Learning through Create Place

One of the persistent challenges in the cultural sector is this: we generate a huge amount of learning, but too often it doesn’t travel. It stays held within programmes, organisations, or individuals, rather than being shared, tested, and built on.

I spent time this week with the current Create Place cohort, facilitating an evaluation day designed to do something slightly different: create the conditions for that learning to surface, be articulated, and be collectively shaped.

Working in small, conversational groups, we explored the programme through three key lenses: participants’ experience of the programme so far, the value and application in their current practice, and their ideas and ambitions for what the programme could become next.

What emerged wasn’t just feedback on delivery, but something more valuable -- participant-led insight into how creative placemaking support actually lands in practice. Where it builds confidence, where it creates friction, and where it opens up new ways of working that extend well beyond the programme itself.

This is where learning and communication intersect in powerful ways. Evaluation isn’t just about accountability, it’s about how we capture, translate, and share knowledge in ways that others can use.

A few reflections I’m sitting with:
– The importance of creating the right conditions for honest, peer-led dialogue
– How evaluation can surface latent impact, the things programmes don’t always set out to do, but which matter deeply
– The need to actively design for how learning is communicated, not just generated

As the sector continues to navigate complexity - social, environmental, economic - it feels increasingly important that our approaches to learning are as intentional as our approaches to delivery.

Programmes like Create Place remind me that learning isn’t a byproduct. It’s a core output and a shared responsibility.