A post on Sussex devolution and equally, any place going through this process...

I am part of the Sussex Futures Network, a cohort of county people engaged in talking and thinking widely on our devolution, brought together by Richard Freeman of Always Possible, and under the banner of Sussex and The City.

We know that Sussex devolution is not just a governance reshuffle, but if its to be that meaningful transfer of power that its billed to be, then we need to be thinking about who we are.

Devolution is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink how decisions are made, who they are made with, and what public value actually means across the county (and country) - from coastal towns and rural communities to our big and small towns and cities and growth corridors.

What matters now is how this transition is shaped.

Because devolution can easily become an exercise in structural change without cultural change: new committees, new language, new boundaries, but the same old patterns of uneven investment, patchy engagement, and people feeling that change is something done to them, not with them.

From my work with arts and cultural organisations, local authorities, and communities of place, I’ve seen how powerful culture can be when it is treated as civic infrastructure.

Culture is one of the few mechanisms we have that can hold complexity: identity, belonging, local pride, migration, inequality, memory, and future aspiration - all at once. And it can do this in ways that policy language often can’t.

If Sussex devolution is to deliver genuinely inclusive and sustainable outcomes, it needs to build frameworks that recognise lived experience as evidence, community voice as expertise, and cultural practice as a legitimate tool for shaping policy priorities and investment decisions. And – perhaps counter-intuitively – we need to not think in terms of where we are from, but what we have in common. To think of ourselves across Sussex as each other’s neighbours, yes; but also as communities of interest and communities of impact (and click on through for what I mean on that.)

I’m really pleased to be part of this conversation – thank you, as ever, Richard - and grateful to everyone pushing it beyond the technical and into the human realities of place.

Read my article for Sussex and The City here, and Richard’s thoughts in the posting of this article here.