Blazing a trail

The past decade has witnessed an English ‘devolution revolution’ in which a series of new combined authorities and associated mayors have been rolled out across England. By May 2024, 60 per cent of England will be governed by a democratically elected mayoral combined authority (MCA). The ethos of English devolution is to transfer power and resources from the centre of government to the regions, to have decision-making closer to communities and to better understand needs and opportunities on the ground. In terms of culture, devolution affords agency to advocacy, nationally and internationally, to connect audiences, publics, partners and investors to a single coherent message about the offer of a place and its people.

But as devolution has evolved across England, tensions have begun to emerge between central government's one-size-fits-all approach to culture and the changing needs of communities in the regions. Devolution has created the need for a more relationship-based approach to culture delivery at a local level, one that is less top down and more co-created closer to communities. In this new world, arm's-length bodies (ALBs) have become key delivery mechanisms for recognising and responding to regional priorities and planning. Through aligned funding and support to deliver shared objectives in new place-based partnerships, their rewiring of the relationship between the centre of government and the regions is key to the success of cultural devolution.

The 2024 IPPR North State of the North report “recommends further regional empowerment and prioritising regional rebalancing” in policies, including culture. It argues that “clear promises and tangible change for people's communities would reap political reward … local and regional leadership should be strengthened through broader and deeper devolution, improving outcomes and trust”.3 By better investing and connecting culture spend closer to communities, we can more effectively ensure that culture becomes a delivery mechanism for meeting other targets in areas like education and skills, health and wellbeing, pride in place and civic identity. This approach is also popular with voters. As the RSA states, “the public want local leaders to have more control over both spending and decisions over policy, including schools, transport … skills, and culture”.4

The aim of devolving culture is to enhance delivery and reach, adding value and expanding access to put local people and places at the heart of decision-making. Devolved mayoral authorities can co-create a local cultural framework with communities and cross-sector stakeholders to enhance pride and wellbeing, develop the local visitor economy, and build skills and investment to increase access and opportunities for local young people to live and work in the area. This integrated approach to service delivery is key to driving inward investment: through harnessing culture and the creative industries to catalyse growth, devolved regions can maximise their capacity to generate spillover benefits and bring added value to other delivery streams.

Culture is core to the Level 4 devolution deals being sought by an increasing number of MCAs in England. To date, 11 devolution deals mention culture in their main business case and there are innovative developments around culture and innovation zones and new cultural investment vehicles being designed by MCAs as part of their so-called ‘trailblazer’ agreements with central government. This is a marked shift away from the historic centralised provision of culture funding by the UK government. To date, most culture spend has come from central government via local government and a range of government-approved ALBs.

There are currently 38 Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) ALBs whose representation ranges across museums and heritage, media and digital, arts and libraries, civil society and tourism.5 The Level 4 devolution framework asks ALBs to work with MCAs to “share expertise and insight … in order to maximise the impact of funding and policy decisions”, outlining the “potential opportunities for alignment and recognising that culture, heritage, sport and the visitor economy all play a strong role in supporting places and communities to thrive”.6 It underlines that any MCA developments with ALBs should “not prejudice ALB decisions around national grant funding processes or their national priorities” and that ALBs should plan to use MCA “partnerships to deliver their national priorities, which will remain paramount”.7

Each DCMS ALB has committed to help deliver devolved culture spend by working with the new MCAs, but how this will be operationalised in practice remains to be seen. Since 2015, central government has tasked ALBs with devolving their activities and spend away from the South East of England and into the regions. Set against a political context in which government departments like DCMS and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) have been asked to do the same with culture research & development (R&D) spend, there is a window of opportunity to better connect policy priorities through strategic alignment with a new network of MCAs that position culture as both an asset and an identified area of growth and investment.

The biggest ALB funder of culture in England beyond local government is Arts Council England (ACE). ACE has published its own commitment to devolution and has promised to work with mayors to deliver culture at a local level, from the centre. The dynamics of this positioning are key: ACE intends to stay central but will devolve its activities and funding out to a greater degree than previously. ACE guidance on devolution states a commitment that the ALB will “not depart from the arm's length principle and will retain full discretion in how we invest our resources” and requests that “local authorities engage with us as early as is possible as they consider their devolution deals”.8 To date, ACE has engaged with all MCAs in the development of their devolution deals and has leaned into supporting the first Level 4 single-pot settlements for culture currently in operation in the West Midlands and Manchester.

On a national level, ACE has explored the potential of cultural devolution through a series of strategic alignments with combined authorities across England. Individual mayors have leant into culture to deliver their equality and diversity targets – like Tracy Brabin's Mayor's Screen Diversity Programme in West Yorkshire9 – or meet key performance indicators on productivity and employment, such as the North of Tyne Combined Authority Creative Growth scheme.10 By aligning its Place Partnership funding with cultural trailblazer spend in the West Midlands, ACE has maximised the impact and reach of public funding for culture and strengthened local involvement and engagement in a national programme. In Manchester, ACE and other ALBs, including Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Foundation, have been inspired by devolutionary powers to engage in new cross-ALB working around identified opportunities like Heritage Action Zones and High Street sites to pool resources and better connect funding to strategic place-making.11

Growth through capacity must be achieved within and between devolved regions, and more needs to be done to facilitate and reward MCAs working in partnership to meet shared goals and challenges. In recognition of this, ACE is developing a new Creative Corridor initiative that aims to enhance the connectivity of culture across the north of England and frame linkages between cultural and creative industry offers in MCAs from Newcastle to Liverpool. The RSA estimates that by connecting creative capacity across devolved MCAs, the north of England could raise Gross Value Added (GVA) across the region by an additional £10 billion each year.12 Positioning the capacity of culture in devolved settings as a source to attract inward investment, tourism and talent, as well as sharing skills, research and innovation and opportunities, the corridor concept demonstrates how ALBs can supercharge MCAs by working with them at a local level. The power to convene, catalyse and project cultural capacity is a super power for the future development of ALBs like ACE. In the context of devolution, ALBs have a unique potential to advocate for and better connect culture in the regions to central government and international markets to create greater soft power for the regions on global stages.

The new mechanisms of devolution could also offer an opportunity to address some long-term tensions inherent in regional experiences of local cultural organisations in their working with national ALBs like ACE. The central reporting mechanisms of many ALBs are often cited as not being fit for purpose or impossible to translate to the very different needs and contexts of cultural organisations, venues and creatives across the whole of England. More bespoke systems, co-created and completed at a local level, could enhance data capture and analysis and create more robust and reliable national understanding of the ‘value’ of culture than the current unitary evaluation models do. The same applies to cultural funding – both the form of the funding and the composition of the awarding panels – where national/regional imbalances are often cited as causing structural inequalities and replicating existing issues of representation and geographic spread.

MCAs also offer a unique opportunity to enhance central culture spend from ALBs like ACE. Taking back better intelligence from the regions to the centre of government helps to address a criticism levelled at the awarding of central government funds involving culture (such as the Levelling Up Fund and Cultural Development Fund) – that central decision-making often bears little relation to the lived experience of needs and opportunities on the ground.

It also creates capacity for a more effective join-up with other devolved powers in areas like transport and skills. Transport has been a persistent problem in the awarding of recent centrally funded cultural capital builds, such as Shakespeare North in Prescott, where theatregoers from the local area struggled to get to and from the new theatre using public transport. Ensuring new cultural provision is connected to communities – not only logistically but also socially – is essential to ensuring its long-term success and accessibility. Thanks to their menu of devolved powers, MCAs can consider such developments in the round and better connect their services in the planning and delivery of major cultural projects.

In the longer term of a 30-year funding settlement, cultural devolution has the potential to catalyse the relocation of national cultural organisations to the regions, rewarding the co-location of ALBs and forging new partnerships with inter/national arts and culture organisations and events. This will reshape and better inform national investment in regional cultural priorities. In doing so, it offers a way to increase tourism and spend, and draw new strategic investments in culture to the regions. Whether ALB regional staff will eventually align with or be integrated into the MCAs’ new infrastructure remains to be seen, and it is not currently clear how regional staff from any ALBs will be represented on or involved with the portfolio boards of culture in the MCAs, or indeed whether there should or will be central guidance on this evolving relationship in practice. No two regions of England are the same and so it follows that the relationships between the various new MCAs and ALBs will also look different. While the concept of a one-size-fits-all model flies in the face of devolutionary theory, in practice there is a need for some parity of provision and opportunity between ALBs and MCAs to ensure that everyone everywhere has equal access to culture.

Historical top-down, nationally centred approaches to culture are changing all around us. New combined authorities are flipping over-centralised models of delivery by working closely with government departments and ALBs to devolve culture spend and culture strategy on the ground so that local people have a greater say over and role in cultural provision. In practice, this will mean exploring new models of distributive leadership, new frameworks for facilitating and sharing local knowledge on a national scale, and new representation and governance models that empower communities to shift power from the centre of government to the places where culture is regionally created and consumed.

Devolution provides a timely opportunity to touch base with our ALBs and consider the kind of future we want together: one that is less arm's length and more arms around communities and their cultural institutions. Mobilising investment flows to diversification and making resilient our cultural organisations big and small, and our workforce employed and independent, cultural devolution aims to mobilise the multiple value chains of culture and creativity – from GVA to good jobs, visitor economy footfall to productivity – that collectively combine to create a compelling story about where our regions have come from, where they are today and where they will go with the right powers and support from their ALBs.