Culture, sport and leisure services can help boost high streets and improve wellbeing
The pandemic generated a lot of innovation, and services are continuing to innovate as they support communities with the cost of living, as well as their own financial pressures from high energy costs and a squeeze on discretionary income.
Even as we respond to these new issues, it is important for us as leaders of place to pause and reflect on what worked, and what didn’t work, during the pandemic period.
What ways of working should we perpetuate and mainstream? What do we need to retire now the world has moved on?
The LGA’s improvement offer is helping councils to do this through Leadership Essentials programmes for culture and sport lead members, culture and library peer challenges,
and leadership programmes for culture, library and physical activity lead officers.
These programmes support leaders to develop good practice and systemic thinking, and to connect with other councils to share case studies and sector knowledge.
We have heard how councils are using culture and leisure services to help:
- reinvigorate the high street and manage empty shops
- bridge the attainment gap for children who have missed out on formal schooling during the pandemic
- address rising levels of mental ill health and loneliness
- ensure local people have the skills they need to find high-quality, sustainable work
- communicate messages about climate change and prompt behaviour change in this area.
Culture and leisure infrastructure is what creates places in which people want to live and work. It can rebrand towns and cities, draw investment, create jobs and strengthen communities through a sense of local pride. It can be a tool for communicating new ideas.
More importantly, it contributes to a better quality of life for communities.
Councils run a wide range of cultural facilities, including 3,000 libraries, 350 museums, 116 theatres and numerous monuments, historic buildings and heritage sites.
They also run 2,607 health and fitness facilities, including 924 swimming pools; and around 20,000 parks and green spaces.
These facilities are embedded in local communities and provide a ready-made network of community engagement opportunities at a local level. It is essential we work with partners and communities to co-create sustainable solutions to complex issues.
For example, my own Isle of Wight Council works closely with the Island Collection, a strategic partnership of cultural organisations who work together to establish the island as a significant cultural environment and destination, for all those who live here, and for those who visit.
We are still lucky enough to run our own leisure centres but, like all operators, are dealing with the shadow of the pandemic and the impact of energy costs.
As leaders we need to:
- encourage creative ideas for opening up services and getting the public involved
- advocate the way in which culture and sport contributes to wider social outcomes, particularly regarding economic renewal,
- health and wellbeing and climate change activity
- work collaboratively to build relationships with partners across place.
It is essential that culture and physical activity are embedded in councils’ wider strategies and that leaders advocate for cultural services and physical activity to leverage opportunities and partnerships.