Coming up - talking HEI and Cultural Compacts

I was recently commissioned to write a thought piece for National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange on the role and potential of universities in Cultural Compacts – and I will be outlining my findings and questions for the development of Compacts at NCACE’s Festival of Cultural Knowledge Exchange, 11 October 2022.

I will be part of the panel, Cultural Compacts, collaboration, knowledge exchange: the role of Higher Education in fostering place-based cultural and artistic ecologies, with Professor David Amigoni (Keele University and Stoke Creates), Rebecca Ball (Chief Executive, Sunderland Culture), Paul Bristow (Arts Council England), Rebecca di Corpo (Bath Spa University and the West of England Cultural Compact) and Professor Katy Shaw (Northumbria University and AHRC Director of Creative Communities).

In 2019, the Arts Council and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) supported the creation of 20 Cultural Compacts. These partnerships, informed by the Cultural Cities Enquiry, were designed to support local cultural sectors and to enhance their contribution to development, with a special emphasis on cross-sector engagement beyond the cultural sector itself and the local authority.

A review of the programme, carried out by BOP consulting in October 2020, explored how the Cultural Compacts were working across different parts of the country, recognising that the Compacts had created opportunities to embed culture across wider partnerships and policy, amongst a number of other key achievements.

The focus of this event will be to explore in greater detail the role of universities in the wider collaborative ecologies that the Compacts have helped bring about. We will explore the distinctive HE experience of working in collaborative, compact-based relationships in case studies where university involvement has been significant.

The festival is a space for fresh considerations and perspectives on cultural knowledge exchange between Higher Education and the Arts and Cultural Sector. It presents a range of timely discussions, workshops, debates and other activities designed to bring together researchers, academics, artists, arts professionals, policy-makers and indeed anyone with an interest in research partnerships, networks, collaborations, and engagements and exchanges of all kinds between universities and the arts.

More information on the Festival can be found here, and on the panel session here.