Val Birchall reflects on becoming a LPIP Fellow and the work she has planned for her fellowship.
About Me
As a Place Fellow at the LPIP, I am excited to be joining a team of practitioners at the intersection of policy and place.
I bring over two decades of experience shaping and delivering local cultural policy, as well as running a range of place-based services for arts, heritage, libraries, and related provision in sport, community development, creative industries, and events. Having started my career in the cultural sector, my local government journey has been rooted in the belief that culture is central to the identity of our localities and vital to the creation of thriving places.
Becoming an LPIP Hub Fellow
The Place Fellowships are a rare chance to combine academic policy specialisms with on-the-ground experience. The fellowship will enable me to collaborate with colleagues whose insight intersects with the work of the National Alliance for Cultural Services, of which I am the Chair. This will position our thinking within the broader policy context and prompt me to consider the implications from different perspectives.
My Work as an LPIP Hub Fellow
My work as a Fellow will address two complementary issues for the publicly funded cultural sector. Firstly, how to continue to build on ways of working that have developed in recent years to put local partnerships and strategies, co-produced by local stakeholders and residents, at the heart of cultural delivery and place this within the context of local government reorganisation and devolution. Secondly, how to marry that intention with the challenge of maintaining a thriving national cultural provision in a climate of reduced resources.
In the initial phase, I will look at the current model for supporting cultural development and explore how a new framework could be developed that responds to the complex interdependencies of the national, regional and local components of the ecology but retains the principle of communities retaining the power to determine their own priorities for their place. In the second phase, I will consider the implications of the emerging model for the skills and capacity requirements of our sector and make recommendations for the development of a future-fit workforce.
Final Thoughts
It is important to me that my fellowship produces work which has practical benefits and influences change. I will be looking to share the thinking with colleagues in the local government cultural sector through the work of the National Alliance and with the Chief Culture & Leisure Officers Association (www.cloa.org.uk), of which I am the Vice-Chair, to shape new initiatives and to develop policy positions that can help guide decision-makers at a national level.
This blog was written by Val Birchall, Chair of the National Alliance for Cultural Services and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of the Academy of Urbanism.
Find out more about the Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not necessarily those of City-REDI or the University of Birmingham.