We published our first 10-year Strategy in the autumn of 2010. Great Art and Culture for Everyone had a simple aim: to build for the first time, with the public and our partners, a shared vision and a set of priorities to support and develop arts and culture in this country.

The Strategy’s launch coincided with an era of austerity, during which funding for arts and culture from local and national government fell. But the strong partnerships that it forged helped us to support creative practitioners and cultural organisations, even in challenging economic circumstances. And its clear vision allowed us to work purposefully with others towards the shared goal of a country in which great art and culture could be made, experienced and appreciated by as many people as possible.

The successes of that first Strategy were significant. England’s artists, curators and librarians continued to flourish at home and around the world. They proved to be vital sources of talent and enterprise for our country’s creative industries, which in turn emerged as major drivers of the national economy. In many places, the Arts Council and local authorities stood together and continued to invest in culture, for the benefit of local communities, and increasingly in consultation with them. Cultural organisations responded boldly to the decade’s economic challenges, growing earned income and developing new ways of raising money to counter the impacts of reduced public funding, while at the same time becoming greener and moving to diversify their work and their workforces. As a result of all of this, we’re beginning the new decade with a far clearer understanding of the role that culture can play in building the identity and prosperity of places, creating stronger communities, and inspiring change.

But there is more to do. As we prepared for this new Strategy, we set out to understand how we could build on the achievements of the last and do better in the areas where challenges remain.

We began with a conversation involving more than 5,000 people from around the country – including members of the public, children and young people, artists, curators and librarians, leaders of cultural organisations, and those working in local and national government and in education.

We asked them how they experienced creativity and what their cultural lives looked like, what arts, museums and libraries meant to them, and what they believed public money should and shouldn’t fund. We reviewed more than 100 reports into the work of artists and arts organisations, libraries and museums, and the ways in which the public benefits from them. We commissioned a study of the future trends that are likely to affect the cultural sector. We looked at evidence about leadership in cultural organisations, about their economic and environmental sustainability, and about the roles culture and creativity play in the fields of health, wellbeing, and criminal justice.

From our analysis of this evidence we identified a set of key issues facing the cultural sector. Together, they made up our ‘case for change’.

They were:

That across the country, there are significant differences in how ‘arts’ and ‘culture’ are defined, understood and valued. Many people are uncomfortable with the label ‘the arts’ and associate it only with either the visual arts or ‘high art’, such as ballet or opera. At the same time most people in this country have active cultural lives and value opportunities to be creative

That there are still widespread socio-economic and geographic variances in levels of engagement with publicly funded culture

That the opportunities for children and young people to experience creativity and culture inside and outside school are not equal across the country

That there remains a persistent and widespread lack of diversity across the creative industries and in publicly funded cultural organisations, although awareness of the issue is greater than it used to be

That the business models of publicly funded cultural organisations are often fragile, and generally lack the flexibility to address emerging challenges and opportunities, especially around the decline of public funding and the growth of new technologies

That many creative practitioners and leaders of cultural organisations report a retreat from innovation, risk-taking and sustained talent development

We then went back to the public and stakeholders to test whether they recognised the issues we had identified, and whether they agreed that our next Strategy should address them. Respondents were strongly positive about the direction of travel we were proposing, while asking us to keep in mind the considerable achievements of the past decade. They also offered many valuable ideas about how a Strategy that aimed to address these key issues could be framed and delivered.

Of course, this Strategy will not exist in a vacuum. As we look towards 2030, the external challenges and developments facing both our sector and the wider world are significant. Technology continues to evolve at speed, presenting us with new opportunities while at the same time posing new questions. Rising health and social care costs will continue to place demands on public funding.

The global financial outlook remains uncertain, while the UK’s relationship with Europe will continue to evolve in the wake of our departure from the European Union. This country will continue to grapple with historic cultural, social and economic divisions. And overshadowing all of this are the urgent crises of climate change and environmental degradation, which look certain to be the key forces shaping our social, political and economic landscape over the decade to come.

The cultural sector is already adapting in response to these wider changes. During the consultation, participants were quick to point to the many organisations and individuals across England who are already addressing the challenges that our research identified. They highlighted partnerships with the technology sector, the wider creative industries and higher education; projects around health and wellbeing; progress towards environmental sustainability; and the growing support for and celebration of everyday creativity. Such initiatives are exciting and inspiring. The aim now must be to adapt and expand them in order to accelerate and deepen the wider development and impact of our sector.

This Strategy sets out the change we want to achieve together over the next decade. It will help put in place conditions that enable creative practitioners, cultural organisations and their workforces to respond nimbly and effectively to what lies ahead, and to shape it for the better. And for Arts Council England, it will determine our role as a development agency, our approach to the investment of the funds we receive from the National Lottery and from tax payers, and our advocacy for creativity and culture, over the next 10 years.

We’re not expecting to do everything at once. Change will take time and its pace will depend, in part, on the resources we have available; between now and 2030 we will publish a series of Delivery Plans that will set out our specific priorities for each period. But the strength and vitality of the cultural sector, together with a shared recognition of the challenges ahead and a shared commitment to this Strategy’s vision, mean we can approach the next 10 years with confidence in our ability to achieve more, and reach further. It’s time to take the next step.