Introduction

Introduction

Explore the strategy
About us and our definitions
ABOUT US

The Arts Council has offices in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham. We are headquartered in Manchester, and over 79 per cent of our staff are based outside of the capital. We are governed by a government appointed National Council which is supported by five Area Councils covering London, the Midlands, the North, the South East and the South West. We are an independent charity as well as an arm’s-length non- departmental public body, and are accountable to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). We were established as a distributor of National Lottery funds under The National Lottery Act 1993. In 2011 our responsibilities were expanded to include the support and development of museums and libraries, alongside the arts.

We are tasked with various statutory UK-wide responsibilities that enable objects and collections of special interest to be acquired, shared and protected for long-term public benefit. We work with the Department for Education to deliver a network of Music Hubs, ensuring every child in this country has access to a high- quality music education.

Arts Council England’s total annual income for 202½2 was £942 million. Our main sources of income are Grant-in-Aid (that is the money we receive directly from government which totalled £687 million in 202½2, including £149 million for the Culture Recovery Fund programme and £82.2 million from the Department for Education, and National Lottery funding (circa £253 million in 202½2).

In 202½2, we spent 68 per cent of our total programme expenditure outside London and our administration costs were 4.4 per cent of our income. In 2023/24 over 69 per cent of our programme budget will go towards supporting a National Portfolio of nearly 1,000 arts organisations, museums and libraries, who are based all over the country. They currently range in size from the Royal Opera House in London to the Leach Pottery in Cornwall and include organisations who run public-facing buildings as well as touring companies, festivals, publishers and other cultural organisations who provide a range of services to the sector and the public.

OUR DEFINITION OF CULTURE

‘Culture’ means many things to many people and is often used to refer to food, religion and other forms of heritage. Here, though, we use it to mean all those areas of activity associated with the artforms and organisations in which Arts Council England invest: collections, combined arts, dance, libraries, literature, museums, music, theatre and the visual arts. By describing all of this work collectively as ‘culture’, rather than separately as ‘the arts’, ‘museums’ and ‘libraries’, we aim to be inclusive of the full breadth of activity that we support, as well as to reflect findings from the research we commissioned for Let’s Create, which showed that members of the public tend to use the words ‘the arts’ and ‘artists’ to refer specifically to classical music, opera, ballet or the fine arts. Similarly, we have used ‘creative practitioners’ rather than ‘artists’ as an umbrella term for all those who work to create new, or reshape existing, cultural content.

We also recognise that the traditional boundaries between and around cultural activities are disappearing as new technologies and other societal changes alter the ways in which many artists, curators, librarians and other practitioners work, as well as how culture is made and shared. We’re excited by these changes, which we expect to accelerate over the next decade – and in response, we will become more flexible about the range and type of cultural activities that we support over the years to come.

 

OUR DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY

‘Creativity’ describes the process through which people apply their knowledge, skill and intuition to imagine, conceive, express or make something that wasn’t there before. While creativity is present in all areas of life, in Let’s Create and this Delivery Plan, we use it specifically to refer to the process of making, producing or participating in ‘culture’.

Let’s Create, our strategy for the next 10 years, describes our vision that, ‘by 2030, England will be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.’

Let’s Create was developed over a period of three years through extensive conversations with the public, with individuals and organisations working within the cultural sector, and with partners and stakeholders, and informed by a wide range of data, evidence and research. The strategy aims for three Outcomes and is underpinned by four Investment Principles.

To help us achieve the vision, we will publish a series of Delivery Plans over the next decade. These will set out in more detail the steps we will take to deliver Let’s Create and how we will resource them. This first Delivery Plan covers 2021-24. It is a ‘live’ document that we refresh and update annually. It is intended to provide clarity for those looking to work with the Arts Council about where we will be focusing our resources during these three years.

Our commitment to excellence

The Arts Council is committed to excellence in everything we do because we believe that it is outstanding performances, exhibitions and events that inspire audiences and because the public deserve the best in return for their investment. This means that consideration of quality will be central to all our investment programmes and in our decision making. We will only invest in organisations and individuals that share our commitment to excellence.

We recognise that excellence in culture has different dimensions. At its heart is the technical and imaginative quality of the cultural offer – determined by the flair, expertise and experience of the artists, curators or librarians involved in the project.

Alongside the excellence of our artists and creative practitioners, this country also has a global reputation for the vision and imagination of cultural organisations, both large and small, across England, and for the high-quality technical and craft skills that underpin our creative industries. It is the responsibility of the Arts Council to build that reputation by ensuring that we invest in artists, projects and organisations that combine creative brilliance with the highest level of technical and craft skills.

We believe that one of the benefits of – and reasons for – public investment in creativity and culture is that it improves the quality of what is offered to the public. We should therefore expect those who have been receiving regular public funding over many years to be able to readily demonstrate their excellence. But to ensure that we have a dynamic cultural sector in this country, we need to have an eye on the future as well as a respect for the past.

We must have investment programmes that support innovation and new types of creative practice – as well as backing work that has already proved itself and found its audience. We will ensure our programmes support those organisations and individuals who are already at the top of their game, alongside those at the start of their career who we believe, with our support, have the potential to excel.

We acknowledge that excellence is difficult to define and will mean different things in different contexts. It will always be, quite rightly, the subject of debate. For instance, the criteria for excellence in a theatre performance will not be the same as for a museum exhibition. They will look different for a large organisation that operates in an international marketplace to one focused on small-scale rural touring.

We are also interested in the way that excellence applies to all aspects of cultural practice – from the imagination that organisations and individuals show in the way they work with and for communities through their education and outreach programmes, to how effective they are in the way they run their businesses. We will factor all these different aspects of excellence into our assessment of applications and our investment decisions.

We will receive more high-quality applications than we are able to support. This will require us to draw on our expertise and experience and use our judgement to make difficult decisions. What will underpin all those decisions is our belief that every successful applicant has demonstrated to our satisfaction a commitment to excellence across all aspects of their work. We will expect that commitment to include a determination to use our investment to improve future performance, something that is critical to ensuring we have a high-quality cultural sector that will continue to be globally competitive and serve all our communities.

In Let’s Create, we describe a set of four Investment Principles – Ambition & Quality, Dynamism, Environmental Responsibility, and Inclusivity & Relevance. We believe that these Investment Principles can work together to create a powerful mechanism that will help organisations and individuals to improve their performance going forward. We will expect successful applicants to use these Investment Principles – and the resources we are commissioning to support them – as development tools to help them focus and track that journey of continuous improvement, and help underpin their commitment to excellence.

We believe this shared commitment is essential to achieve the vision we set out above and the three Outcomes that are outlined on the following page.

Our outcomes
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Our three Outcomes

Creative People 

Everyone can develop and express creativity throughout their life.

Everyone can be creative, and each of us has the potential to develop our creativity further. Taking part in creative acts such as singing, photography or writing delights and fulfils us, and helps us to think, experiment, and better understand the world. The public has told us how much they value opportunities for children to take part in creative activities and that they want to see us do more to widen and improve these opportunities.

Over these three years, we will be looking to support high-quality applications that address at least one of these key Elements of Creative People:

  • supporting people at all stages of their lives to design, develop and increase their participation in high-quality creative activities
  • promoting creative opportunities in the local community to people at all stages of their lives
  • providing high-quality early years activities that reach families from a wider range of backgrounds
  • widening and improving opportunities for children and young people to take part in creative activities inside schools
  • widening and improving opportunities for children and young people to take part in creative activities outside schools
  • improving teaching for creativity in schools
  • supporting children and young people to develop their creative skills and potential
  • developing and improving pathways towards careers in the creative industries

Cultural Communities 

Villages, towns and cities thrive through a collaborative approach to culture.

Culture and the experiences it offers can have a deep and lasting effect on places and the people who live in them. Investment in cultural activities and in creative and cultural practitioners, arts organisations, museums and libraries helps improve lives, regenerate neighbourhoods, support local economies, attract visitors and bring people together. But this can only work if there is a shared commitment to removing the geographic, economic and social barriers that currently prevent many people from taking part in publicly funded cultural activity.

Over these three years, we will be looking to support high-quality applications that address at least one of these key Elements of Cultural Communities:

  • improving access to a full range of cultural opportunities wherever people live
  • working with communities to better understand and respond to their needs and interests, resulting in increased cultural engagement and the wide range of social benefits it brings
  • working collaboratively through place-based partnerships to:
  1. support and involve communities in high-quality culture
  2. improve creative and cultural education for children and young people
  3. improve health and wellbeing through creative and cultural activity
  4. build skills and capacity in the cultural sector and grow its economic impact
  • connecting people and places, including diaspora communities, nationally and internationally

A Creative and Cultural Country 

England’s cultural sector is innovative, collaborative and international.

The cultural sector will only ever be as strong as the talent on which it is built. Its future success depends on being able to draw on a talent pool that reflects society as a whole and is much wider and deeper than it is now. To achieve the first two Outcomes, we need a professional cultural sector that generates new ideas, works easily and effectively with others, and is adept at developing talent from every community.

It should aspire to be world-leading – in the way it makes art, in the imagination and expertise with which it makes exciting use of collections and develops libraries, and in the culture it creates and shares.

Over these three years, we will be looking to support high-quality applications that address at least one of these key Elements of A Creative and Cultural Country:

  • supporting new types of creative practice, new forms of cultural content and new ways of reaching new and existing audiences and participants
  • collaborating with other cultural organisations and/or with the commercial creative industries and/or with further and higher education, especially with a view to supporting innovation, research and development, new skills and the use of new technologies
  • strengthening the international connections of cultural organisations and creative and cultural practitioners, including co-production and touring
  • bringing world-class culture to audiences in England
  • giving more opportunities to people to start a professional career in the creative industries, especially those who are currently under-represented
  • ensuring people have opportunities to sustain their careers and fulfil their potential in the creative industries, especially those who are currently under-represented

Our investment principles
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Our four Investment Principles

We will expect successful applicants to use our Investment Principles as development tools to help them focus and track their journey of continuous improvement and help underpin their commitment to excellence. Over these three years, we will increasingly direct our investment to applicants that show a demonstrable commitment to the following Investment Principles:

Ambition & Quality 

Cultural organisations and individuals are ambitious and committed to improving the quality of their work.

The public deserve the best in return for their investment and the Arts Council is committed to the pursuit of the highest quality in everything we support. We will back organisations and creative and cultural practitioners of all ages who have the potential to excel at what they do, as well as support those who are already at the top of their game. We will invest in a cultural sector that is ambitious, determined to improve the quality of its work and that invests in training and skills development.

We will expect it to gather the views of the public and their peers on the quality of what it does and learn and use that feedback in discussion with staff and boards to shape future decisions about its work. We expect them to be aware of the best work in their field – wherever it happens in the world – and to tell us how they will apply that knowledge to their own development.

Dynamism 

Cultural organisations and individuals are dynamic and able to respond to the challenges of the next decade.

The years ahead will be ones of rapid change and will see the public’s cultural tastes and habits evolve, new technological opportunities and ongoing pressure on public funding as we emerge from the pandemic.

To navigate these opportunities and risks successfully, cultural organisations and individuals will need to become more dynamic. They will need to be flexible and adaptable so that they can innovate their business models.

We will invest in organisations that are committed to strengthening their governance and leadership, developing the skills and wellbeing of their workforce, improving their data culture, and adopting appropriate new technologies across their business. We will expect them to become more entrepreneurial and develop business models that help them maximise income, reduce costs and become more financially resilient. We will also expect them to look for opportunities to share services and explore mergers with other organisations.

Environmental Responsibility 

Cultural organisations and individuals lead the way in their approach to environmental responsibility.

The climate crisis and environmental degradation are the most significant challenges facing all of us. The cultural sector in this country has already taken major steps to reduce its carbon footprint but it will need to go further.

We will expect organisations that we invest in to develop clear pathways towards net zero carbon and to underpin those plans with a framework of measurement and progress reports. We want cultural organisations and individuals to embody the principles of environmental responsibility through the work they create, commission and programme, the way they run their businesses, buildings and projects, and the conversations they have with their stakeholders, staff, peers and audiences.

Inclusivity & Relevance 

England’s diversity is fully reflected in the organisations and individuals that we support and in the culture they produce.

We will invest in a cultural sector that sets out clear measurable plans for how it will ensure that its leadership, governance, workforce, programme and audiences are more reflective of the communities it serves – in terms of geography and socio-economic background as well as protected characteristics (including disability, sex and race).

We will promote equality and fairness, as well as encourage cultural organisations to be more effective businesses by drawing on a wider range of views and experience. We will also expect the cultural sector we support to build closer connections with its communities, particularly those that it is currently underserving, and applicants will need to tell us how they will take their views and interests into account as they plan their programmes.