Culture is a term with many meanings and contexts, including in its sphere a wide range of processes and actions in the fine and performing arts, public art, media, sport, heritage, events, creative activity and is frequently used more broadly to describe the ways we live our lives.
‘A good place to wash your hair, Liverpool - good, soft water...’ John Lennon
The structure, role and responsibilities of Liverpool City Council’s Culture Liverpool unit has diversified and evolved since the time of Liverpool Culture Company which delivered the most successful ever European Capital of Culture in 2008. It has, since then, considerably streamlined its core staffing and has current responsibilities for: • The Visitor Economy including Tourism Information Centres • St George’s Hall and the Town Hall • Liverpool Cruise Terminal • The Major Events Programme • The Arts and Participation Programme • The Liverpool Film Office • The Cultural Investment Programme • Commercialisation, Sponsorship and Income Generation This action plan is focussed on the practical and influential role Culture Liverpool will play in the city’s next phase of development, as outlined in the Mayoral Vision and Strategic Investment Frameworks (SIFs) and on the responsibilities outlined. As such it is not about many aspects of the city’s culture, for example its sport, its libraries, its leisure facilities, its museums. Nor is it a strategy, although it may well inform future strategy documents. If culture is to play a pivotal role in the city’s progress, Culture Liverpool recognises that it needs to develop and maintain productive partnerships and alignments with and between the cultural organisations and
others, particularly Arts Council England, at a time when public funding for the arts and culture is reducing. Culture Liverpool will produce facilitated workshops with the cultural sector during the second half of the 2013 - 14 year to share visions and strategic priorities, establishing task groups to help lay the foundations for this area of work and aiming to bring about improved alignment, integration and cohesion. Throughout the period 2014 - 18 a series of thinking, consultation, research and development exercises across many areas of culture and with many stakeholders and partners will be developed into a series of strategies for sport, heritage, the arts, festivals, popular culture, digital culture, public space and parks animation, public art, the economics of culture, tourism, the creative industries, skills development and talent retention, culture as a tool to support strategies for engagement and inclusivity, participation, education, employment and health and wellbeing. As these strategies are generated they will be acted upon. It is our intention to have a ‘full deck’ of complementary and cohesive strategies in play by 2018, 10 years on from 2008, which will coalesce to establish a Master Plan for Liverpool Culture for 2018 - 25. These strategies will be responsive to any changes that affect the environment in which culture operates. Local Authority and Government Departmental changes and mergers will, for example, be one area in which Culture Liverpool will remain cognisant.
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