Including Culture In Development: A step-by-step guide

By Urban Land Institute .

This how-to guide will help you improve the creation and integration of quality public art and cultural infrastructure within urban development. The publication outlines six steps that can be taken to achieve high quality results and includes real-life examples and interviews.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Urban Land Institute
• Release date: Oct 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780874204407

Book preview

Introduction

1. What does this guide do?

Aimed at developers, this guidance provides support with the process of identifying and agreeing the right cultural opportunity for a development site, from public art to cultural infrastructure.

Including culture within development has often been understood as starting with a list of cultural possibilities and forcing one of them to fit the development. This guide presents six steps that will achieve far richer results, backed up by case studies learning from diverse developments.

It complements and can be read alongside other detailed guidance already available about public art and cultural infrastructure.¹

2. Why does culture enrich development?

Culture takes many forms, including dance, film, exhibitions, festivals, street art, theatre, digital manufacture, historic sites and more. Culture is about people, and it can engage them in all kinds of development.

Whether the goal is to involve existing communities in neighbourhood regeneration or to draw audiences to new cultural infrastructure, such as studios and workshops where culture is ‘produced’, or galleries, parks or theatres where it is ‘consumed’, this engagement through culture is good not only for investors and developers, and their design and marketing teams, but also for local communities, planning authorities, people working in creative industries and the artists and cultural professionals who will help bring the development to life.

As well as providing new spaces, developments can also protect existing cultural infrastructure. Both are essential to ensure London remains the global capital for arts and culture, the ambition set out the Mayor of London’s Cultural Infrastructure Plan.

1, see Further Resources, p.112

‘Think about the story you want to tell about your development – art can tell that story vividly.’

Rosie Glenn

British Land

3. When should you use this guide?

Having a clear route through the crucial earliest stages of a development – in design terms preceding RIBA Stage1 – ensures the right people are round the table, and are able to have a more informed, productive dialogue on their priorities, vision and opportunities. This will produce a creative brief that is both achievable and meaningful.

A clear message from the case studies is that the earlier the discussion begins, the more options will be available and the more cost-effectively they can be integrated into a scheme. However, nothing is set in stone – sometimes the concept of a cultural opportunity will appear later in a development, or change to reflect changing circumstances – and the steps outlined here can accommodate that too.

Following these six steps throughout the development process will help keep discussion about the vision objective, stakeholders aligned and the cultural engagement ambitious.

4. Who will be involved?

While the developer will be involved throughout, several other people will also work closely with the development at different stages. To unlock the cultural opportunity for a development a partnership of stakeholders should work alongside a creative professional – or ‘cultural collaborator’ – who will help identify the right match in terms of the artist and the project. The diagram to the right identifies at least nine potential people who will sit round the table at various times. These include the investor, architect and planning consultants, communications and branding professionals, the planning authority, local community, the artist, people working in creative industries and cultural professionals. These other stakeholders will be involved more or less at different stages. It is important everyone understands the whole process for this collaboration to work.

Each stakeholder will make different contributions, described in the table opposite, and each will have different needs and motivations. Acknowledging these differences can be helpful – for instance an investor may want to mitigate risk, a planning authority look for a positive impact on the wider neighbourhood, an artist might seek to raise challenges and questions – but more important is for stakeholders to think of themselves from the outset as a partnership, finding shared aims for the development and agreeing the cultural objectives to achieve these. This partnership, not any one individual, will be the cultural commissioner, agreeing the vision and goals that underlie and drive the cultural opportunity for the development.

The steps described are essential for all of the stakeholders. For the developer, investor and community this route provides a constructive and productive way in which to engage with artists and cultural providers; for the curator and artist it will ensure a well-thought through commission, with a client who will be open to challenging and even provocative ideas.

Stakeholders’ Roles

What to bring and what to gain by sitting at the table together:

5. How does the guide work?

Part I shows, in six steps, how understanding the needs and objectives of all the stakeholders will lead to successfully identifying and defining the right cultural opportunity: the right solution will come naturally from these shared goals. This is illustrated with evidence, starting with Ten Top Tips from the personal experience of some of the interviewees.

Part II