Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 2
Third Report - Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda
Published 2 Nov 2022
Paragraph 16
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government should take steps to level up cultural opportunities and production across the country through its proposed statutory framework set out in the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill currently working its way through Parliament. We recommend that the Government commits to explicitly incorporating support for local arts and culture into the Government’s first Statement for Levelling-Up Missions, including the methodology and metrics for mission progress, for missions such as pride in place, living standards, wellbeing, education and local leadership. In its Response to this Report, the Government should provide clarity on how prospective methodologies and metrics might also recognise the idiosyncratic and esoteric nature, and capture the social, cultural and economic value, of many creative businesses. Finally, the Government should ensure that there is countrywide support available to local cultural organisations and local government achieve this progress.
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Third Report - Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda (HC 155), paragraph 16, 2 November 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 3 February 2023 (deadline 11 January 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the inquiry and agrees that place-based cultural policymaking can help deliver the Levelling Up missions, but it disagrees with the Committee's conclusion on a joined-up approach and declines several recommendations.
- It disagrees with the Committee's "lack of faith" that a collaborative approach to Levelling Up cultural infrastructure is being taken, citing partnership working between Government, Arms-Length Bodies and places.
- On skills, it says a Government-led national training programme "is not required", and does not agree that an audit and roadmap of cultural placemaking skills is necessary, citing the risk of duplication.
- On Cultural Compacts, it says that "in the current fiscal climate, further Government investment in Compacts at this time is unlikely", preferring their "organic development".
- On funding, it says current policy does not distinguish "national" from "regional" or "local" organisations. It says there are "no plans to expand the Music Hubs model to other art forms".