Post-pandemic culture pledge from Liverpool City Region

A five-year post-pandemic plan has been approved to help rebuild the Liverpool City Region’s creative industry which employs around 24,000 people.

The new initiative, which has the rather lengthy title Liverpool City Region Cultural Compact Strategic Action Plan, recognises the key role that arts and culture play in the city region’s economy and in supporting health and wellbeing.

And it identifies three key priorities for the recovery of the sector, which has been one of the hardest hit as a result of a year of Covid restrictions.

The first, Creative Communities, aims to champion ‘community-led transformation’ and develop assets within communities across the six boroughs Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, Wirral, St Helens and Halton.

Creative People will support creative talent and ‘facilitate artist, practitioner and community led cultural/creative interventions within city region cultural programmes.’

And finally, Creative Places will prioritise the influence and role of arts and culture in the regeneration and recovery of the area.

A report presented to, and approved by, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority today said: “Liverpool City Region’s decision, uniquely, to feature culture in its devolution deal, continues to drive ambition and opportunity for the arts, culture and creative industries across the city region.

“Culture has contributed massively to the wellbeing of the city region and its people – if it is to remain the critical and vital part of the city region’s economic and social infrastructure that it has become, the sector will need re-invention and reinvestment.”

One percent - £300,000 – of the Combined Authority’s annual £30m budget is already pledged to the region’s culture sector each year.

The body is also behind the ongoing Borough of Culture programme, as well as the LCR Music Support Fund and a Film Development Fund – launched during the pandemic.

Phil Redmond, co-chairman of the LCR Cultural Partnership, said: “As we look to a post-pandemic future and reboot our culture, there will inevitably be challenges ahead, just as there always has been, but there is also a new horizon in an accelerating, digital, post-Covid world.

“This plan lays down a new road map for the next stage of cultural development as we remind people that Liverpool City Region has been, is and will continue to provide the UK’s second city of culture.”