedral. It is some cause for concern, then, that the number of people participating in cultural events across the city is below national levels. Reasons almost certainly include the rapid growth of the city – up 17% in just a decade – and the growth of satellite settlements that has resulted from this boom. Reconnecting these outlying areas to the city centre and its cultural offering is one of the ambitions of Peterborough City Council’s (PCC) new culture strategy, which covers the period from 2015 to 2020.

Upon This Rock, Metal's lantern parade

Upon This Rock, Metal’s lantern parade

Many communities, one city
The council’s cultural vision for the city is to bring local, regional, national and international interest and acclaim for the city’s cultural offer based on the variety and quality of the experiences it offers. It sees Peterborough as one city made up of many communities. The culture strategy recognises that culture is central to improving quality of life and life chances for people in the city. The strategy has three interlinked objectives or priorities: to increase participation in cultural activity; to develop, retain and attract people with talent; and to make better use of the city’s spaces so that there are more places to go and more things to do.

The hope is that by meeting these priorities the profile of culture within the city can be raised and, therefore participation. Meanwhile, there is a desire to put Peterborough firmly on the map as a cultural destination, driving visitors into the city. It’s an ambitious strategy but, given the events, activities and cultural hubs that already exist, it is achievable.

More people, more often
The first of the culture strategy’s three priorities is to foster creative engagement and participation across all areas in Peterborough. This can be done, for example, by involving people so that they can make their own decisions about what excites them. The cultural offer needs to be relevant to local people. Peterborough has a range of first-rate cultural institutions and programmes which residents can enjoy. Many residents would like to engage more in cultural activities but encounter a range of barriers including time, transport, price, availability of information and familiarity. This priority aims to overcome these barriers so that more people can participate. By working with strategic partners, such as Vivacity, and supporting programmes such as Peterborough Presents, the city council hopes to not only increase participation within a range of audiences (especially young people and the elderly) but increase the use of public spaces for cultural activity and increase membership of cultural and voluntary organisations.

Talent pool
The second priority – to attract, develop, promote, retain and attract talent – also envisions the local creative economy growing to complement the city’s growth. The strategy hopes to realise this by developing opportunities for the next generation of cultural producers through, for example, working with learning partners across the city to support and encourage learning at all ages through culture. Other ways of promoting talent might include supporting continuing professional development activities for cultural producers and programmers through initiatives such as Peterborough Presents and cultural producer networks, and continuing to support and celebrate excellence through the Arts Award and the Children’s University.

The desired outcomes from this strand of the strategy are a current and relevant cultural offer to all schools, more opportunities for young people to develop skills, the development of cultural hubs and the sharing of knowledge and experience within the city.

Places to go, things to do
The culture strategy’s final priority is to create more places and spaces for cultural activities, thereby increasing the city’s vitality. With the trend for more people to lead more isolated lives, providing free, high-quality spaces for people to gather becomes increasingly more important. Peterborough does not have a cultural quarter like many other cities of a similar size. In order to improve access to cultural activities, the city needs to improve or open up access to cultural facilities in the city centre and the surrounding wards.

RHS award-winning garden at Chauffeur's Cottage

RHS award-winning garden at Chauffeur’s Cottage

The council will review all of its community assets, including school buildings and libraries to understand how and where cultural activity can be accessed and supported, and to explore the potential for creating a cultural quarter. It will also support creative activities in the community, at public venues such as libraries and in parks and open spaces, while highlighting the role of culture in relevant investment strategies such as the visitor economy strategy. The council will work with partners to develop and strengthen new initiatives for the city’s cultural calendar, using tools such as the www.idea1.org.uk website for events promotion. It is hoped that during the course of the strategy, better use will be made of the city’s assets, creating new audiences to feed demand for activities.

Delivering the strategy
Like every public body, the city council’s income is under increasing pressure. Fortunately, the culture strategy does not require any additional council funding. Instead, it seeks to make better use of all of the existing funding streams that support culture in the city – and to enable more external funding to be drawn in. As budgets become more constrained, the council will need to ensure the very best possible return on any continuing investment. By working in partnership with other organisations to deliver the culture strategy, it will be able to deliver the outlined priorities without increasing resources. A core delivery group, Culture Peterborough, will be established to deliver the strategy. The group will be supported and informed by a wide range of stakeholders such as Peterborough Presents Creative Peterborough, Peterborough cultural partners, Opportunity Peterborough and Peterborough learning partners. Together, this creative alliance of organisations, individuals and artists will take ownership of the strategy and oversee its delivery.

As well as overseeing the strategy’s implementation, Culture Peterborough will provide a voice for the sector, sharing information and facilitating networking. It will make strategic connections with and contribute to the Local Enterprise Partnership, advise on selected projects and programmes, and generally encourage better collaboration within the sector.

'Hoarding' exhibition

‘Hoarding’ exhibition

Monitoring progress
Any strategy needs to be closely monitored to check that it is on track to meet its objectives. For the cultural strategy, this vital step will also fall to culture Peterborough. To do this the group will run an open annual review involving the cultural sector and the wider public. It will then agree an annual action plan every March that will set out what needs to be done, by whom and by when. To ensure meaningful monitoring, a set of indicators that measure strategic progress (for example participation levels) and the progress of key programmes and projects will be agreed. The indicators will take account of the objectives and outcomes set by key partners such as Arts Council England. As national performance indicators disappear, a key measure of success will be customer, citizen and tourist satisfaction with the city’s cultural programmes. Ultimately the city council hopes that its culture strategy will foster a cultural community that is resilient – growing memberships and audiences; strategic – engaging in long-term planning to secure benefits for residents, visitors and businesses; collaborative – working in partnership; ambitious – focusing on the quality of what is offered; and confident – with an enthusiasm to promote Peterborough as a cultural destination. With so many individuals, groups, organisations and initiatives working together, Peterborough looks set to become a true city of culture over the course of the next five years.

We have lots of really good things in the city, with lots of unsung heroes, but in the past it has been quite disjointed. On top of those we’ve had what Vivacity is organising, what the Cathedral is organising, and what St John’s is organising – but no one was able to see what was going on overall and have a strategic view. There is the potential for a really thriving cultural scene in Peterborough, and from my discussions with the artists and performers, they have that ambition as well. Part of this strategy was to see what the ambitions of those artists really were, and to help them to the next stage. We want to raise the profile locally, regionally nationally and internationally, and because we have all these different nationalities and cultures there’s an opportunity to see that as a selling point, but also use it to export the brand of Peterborough internationally.
Cllr Graham Casey

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