Councillor Tudor Evans OBE (Leader), Councillor Peter Smith (Deputy Leader), David Draffan (Service Director for Economic Development) and Hannah Harris (Chief Executive of Plymouth Culture) were present for this item.  The purpose of this report to present the ‘Culture Plan - a place-based culture strategy for Plymouth 2021-2030’ which would take over from ‘The Vital Spark’ strategy. This new strategy would run from 2021 to 2030.

Plymouth City Council commissioned arts development companies and audience agencies to work with Plymouth which explored data captured to understand the scale and impact of the Sector.  Due to the impact of COVID and subsequent lockdown the strategy was paused to reflect on the appropriateness on developing a long term plan, whilst companies and individuals had been in crisis. The feedback however had been to accelerate progress, the positive of the first lockdown had been to allow the team to stop and reflect and plan this strategy thoroughly looking to the future.

Work had been completed to understand the value of the sector to Plymouth; £34 million spent in Plymouth from visitors; 74% of visitors had been attracted to Plymouth because of its history and heritage; £50 million had been invested in arts and culture in Plymouth in the last five years; £4 million in income has been generated from grass roots music venues; 95 opportunities had been created every week for young people by non-profit cultural organisations in Plymouth; 2,130 jobs had been supported by businesses and organisations in Plymouth; 1 million people go to events organised by creative and cultural organisations in Plymouth every year; 1,200 performance workshops and events had been hosted every year by non-profit cultural organisations in Plymouth; 31,117 musicians played at 2,829 events organised by grass root music venues which were attended by 294,216 people every year.

The consultation process had held 40 1:1 stakeholder interviews from the culture sector and beyond in order to have a sense of what Plymouth unique offer is, what the strategy would be and how Plymouth would position itself moving forward.

Thematics had been tested within focus group consultation workshops and the vision was refined subsequent to those workshops. A few individual groups were less represented and were engaged with through a number of partner organisations such as Marjons University, Beyond Face, Funky Llama, Plymouth and Devon Freelance Task Force and the Barbican Theatres ReBels young people group.

A survey to evaluate the impact of COVID had been undertaken to understand the impact and what Plymouth would be losing from the sector as well as evaluating what Plymouth would gain.

The vision for this strategy was to form Plymouth into a magnet city attracting artists, creatives and social activists. Our City’s appeal is characterised by Plymouth’s commitment to people and planet which had been evidenced by the cultural offer it reflects by including and valuing our diverse communities.

It’s this visions ambition to:

(a)           Use Plymouth’s unique landscape to present culture in unusual spaces, to allow people to enjoy Plymouth’s unique assets making use of the waterfront, green spaces and urban environment.

(b)          For culture to be for everyone every day and to be visible and accessible.

(c)           Build a co-creation model to progress the cultural offer and to engage audiences in a different way.

(d)          To provide future jobs and to make use of the physical assets already within the City.

(e)          Achieve equitable activity to build an inclusive sector and City.

There are five programmes of work:

(1)            Our city is our venue; to look at the City’s infrastructure to ensure culture can happen, whether this is through installation of Wi-Fi, creating designated zones for culture and performance, creating spaces where there is light of electricity, having under cover spaces or opening up spaces.

(2)            To create a programme for a year of culture and activity and to make this visible and accessible.

(3)         To be an economic driver for jobs.

(4)         Creating community clusters where other services can’t get to.

(5)            To be able to explain to people through data the impact that the sector has on the City.

Plymouth City Council has and continues to consult with stakeholders to receive feedback in order to understand what people liked about the strategy and how to get people involved.  Out of this work an easy to read and audio document would be created to make the strategy more publicly accessible.

The Brexit, Infrastructure and Legislative Change Overview and Scrutiny Committee notes the Culture Plan - a place-based culture strategy for Plymouth 2021-2030 which was approved at Cabinet on 9 March 2021.