What if… Dudley was the creative capital of the UK?

I know - we can all dream, but you have to aim high right?

At Creative Black Country, alongside our friends at CoLab Dudley, we have been working with colleagues across the creative and cultural sectors; members of the local creative and artistic community and locally-based practitioners, as well as the local authority to develop a new Cultural Strategy for the borough that will help more people take part in creative activity.

We are not too keen on the words ‘Cultural Strategy’ - it makes us think of writing a long document that will get buried away at the back of a shelf never to re-appear or be used. So instead we want to see ‘strategy in action’ and are taking an approach that we feel is more appropriate to place.

Cultural Democracy for Dudley

We want to see what a more democratic approach to the cultural offer could look like in Dudley, but what do we mean by this?

It is an approach to arts and culture that actively engages everyone in deciding what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it, and who experiences it. It is, after all, what the network we are part of - Creative People and Places - is all about.

In their 2022 research digest, Everyday Creativity, the Centre for Cultural Value highlight that:

“Cultural democracy can play a significant role in rebalancing resources, infrastructure and management, which are vital to everyday creativity at both individual and community level. Yet there is a danger that this becomes about mediated culture through the lens of organisations and institutions, which can disincentivise those involved in everyday creativity in the first place.”

In Dudley borough there are emerging examples of exciting cultural activity happening that invites new possibilities and opportunities. This creative potential is being nurtured by many increasingly interconnected local and national creative practitioners, citizens and supporters.

Sound aloud is a project that took place in Netherton Tunnel and was commissioned as part of our Dudley Creates strand of work

Alongside CoLab Dudley we have been supporting a network of people to co-design ideas for projects that will help bring this cultural strategy to life. This work has been going on for a few years and has been done via a steady and gentle approach. It isn’t easy work: We could just write a strategy using our desk research, but if no-one acts on it what is the point? We want to demonstrate to people and inspire local communities to see how from small acts of creativity we can all grow exciting new ideas - together.

Time Rebels of Dudley are helping to shape what a 100 year cultural strategy could look like

The research of this work started during the lockdown when Kerry O’Coy and Laura Dicken were appointed Associate Producers by CBC to support a programme of work, called Dudley Creates, to take place across Dudley Borough.

At the same time CoLab Dudley began inviting local creatives to join a collective of Time Rebels to encourage people to think long term and about intergenerational justice. We’re just in the process of bringing ALL of the learning from that work together but projects included; singing in tunnels, animation and poetry making, large-scale paper weaving, heritage photo embroidery, collaging, performance, sound art, puppet making, map making, dance and lots more.

It was, and continues to be, a very diverse, open and fun set of projects that were chosen and designed by artists and communities together.

Ruth and Odette invited people to decorate the subways of Stourbridge for their Summer of Creativity commission.

During May to October Dudley Council funded the Dudley strand of CBC’s Summer of Creativity programme. This was a pilot programme to continue to support communities and creatives across the borough to co-create projects together that would have legacy. We want everyone to feel they can take part in creative projects so our aim is to ensure that the design of projects is thoughtful and done with people who the project is aimed at.

Of course some projects are always more successful than others so we always aim to use the learning from projects (what worked? What didn’t? Why was that?) to iterate and see how we can improve.

There is a growing network of Cultural Collaborators convening at CoLab Dudley on the High Street who are thinking about different ways to inspire communities into the future with ideas like; large-scale participatory performances on High Streets; using dance to communicate feelings of grief; investigating cemeteries to think more about time; utilising everyday outdoor spaces to craft; planning weekly pop-up making spaces in neighbourhoods.

We are working alongside this group of people to help show what a strategy in action could look like.

We are inviting communities, artists, practitioners and people interested in making Dudley a vibrant creative place to be Cultural Collaborators - part of an emerging, open network of people seeking to catalyse change through creativity and cultural animation in the Dudley Borough. This is about people having a say in what they want to see and do in their town, area, neighbourhood and street.

Summer of Creativity collage is as re-imagining of what colourful towns could look like

So why are we developing a cultural strategy?

A strategy can help offer a vision of how things can be developed for the future. What needs to grow, develop, be thought about and put in place to make certain things happen for the better.

In 2021 we were asked by DMBC (as part of a commission) to develop this work. Due to a few curveballs and a re-routing of funds (the monies had to be re-directed to delivery of a Summer programme of creative community activity) we are now working alongside Dudley CVS and CoLab Dudley to support the Cultural Compact for Dudley which is funded via Arts Council England.

The Cultural Compact work we are helping to support is being delivered to develop a strategy that is, of and, unique to place - we want to bring people together, align ideas within the creative and culture sectors, offer opportunity for conversation, shared visions and ideas, and offer suggestions and recommendations for the future.

Photos on the High Street took place in Halesowen and offering the opportunity for people to talk about the place they live. It included portraits and a film.

An invitation to collaborate on culture and become part of a growing ecosystem

We don’t think that any one organisation or person should make recommendations of behalf of the community or/and residents without asking them. Our approach is to speak to, demonstrate, co-design, co-create, learn and share ideas in many different ways with many different people.

We don’t want to just bring the usual suspects around a table talking about what we could do. Instead we want creative people to show what we can do. Our hope is that this will inspire and open up people’s imagination to think about what a creative future in Dudley could look like.

How might we get from small pockets of cultural investment here and there to an exciting annual programme of activity designed by communities and creatives together?
How might we retain our young creative people to stay and work in the Borough?
How might we turn existing empty spaces into creative and cultural hubs?
How might we design creative spaces for the future that are sustainable and fit for purpose?

How might we grow a thriving cultural ecology?

Academic John Holden stresses the nature of governance in a cultural ecology:

"...any attempt to understand what a cultural democracy might look like needs to begin by abandoning the rigid criteria by which different forms of creative acts are classified and ultimately valued. Taking an ecological approach to understanding cultural participation places a focus on the relationships between different types of creative acts and organisations. It emphasises the extent to which culture is created by the coming together of people, ideas, skills, assets, resources and opportunities, and in this regard evokes the idea of capabilities, discussed below. The idea of a cultural ecology is explicitly non-hierarchical and implicitly asserts each element is interdependent, equally important and should be valued as such."

The Ecology of Culture - A Report commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project (John Holden, 2015)

The Walk and Draw group were supported to use their creativity and make puppets that helped use nature to tell the story of living in Dudley

We know that there is room for many approaches to bringing together a strategy and we are taking this approach for a number of reasons:

There has been a lack of investment and joined up thinking in culture across the Borough and given the current cost of living crisis this is unlikely to change.
If we are to wait for those in more traditional authority and decision making roles to make this change we might be waiting a long time.
As budgets are cut and priorities diverted many things are now being left to citizens to do themselves.

Creativity usually comes alive and is more exciting when things around us become uncomfortable so let’s not leave it to people making decisions behind desks, but let’s hand it to the people that have an invested interest who have everything at stake, and others in mind - the people that are making things happen for themselves and their communities, regardless.

This is a growing, developing piece of work. Our aim is to use all of the research to bring together recommendations so that we can, when the time arrives, be ready to help make change and grow the capacity for people to take part in cultural activities.

WHERE CAN I FIND OUT MORE?

At the moment the work so far is available to see here in the Digital Allotment. A place for sharing between people experimenting with an approach to arts and culture in Dudley borough that actively engages everyone in deciding what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it, and who experiences it.

AN INVITATION
We are inviting people to two events in December at CoLab Dudley on the High Street: Imagining the Futures We Want will be hosted on Wednesday 7th December (5-8.30p) and Thursday 8th December (12-3pm) and will be an opportunity to meet local creatives, doers and cultural collaborators who are helping to think about the cultural strategy.

WANT TO COME CLOSER?
We’d love to invite you for a coffee or a cuppa to chat more about creative and cultural ideas for Dudley. If you’d like to join us in Dudley we’re usually there on a Thursday. Email kerry@creativeblackcountry.co.uk to work out a time.

This post was written by Kerry O’Coy.

Could you be a Cultural Collaborator?