Our Youth Advisory Board talk local culture
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Chaired by Baroness Lola Young, the commission has explored the role local culture can play in supporting recovery from the pandemic through a programme of stakeholder engagement events and roundtable discussions across four themes: sustainable and inclusive economic recovery, health inequalities, social mobility and place.
The report discusses how local cultural services support these outcomes and what’s needed from Government, funders and councils to allow the sector to thrive.
During the summer of 2022, the Local Government Association (LGA), consulted with our Youth Advisory Board to better understand their experiences and perceptions of local culture, ensuring youth voice played a key role in the commission.
Charlotte Patterson and Rawan Yousif, two members of our Youth Advisory Board, contributed to the foreword of the final report. Here’s what they said:
“Improving access to creativity and culture will increase inclusion and, in turn, representation, as we will see a wider variety of people able to access the arts and encouraged to begin fruitful careers in the sector. Better representation will draw more young people to cultural venues and hubs, seeing themselves represented on stages and in galleries, and helping them to feel welcome in their local cultural community.
“There are additional benefits to improving local cultural opportunities, such as improved physical and mental health. Many board members shared that their sense of identity was strongly tied to their creativity and artistic practice, and they felt their mental health was better when they were able to explore this creativity. As we are still reeling from the effects of the pandemic and multiple lockdowns, many have turned to artistic pursuits as a means of reforming their communities. “Connecting with one another through creativity and culture, we are able to use shared passions to deal with the serious emotional toll of the past few years. It’s clear to us that creativity and culture have a significant therapeutic role to support recovery post pandemic, but these health benefits to individuals and communities surely warrant ongoing investment on both a national and local basis.
“We welcome this report to support our demand for cultural offerings in our hometowns and local highstreets. We feel there should be greater onus on inclusivity and access, empowering young people to participate in the arts; not just as audiences, but as creatives and gaining expertise through experience. We ask the creative sector to begin by examining the opportunities they offer and to question whether they are truly accessible. Not only this, but we ask decision makers and others in power, to take the responsibility for opening those doors, to remove those barriers without relying on young people to struggle to break them down.”
You can read the full report here, which also includes a pen portrait from another of our Youth Advisory Board members.
The commission revealed four areas of ambition; access and inclusion, creative growth, cultural education and pathways to creative employment and health and wellbeing.
These ambitions reflect the vision of our 10-year strategy Let’s Create, so we very much look forward to continuing our work with the LGA to ensure local communities are culturally rich and exciting places to live.
