Over the last two years we have increased cultural opportunities in more villages, towns and cities through a more focused place-based approach. We have identified Priority Places and refocused our ways of working to create more time for staff to deliver development work. And we have established a new National Portfolio that reaches more places than ever before.

We continue to support all places across England through our three-pronged approach: 

• a universal offer available to all parts of the country 
• ensuring that our investment in places where joint investment in culture is relatively high delivers greater social, economic and cultural value 
• increasing investment and staff development time in Priority Places 

We have worked with key stakeholders in our Priority Places to establish shared objectives grounded in the needs and aspirations of local communities and have focused our investment on furthering those objectives. Across the 54 Priority Places, average annual investment, excluding National Portfolio investment, has increased from a baseline of £24,736,942 in 2019/20 to £47,788,154 in each of the first two years of the delivery plan  – an increase of 93%.

Through the National Portfolio investment process, we delivered significant change in how our investment is spread across the country, with marked increases in investment in both Priority Places and Levelling Up for Culture Places (a total of 109 places outside London identified jointly by the Arts Council and DCMS where our investment and engagement with publicly funded culture have been too low). From 2023/24 there will be 78 new National Portfolio Organisations and Investment Principles Support Organisations in Levelling Up for Culture Places with investment increasing by 95 per cent: a total of £21,196,746 additional investment each year. In Priority Places, National Portfolio investment will increase by 141 per cent. 

Libraries and museums often reach into places with little or no other cultural infrastructure. The number of libraries supported through the National Portfolio has more than doubled and National Portfolio investment in libraries has increased by 166 per cent. Of the 25 museums that joined the portfolio, 10 are in Levelling Up for Culture Places. Overall, National Portfolio investment in museums has increased by 21 per cent.

Local government remains our most important strategic delivery partner. We continue to work closely with local authorities, including Mayoral Combined Authorities, as part of our work in place. We welcome the inclusion of culture and commitments to partner with the Arts Council within devolution deals. We support local capacity through providing learning opportunities for elected members and senior officers via our partnership with the Local Government Association. By the end of this Delivery Plan, we will publish a place data platform, ensuring that our partners in place have access to data and evidence that is relevant to the local area, enabling them to map need, identify opportunity, and form partnerships. In 2022 we partnered with Key Cities to review culture policy and data in urban areas which culminated in the publication of the Culture and Place in Britain report. In 2023/24 we will undertake a new rural evidence review. 

We welcome the fact that culture is at the heart of the government’s ambitions to level up. Our close working relationship with the government remains central to our ambition to help more places achieve their cultural and creative potential. Investment in culture and heritage is a priority of the Levelling Up Fund, and we will continue to engage with DCMS, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), and our partner arm’s-length bodies (National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, Sport England, The National Lottery Community Fund, British Film Institute, and VisitBritain) to support Levelling Up Fund recipients to ensure successful delivery of cultural projects. 

In 2022/23 we worked with DCMS to invest over £50 million in communities across England through the Cultural Investment Fund (Libraries Investment Fund, Museum Estate and Development Fund, and Cultural Development Fund). New rounds of the Libraries Investment Fund and Museum Estate and Development Fund in 2023/24 will see a further £33 million invested across the country. 

We continue to work with the Department for Education to develop a National Plan for Cultural Education and to deliver the activity outlined in the 2022 National Plan for Music Education. In 2023/24 this will include refreshing our network of Music Hubs. The new Music Hub Network will be a key pillar of our universal offer, ensuring that children and young people in every local authority across England are able to access high-quality music education locally.

Our focus on ensuring that all children and young people are given more opportunities to realise their creative and cultural potential remains clear. We will work with schools to reach as many children and young people as we can by implementing findings from the Durham Commission including continued investment in Talent25, refreshing our Artsmark programme, and working with the public and teachers to highlight the importance of creativity in education, and of a rich curriculum that includes art and design, dance, drama and music. We also support children and young people through a range of open funds. One of the first grants made through our Place Partnership Fund strand of NLPG, for instance, will support Kirklees’ Young People’s Year of Music in 2023 and include a focus on music education, aspiration and skills, and inclusion. Our support for the King’s Coronation also includes additional investment in Music for Youth to help them produce a concert series delivered by children and young people on bandstands across England.

We have continued to deliver on the ambitions in our plan for creative health by investing in key roles in the National Association for Social Prescribing and in Integrated Care Partnerships across England. Over the next year, we will ensure that these roles are fully embedded, build the evidence base for the impact of culture on health and wellbeing, and develop new projects to support cultural organisations and individual creative and cultural practitioners to play a key role in supporting the health and wellbeing of communities. 

Place-based partnerships including Cultural Compacts and Local Cultural Education Partnerships (LCEPs) are increasingly important for the effective development and delivery of cultural strategy in place. They create capacity for strategy partnerships with other sectors, and for delivery. In October 2022 we launched a peer learning network for Cultural Compacts, LCEPs, and Creative People and Places delivery organisations, invested £400,000 in Cultural Compacts, and commissioned research into LCEPs. In 2023/24 we are committed to increasing the number of Cultural Compacts in England by 50 per cent and to understanding the impact of having multiple place-based consortia in a single place. 

In 2022/23 we made the first grants through our new Place Partnership strand of NLPG; £7 million across 13 projects. Each of these projects is led by a place-based partnership and will make a sea change in cultural provision that will be felt across communities. Many of the projects focus on social cohesion, health and wellbeing, pride in place, and economic development. Almost all include a substantial offer for children and young people, including opportunities to engage in creative activity in and out of school as well as opening up career pathways.

‘Q½/¾’ – This refers to the different quarters of a financial year ‘Date’ – This is the point when more information will become available. At that point we publish a link to that information under the relevant Action. ‘2022/23 Budget’– We only publish budgets in relation to programmes where there is an open application process. The published figure represents the amount of funding Arts Council England has allocated to this Action. This figure may not represent our full investment in an Action. Funding may have been allocated in previous years or may be planned in future years or may come from programmes that are separately budgeted (eg National Lottery Project Grants).