About us

About Cultural Planning

Where does cultural planning come from?

  1. Australia - at national level – adopted cultural planning as policy.
  2. USA - Jane Jacobs; Partners for Liveable Communities (Robert McNulty)
  3. Mainland Europe (e.g. Turin, The Gate)
  4. U.K. (Bristol Creates, Dundee, Highlands and Islands)

Cultural planning methodology reached Scotland in the 20th Century via Australia (the only country so far whose government has specifically adopted a cultural planning approach across all strategic policy agendas), the U.S.A. (e.g. Robert McNulty’s “Partners for Liveable Communities”) and mainland Europe. There are two Masters Graduates on European Cultural Planning based in Scotland (Phil Denning and Liz Gardiner – both involved with Fablevision at board and operational level) and they are founder members of the National Cultural Planning Forum: a loose network of like minded individuals who are joined each year by a new wave of cultural planning course participants from the joint course with the University of Strathclyde.

What is cultural planning?

Cultural Planning is a culturally sensitive approach to planning and policy-making across all areas of activity, planning, social policy and business.  While cultural policies have a sectoral focus (i.e. “the arts”) Cultural Planning has a broader definition of culture, adopting Raymond Willians’ “culture as a way of life”. It has a broader, developmental remit. (Ghilardi, 2006)

Cultural planning is the description of a process that responds to the ambitions and imaginings of groups and individuals who seek to take local responsibility for change and assists them in the delivery. The process takes cognisance of the existing resources within any given community and supports their development in order to best make a contribution. Cultural resources are the key driver.

It seems like common sense - particularly in Scotland where the international “father” of cultural planning was our very own Patrick Geddes and we have a Government administration who are interested in culture as the expression of a nation.

Why does cultural planning need promotion and research?

With the exception of the Highlands and Islands, where social enterprise, the development trust movement and localism are more embedded, the application of cultural planning in Scotland remains fragile, patchy and restricted to “interesting, innovative experimentation”

There are various reasons for this:

The main one is an uneasy co-existence of different policy rationales within cultural policy thinking from different historical periods, and numerous political priorities:

* From the Victorians, the collapsing of “culture” and “the arts” with an assumed intrinsic and civilising value of access to a particular form of arts (i.e. Western European high art).

* From the 1970’s, the transformative potential of ‘cultural democracy’ and active participation in “the arts”

* From the 1980’s, culture as a “tool” for economic development, regeneration and place-making

* And from the 1990’s - cultural actions to change the behaviours of individuals and communities

In the Scotland of 2009, we have a unique opportunity to ditch the straight jacketing old ways and adopt a more strategic, holistic approach,.

So how do we implement cultural planning as strategic policy?

We start (as with every cultural planning approach) locally, at the grass roots, by “mapping” - not what’s missing, but what’s there – the history, heritage, stories, buildings, and people – particularly cultural social enterprises which often exist self reliantly “under the radar”. In Govan, for example, we got to more than 20 before we stopped counting.

We don’t start with the “issues and problems” (we don’t naively ignore them either). Rather than trying to tackle problems individually and in isolation, we build on existing cultural resources from the bottom up with local people leading the process.

 

What strategic framework is required to deliver cultural planning?
The business model for delivering cultural planning is social enterprise. It has to be – cultural planning is not a top down, public sector driven process (although to reach full potential, it needs to be supported by public agencies and by policy from the top)

And it’s not simply the “growth model” of enterprise where turnover and numbers of employees are the yardstick of success

Rather, the aim is to achieve a “critical mass” of cultural social enterprises –  locally sensitive, networking, building social capital, creating - and this is a key aspect of what we do - creating  training, apprenticeships, and employment (that means real employment - not just “jobs” and bureaucratic box ticking)

We know that in times of global recession and the meltdown of traditional economic values and systems, the potential contribution of cultural planning methodology is even more vital than ever.

What is the Role of Fablevision in delivering Cultural Planning?

Fablevision, has, over the 25 years of our existence, experimented with the cultural planning approach in as many different areas of planning and policy including: (and link to an example in the timeline from each one)

Social Inclusion
Combating racism/inter cultural dialogue
Place making
Housing wider role
Regeneration
Community Planning
Community Development
Health Promotion
Tourism
Education/Community Education
Community Engagement/Empowerment
Neighbourhood development
Town Centre Regeneration
Vibrancy
Quality of life
Greenspace
Tourism
Economic development
Employability and worklessness
Developing new small and medium sized enterprises
…. to name but a few

We have now included the delivery of training and learning in cultural planning in our portfolio. (See Transform Gold). We offer short courses to local authorities and community planning partnerships and we have a year long course, (open to everyone) which we deliver in partnership with the university of Strathclyde.

Fablevision continues to test the model within different policy agendas but has also positioned the charity as Scotland’s Centre for Cultural Planning. The emerging Cultural Planning Institute strand of our work delivers the training and research while other strands (Transform T.V., CRAN and Studios) deliver the work on the ground.

Fablevision convenes the national cultural planning forum, which is linked to a UK, European and Global network of like minded applied researchers and is open to anyone with an interest in these approaches.

With support from Senscot and the Social Enterprise Coalition, we are now able to properly support Scottish based cultural social enterprise and entrepreneurs through a cultural social enterprise network (which is now busy commissioning research and planning events). 

Link to other network members: Out of the Blue, WASPS, Greycoast Theatre,

This page uploaded 3rd March 2009.