Neighbourhood arts spaces in place: cultural infrastructure and participation on the outskirts of the creative city

ABSTRACT

Set in the context of tensions between ‘community development’ and ‘creative cities’ policy agendas, which often implicitly privilege large-scale city-centre cultural assets, this paper discusses cultural policy and arts provision in three neighbourhoods in the city of Leeds, UK. It uses findings from a pilot research project centred on three small cultural organisations based in neighbourhoods in Leeds’ ‘outer inner city’. Each venue works in and with its neighbourhood in distinct ways and has a different vision of the contribution that they can and should make to their locales and to the city as a whole. The paper works with research on these organisations to explore the tensions around the ambition and reach of small venues in the light of this policy context, and the scale of the neighbourhood in cultural policy. We argue that city-scale policy-making risks missing local particularities and erasing the role and contribution of small and geographically peripheral initiatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts venues
• participation
• neighbourhoods
• audiences

Acknowledgements

Thanks first of all to all the participants in the research for the Donut Pilot Project. The research team for the Donut Pilot Project comprised, along with the authors: Keziah Berelson, Lee Dalley, Alex Miller, Emma McDowell, Anahi Ravagnani, Sarah Reynolds, Zac Taylor and Ben Walmsley. Special thanks to Emma McDowell for making the maps. Paul Norman helped us make sense of the Index of Multiple Deprivation data. And thanks to Oliver Bennett and two referees for helpful comments on a previous draft of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Organisations that belonged to the Donut Group in June 2019 were: Chapel FM, The Holbeck, Left Bank Leeds, The Constitutional, Sunny Bank Mills, Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds West Indian Centre, Union 105, Interplay, Garforth Arts Academy, HEART, Otley Courthouse, The Carriageworks and Love Pudsey.

2. For definitions of the Mosaic groups and more details, see https://observatory.leeds.gov.uk/customer-insight/ward-segmentation/.

Additional information

Funding

The Donut Pilot Project was funded by Leeds City Council and the University of Leeds.

Notes on contributors

David Bell

David Bell is Professor of Cultural Geography and a member of the Centre for Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. With Kate Oakley he is currently working on a second edition of Cultural Policy (Routledge 2015), and writing a book about practices of eating together.

Lourdes Orozco

Lourdes Orozco is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies in the Workshop Theatre in the School of English, University of Leeds, UK. She has published research on cultural policy and national identity in Spain and Catalonia, as well as on other aspects of cultural policy such as funding, culture-led regeneration and venue management. She is the author of Teatro y Política en Barcelona: 1980–2000 (ADE-Madrid, 2007).