Sustainable Communities agenda

Working in partnership, local authorities, developers and communities are best placed to manage and bring forward local cultural and sporting developments to meet local priorities identified through spatial planning. To be effective this partnership needs to:

• Match aspirations of the local vision
• Deliver development plans, meeting identified needs
• Maintain and improve existing facilities and services
• Provide high quality, mixed use facilities for communities, and
• Involve the community in planning for culture and sport.

Developers and communities can get the most out of proposed culture and sport schemes by identifying opportunities enabled through local planning policies and delivering high quality outputs.

Strategic and large-scale developments are essential to attracting growth and investment and can enable the delivery of high quality culture and sport schemes.

In particular, Government initiatives, such as growth areas, growth points and eco-towns, are important developments that form part of the government’s sustainable communities agenda for growth and regeneration. Developments within these initiatives, including eco-towns – new settlements of at least 5.000 new homes – provide an opportunity for each sector to play to its strength in a co-ordinated way. See living places in Action Eco-towns.

The emerging work of I&DeA in ‘Towards a Commissioning Framework for Culture and Sport’ will be useful for practitioners in delivering the kind and quality of strategically important facilities and services that will support current and developing communities.

Capturing the Value of Culture and Sport

Culture and sport provision such as green spaces for play and leisure, well-designed and purposeful buildings and places for cultural gatherings and artistic displays, can contribute significant ‘value’ to the quality of life. Although the different types of value can or cannot be measurable in financial terms, the added value will be evident in the enhanced physical quality and distinctiveness of the built environment, increased well-being of communities and the prosperity of the wider economy, as well as financial success of investment value in property.

A number of research projects from DCMS and its agencies into benefits from large-scale regeneration and small-scale building projects highlight the case for embedding culture and sport in all levels of public policy and local development.

You can find examples of culture and sport development projects in the Project Case Studies section of the toolkit.

Links to further guidance and advice

Arts Council England, The power of art, visual arts: evidence of impact, regeneration, health, education and learning, ACE, 2006
CABE, Start with the park, CABE, 2005
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Culture at the Heart of Regeneration, DCMS, 2004
Evans, G. and Shaw, P., The contribution of culture to regeneration in the UK: a review of evidence, DCMS, 2004
Sport England, Sport playing its part, Sport England, 2005
English Heritage, The Heritage Dividend