Cultural Strategies

This Public Policy Southampton funded project examines how local authorities in England are aligning culture with place, health and the environment through cultural strategies and compacts. Employing a mixed methods research design and convening a knowledge exchange workshop, this project will provide analysis enabling local authorities to reflect on and explore how cultural strategies and compacts engage with place, health, environment, and other priority issues.

During 2023, Professor Dan Ashton (Principal Investigator) and Makanani Bell (research assistant) completed a Public Policy Southampton funded project examining how local authorities in England are aligning culture with place, health and the environment through cultural strategies and compacts. As the project developed, a wider set of findings emerged exploring how cultural strategy documents are created, updated and shared.

 

The main outputs from this project are a project report and a searchable, online database:

• Cultural strategies and futures:
  This report outlines findings and makes recommendations from the Public Policy Southampton funded project, Cultural strategies, compacts and futures: The role of local government in connecting culture with place, health and the environment.
• Cultural strategies online database:
  This searchable, online database includes direct links to cultural strategy documents accessible on local authority websites and can be filtered in several ways. The research team acknowledge the efforts of the Research Application Support team at the University of Southampton in the completion of this work.

In addition, other materials from the project are available using the links below：

• Introduction to the Cultural Strategies in England database:
  This word document introduces the Cultural Strategies in England overview (spreadsheet) and Cultural Strategies in England database. It includes an overview of the search results; the takedown policy; and a table outlining updates and version changes to the Cultural Strategies in England overview (spreadsheet).
• Cultural Strategies in England overview:
  This is a spreadsheet providing an overview of the search results with various factors and filters. These are outlined in the document, Introduction to the Cultural Strategies in England database. The content of this spreadsheet was the basis for the Cultural strategies online database which provides an alternative way of visualising and filtering the search results.
• Cultural Strategies in England database:
  This is a zip folder containing the cultural strategy documents identified and examined during the project. This can be accessed directly using the Cultural strategies online database.
• Cultural strategies, compacts and futures project design and findings:
  This is a slideshow presentation from the knowledge exchange workshop, A conversation on cultural strategies held on Friday 5th May 2023 in Southampton. It sets out the project’s context, design and findings.
• A conversation on cultural strategies programme:
  This is the programme from the knowledge exchange workshop, A conversation on cultural strategies held on Friday 5th May 2023 in Southampton.