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Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme provides funding to develop arts and cultural engagement in places where current involvement is below average. Funded projects work with local people to grow an arts and culture offer rooted in each locality and its community. Projects tend to emphasise local decision-making and delivering new projects that engage more communities with arts and culture. Whilst the aim of this programme is to encourage more people to engage with high quality arts and culture, there is growing evidence that it has had other, indirect, or ‘spillover’, economic effects. In particular, the way in which some Creative People and Places projects have worked with local partners and businesses, made use of public spaces, and built the skills of local people, has contributed towards local economic goals.

These five case studies show how, in some places, developing arts and cultural engagement through Creative People and Places has also had a spillover economic benefit. The case studies cover the Creative People and Places projects in Stoke-on-Trent, Hounslow, East Durham, Luton, and Boston and South Holland. Their approaches range from working with shopkeepers in Luton and a seed factory in Lincolnshire, through to a market for new artists on the north east coast and high streets that transform into outdoor theatres.