To deliver this Strategy, Arts Council England must change. The following commitments are designed to set out how we will work over the next decade: to keep our delivery on track, to ensure that we are held to account, and to serve as an invitation to others to join us as partners. They’re not exhaustive, and they will inevitably evolve over time – but they will help us to stay focused, to work differently, and to continue to develop as an organisation.

Over the next decade, in our national role, we will:

• Build our capacity, understanding and knowledge at a local level by retaining our network of local offices, combining this with strong national intelligence. We will continue to bring together local and national decision making to ensure that we operate as an effective development agency.
• Establish, nurture and maintain strong partnerships – including across national and local government, in all areas of education, and with the commercial, not-for-profit and voluntary sectors.
• Grow our expertise and capacity to support and broker more international opportunities for organisations and individuals working in culture.
• Provide platforms for debate and support the cultural sector to learn from the best new ideas from around the world.
• React quickly and effectively to national and local opportunities and challenges.
• Strive to be relevant and responsive to the public, the cultural sector and the places that we are here to serve, by listening and giving voice to a wide a range of people, including young people.

In our investment process, we will:

• Regularly review our application processes and our monitoring and reporting requirements to ensure that they are as accessible, easy to understand and inclusive as possible.
• Become a more flexible investor, developing alternative investment schemes (such as loans or stakes) to support our traditional timelimited grants.
• Invest in new technologies and use them to improve existing services and develop new ones.
• Answer the following questions before making investments:
  1. How well does this proposal help to achieve our three Outcomes?
  2. How well does it address the priorities in our current delivery plan?
  3. To what extent is the applicant able to demonstrate commitment to our four Investment Principles?
  4. How well does this proposal contribute to achieving a good balance of activity across the country and across disciplines (including artforms, museums and libraries)?
  5. Would the activity or service happen without our investment?
  6. Will our funding leverage additional investment that might otherwise be lost?
  7. What is the best type and duration of investment (revenue or capital funding, grant, loan or stake) for the proposal?

In our workforce, we will:

• Accelerate our progress in ensuring our workforce, leadership and governance is representative of this country’s population.
• Ensure more D/deaf and disabled people work with and for Arts Council England.
• Identify the skills, expertise and knowledge we will need for the next decade and invest in and develop them through training and recruitment.
• Reduce our impact on the environment, and measure, understand and report on progress.

In terms of our research and data, we will:

• Be clear on what we want to measure and how we will do so.
• Be a dynamic and responsible collector and user of data, applying both current legislation and open data principles.
• Use research to improve our understanding of what the public and our stakeholders want, and to learn from others, both within and outside of the cultural sector.
• Ensure that any research we undertake is readily available for use by others.

And in terms of our accountability and targets, we will:

• Develop a series of Delivery Plans that set out what our priorities will be for the period in question and the actions we will take to deliver those priorities.
• Include in those Delivery Plans a set of performance measures that will set out how we will track and report on progress in achieving both our Outcomes and our priorities. We will also include detail on how the Arts Council intends to improve its performance against the four Investment Principles.
• Provide regular reports on progress against our Strategy, on targets and on the investments we are making on behalf of the public and our stakeholders.
• Provide a clearer account of the impact we, those we invest in, and the wider cultural sector make.
• Learn from and share our successes and our mistakes, our progress and our challenges.
• Continue to generate efficiency savings in all areas of our operations in order to invest more resources in supporting creativity and culture.