Re-Imagining Place: Sustainable and Inclusive Growth Through Culture, took place at the Guildhall Worcester in March 2023, offering opportunities to celebrate, share learning, connect and be inspired by the first round CDF projects in Grimsby, Plymouth, Thames Estuary, Wakefield and Worcester. 

This video of the third panel of the day, focusing on Developing People, Businesses and Communities, with key highlights including:

• Introduction to panel theme: Chair Paul Bristow (PB), Director of Policy and Partnerships, Arts Council England
• Overview of Wakefield creative business support and leadership programme, Dr Stephen Dobson (SD), Associate Professor in Creativity and Enterprise, University of Leeds
• Overview of creative skills development programme, Alice Heggie (AH), Skills Development Manager, Creative Estuary
• Overview of Worcester Mela and community development, Jabba Riaz (JR), Chair, Worcester Mela
• Overview of Plymouth CDF skills, business support and innovation programme and capacity building, Professor Chris Bennewith, Executive Dean for the Faculty of the Arts, Humanities and Business, University of Plymouth
• Chair’s Q1: How do Universities bring expertise to bear in the wider creative economy? (PB)
• Putting students and post-grads into creative businesses to support R&D and innovation (CB)
• Chair’s Q2: What did the University do differently during the pandemic and what have they learned and will continue from this moving forwards? (PB)
• Delivering virtual learning and collaboration, virtual placements and benefits of this (CB)
• Chair’s Q3: What can local community and volunteer-led organisations offer for larger organisations – including local authorities and the NHS? (PB)
• Delivering genuine and effective engagement with hard-to-reach communities by working with local community groups and organisations and volunteer trustees (JR)
• Chair’s Q4: “Towns are everywhere, but opportunity isn’t”. How do you decide which places, specifically, to focus activity and how do you make connections with the young people within them? (PB)
• Using data to identify need (AH)
• Identifying good local partners and gateway organisations to support work with hard-to-reach young people (AH)
• Chair’s Q6: How does a university understand the needs of the creative business community and tailor an offer to them? How has does this change the wider offer of the university? (PB)
• Identifying skills and leadership gaps, ongoing learning of issues and opportunities within the university context (SD)
• Creating the right (non-academic) team to deliver business support programmes within a university (CB)
• Audience Q&A 1: Building long-term partnerships: “How do you strike the right balance between dealing with organisations and dealing with individuals within those organisations?”
• Arts Council England’s place-based approach to working with local partnerships – including working with local community and voluntary groups, adding legitimacy and insight (PB)
• Consistency of support in the face of changing personnel throughout the lifetime of a project – from funding application to delivery (JR)
• Partnership development vs partnership maintenance – getting a solid communications plan right at the beginning of a relationship (AH)
• Mitigating risks of losing individuals (and therefore momentum) by establishing and embedding long-term strategies and philosophies across the organisation (CB)
• Audience Q&A 2: How do we engage the business community in terms of investing in place?
• Characteristics of the creative sector business community: micro-organisations and freelancers – creating success stories of capacity building through partnerships with larger organisations (SD)
• Providing the business communities with what they genuinely want – not what you think they need – making this free (or low cost) at the point of access and being genuinely responsive (CB)
• Looking outside the traditional box for financial support and funding – eg property developers and construction sector to support local social value projects (JR)
• Communicating the value to organisations: why should they get involved and what are the wider benefits for the business sector to engage? (AH)
• Audience Q&A 3: How can funding like CDF help support businesses to engage with universities to get a better result for small companies?
• Government’s Lifelong Learning programme – bite-sized chunks for better engagements, apprenticeships, short courses and micro-credentials (CB)
• “Engaging with a university is more like engaging with a cluster than with an organisation” – funding programmes like CDF can help change this and rebuild more effective, collaborative and co-created business support programmes (SD)
• Audience Q&A 4: “Are there any small mistakes we can learn from?”
• Learning from being too flexible at the outset (AH)
• Importance of advocacy work to convince other sectors to work with the creative sector – and how much work/how long this will take (CB)
• Importance of being decisive… and sometimes ruthless (JR)
• Getting on with things … and knowing when to circumvent established processes (SD)
• Importance of ACE talking with other government departments about how funding can line up