Being asked to share good practice is always a humbling experience - at the LGA Conference I was delighted to be asked to take part in a very well attended seminar in culture-led regeneration, speaking alongside the Chief Exec of the Eden Project, the Leader of Waltham Forest (who are the first London Borough of Culture) and the Chairman of the LGA Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, all chaired by Samira Ahmed. Esteemed company indeed!
I was asked to focus on how Stoke-on-Trent had taken its journey of resurgence with culture and heritage at the heart, the council’s role and the community aspects. Obviously, a great starting point was our bid for UK City of Culture 2021, and the precursor to this being Appetite, with such a strong community-focused legacy. This gave me the opportunity to talk about the city’s legacy of making art from dirt, and also the key role that changing perceptions had had on our bid. We had experienced huge amounts of community and stakeholder enthusiasm, and through the course of the bid has seen the strength of the local community grow.
The sessions was linked to the publication of an LGA report into cultural regeneration (which you can find here) in which Appetite was used as an example, giving the statistic that 90% of audience feedback had reported an increase in feelings of community pride.
Of course, we didn’t win City of Culture, but it did start to fundamentally change the narrative of the city, and bidding is still regularly cited to me as ‘a moment’ when things in Stoke-on-Trent started to change. It also brought people together to want to continue that change - this has included the success of the Poppies at Middleport in summer 2018, shortlisting for the Channel 4 Creative Hub, and the success of the bid legacy project, Light Night.
Discussion afterwards focused on whether this was achievable in a time of diminishing funds, and also techniques to involve communities and businesses.
