Cakes and ale: the role of culture in the new municipalism

ABSTRACT

The rise of ‘new municipalism’ – imaginative and renascent projects of local organization and government – has been occasioned by resourceful efforts on the part of local states and civil societies, responding to the intensified pressures of austerity, the global pandemic and a crisis of public value. Yet, despite the expansion internationally of an array of municipal initiatives, there appears (as yet) no significant role for culture and the cultural industries, and certainly this is the case in the UK. This review article suggests some possible reasons why UK municipalism might lack something of a cultural contribution or presence, before outlining the potential benefits that could be gained through development of both a “pragmatic” and “managed” – as well as more “radical” – integration of arts and culture into new municipal projects.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural industries
• cultural policy
• new municipalism
• UK
• local authorities
• austerity

Introduction

“Municipal radicalism is back”, argues Matthew Thompson in a recent paper on local government (2023, 2), an argument as applicable in the UK as it is in some parts of Europe, the US and Latin America (Russell, 2019; Sutton, 2019). At a time of multiplying crises and after more than a decade of punishing austerity, local government seems an unlikely place to look for a fightback against political and economic orthodoxy. But, as Thompson argues, it is in response to the very hollowing-out of the state under neoliberalism that cities from Barcelona to Preston, Zagreb to Jackson, have been forced to experiment with new forms of statecraft, modes of governance, and ways of sustaining a local economy and society.

What is striking about these experiments is the relative absence of that once much-lauded driver of local development, the cultural (or “creative”) industries. While the early decades of the century saw local governments often turning to the cultural industries as a way out of economic and social decline (Oakley & O’Connor, 2015), the cultural sector is somewhere between peripheral and non-existent in the majority of municipalist experiments, be these in the UK or elsewhere. We also note that culture is largely absent from the new and emerging range of theoretical approaches that have expounded on the vital economic capacities of localities (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018; Hansen, 2022; Janoo et al., 2021; Raworth, 2018; Schafran et al., 2020; Sutton, 2019; World Health Organisation, 2021).

In contrast, the last wave of radical municipalism in the UK in the 1980s, saw cities such as London, Sheffield and Manchester seize not only the economic prospects of culture but also what they saw as its radical potential (Beveridge & Cochrane, 2023). Culture was very much at the centre of a policy imaginary that sought to revitalize the powers and capacities of local people. As Hatherley (2020, p. 23) wrote, the 1980s Greater London Council (GLC), “a social democratic Paris Commune”, was unimaginable without its cultural policies, alliances and supporters.

Such an absence is especially puzzling given that the municipal turn would appear – on the face of it – quite congenial to the revitalization of the local cultural economy and cultural production. The strong emphasis on community participation and contribution, the drive to foreground and celebrate local distinctiveness, and the desire to not simply transform the functions of local government, but foundationally reinvent the forms through which people are able to give voice to their needs and desires, would seem to lend itself to expression and cultivation through different cultural means.

This review article has two aims. First, to consider why culture and the cultural industries appear marginal to, or even absent from, many of the new municipalist frameworks and, second, to suggest how culture and the cultural industries sector could positively contribute to some of these developing approaches. While there are a number of well-rehearsed problems in hitching culture unproblematically to a local development framework, at the same time, we believe there is a place for culture (and indeed cultural policy) in the municipalists’ re-thinking of the relationship between the local state, communities, and economic life.

We approached this article by looking first at the corpus of literature on new municipalism in general, and then at specific cases of its deployment in the policies of UK localities. Thompson may be right to state that interest in new municipalism is growing, but this is still far from the norm in the UK context, and through our focussed search of local authority websites and local development initiatives, we were able to identify quite quickly the handful of places where ideas of new municipalism are being enacted. We were also interested in exploring how these ideas might relate to what we might call “post-creative economy cultural policy” with its nascent focus on advancing the new, alternative and local economic organization of culture (see O’Connor, 2024). Yet, with relatively little evidence of such tie-ups, we are, of necessity, discussing an absence but one which we think is fruitful for understanding what has happened to culture at local authority level and where it might go in future.

The focus of this article is on the UK. That is where our primary expertise lies, but it is also to avoid generalizing about local government. Although new municipalist experiments are global, the role, funding, remit and agency of local government varies quite widely. As one of Europe's most politically centralized countries, the particular limitations and challenges of UK local government shape this distinctive – though we hope also illuminating – national case.

Reinventing the local economy – the new municipalism

That we live at a time of multiplying crises – social, economic, environmental – is not in doubt and global events such as the financial crisis of 2008, the Covid pandemic and unfolding ecological disaster serve only to make this clearer. While individual crises do not necessarily produce system-level change, the persistent growth of inequality and the failure of our current economic model to ensure good lives for most citizens has seen the rise of alternative, or “heterodox”, economic models. These take a variety of forms, well-being economy, doughnut economics, foundational economy, degrowth economy inter alia (Hansen, 2022; Janoo et al., 2021; Raworth, 2018), but tend to be characterized by the focus on human wellbeing rather than GDP growth as a measure of progress and awareness of the need to live within planetary resource constraints, a challenge that grows ever more difficult as climate change intensifies.

At the same time, the persistence and deepening of inequalities within nation-states, as well as between them, has led to a renewed focus on the local within policy discourse. While regional inequalities have deepened in most developed economies since the 1980s, successive UK governments have created particular problems, as a result of the extremely rapid deindustrialization of the Thatcher era, being followed by a growth in finance and business services that benefitted urban rather than rural economies, and London and the South East of England most of all (McCann, 2020). Successive governments have committed to deal with these issues, the current UK government's “Levelling Up” policies are just the latest incarnation, but most of these attempts have failed and it is, in part, frustration with central government that has led to the revival of municipal approaches.

While many heterodox models of the economy remain somewhat abstract and untested on the ground, they have also begun to influence what has been labelled the “New Municipalism”. This term has become widely used to describe the diverse array of measures being adopted by local governments and non-state actors in attempting to rebuild local democracy, economy and civil society (CLES, 2019; Featherstone et al., 2020; Russell, 2019; Sareen & Waagsaether, 2023; Thompson, 2021). In the UK, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) – an independent think tank at the forefront of advocacy and research on new municipalist strategy – provides us with this handy definition:

New Municipalism refers to a new politics which has emerged from local activism and citizens’ movements. It is concerned with taking back power and, to varying degrees, using the levers of the local state to advance the cause of social and economic justice for all. From Preston and Barcelona to Naples and Jackson, USA, the last decade has seen a reimagining of how we can make towns and cities, and their economies, work for local people and communities. (CLES, 2019, p. 1)

While there are many varieties of municipalism, several of them share a commitment to using or partnering with the local state to help achieve specific strategic ends. For many local councils and governments, such approaches have arisen directly and pragmatically in response to austerity, neoliberal governance and (often) the diminution of local political powers. New ways have been sought to preserve or enhance the institutional structures that can support local economies and help deliver various kinds of public goods and services. Regardless of their specific orientation to the local state, what municipalist approaches do tend to share is belief in the need to “re-empower localities” and to more greatly “involve people in decision making about their lives” (Featherstone et al., 2020, p. 7) – whether in the routine provision of local services, or more abstractly in the forging of a shared “politics of the common” (Russell et al., 2023, p. 2133). The municipalist turn has taken root internationally in many towns and cities because it is at the local level at which many of the impacts of crises and particularly the impacts of neoliberal austerity have been most keenly felt. The global financial crisis which pushed many citizens into poverty and deepened insecurity led to the rise of what are sometimes called “left populist” movements, such as those seen in Spain, some of which, notably in Barcelona and Madrid, went on to take power at local authority level (Fernandez-Martinez et al., 2023; Thompson, 2021). In these and other cases, cities have attempted to re-organize local economic development and local democracy, often around features such as citizen platforms, co-operatives, and local purchasing, often under the banner of “community wealth-building” (Manley & Whyman, 2021; Russell et al., 2023).

So numerous and varied are these approaches that much recent work on the topic is an attempt to categorize the different types of new municipalism (Arpini et al., 2023; Sareen & Waagsaether, 2023). Thompson (2021) provides one such categorization, distinguishing between what he calls “platform municipalism”, “autonomist municipalism” and “managed municipalism”. Platform municipalism is identified as a sort of leftist version of the “smart city” where digital technology and data is used to reshape transport, labour mobility or public space in ways that stress public good rather than corporate power. Such approaches draw inspiration from other attempts to democratize and socially re-embed technology, such as platform co-operatives, for example. Autonomist municipalism is the boldest attempt to deliver an alternative politics of the common, often seeking to move away from state control via the development of new political forums such as citizens assemblies or alternative economic systems based on local currencies, time banks and co-operatives – with Rojava and Jackson (Mississippi) suggested as exemplary cases. As Thompson says of Cooperation Jackson (the name of the collective organization leading change) the overall aim is to socialize the means of production and democratize society simultaneously.

New municipalism in the UK

It is when we move to examine UK examples that we largely encounter what Thompson dubs “managed municipalism”. Here the emphasis is on reinventing local economies for the common good, but the political goals are somewhat more modest; delivering services, improving living standards and reducing inequalities is the ambition rather than, say, the wholesale reinvention of the state. As Thompson argues, UK strains of new municipalism tend to emerge from existing political structures – councils and councillors rather than, say, community activists, as was the case in Jackson, Barcelona or Madrid. In addition, compared with the UK's more radical municipal interventions of the past – Red Clydeside, say, in early twentieth-century Glasgow, or the Greater London Council in the 1980s, the current crop of mainly centre-Left or centrist local administrations favour incremental institutional reforms, based on organizational and social innovation, rather than more radical transformations such as taking private assets into public ownership, or constituting citizens’ assemblies.

The relative modesty of new UK municipalism may result from pragmatism or timidity depending on your point of view, but it perhaps also reflects the geographical context and locations of these new initiatives and the very particular weakness of UK local government. Many of these experiments have been led by places outside the big cities, in larger towns and smaller provincial cities – in Preston, Stevenage, and North Ayrshire rather than say, London or Manchester – though London boroughs such as Lambeth have also been involved, and Manchester is expanding its own initiative (CLES, 2023). Unlike the catastrophic Euro crisis that spurred activity in some Spanish cities, the UK context has been one of grinding, long-term austerity with around a 40% reduction in central government funding to local authorities between 2010 and 2020, cuts that were deepest in the most deprived areas of the country (Atkins & Hodinott, 2022). The UK also permits less revenue raising at the local level¹ than almost any other European country and is one of the most centrally controlled, with the central government in charge of around 95% of tax revenues and 75% of public spending. Local authorities – unlike central government – are not allowed to borrow to finance day-to-day spending. Astonishingly, local government now employs fewer people than at any time since 1963, with funding, expertise and personnel increasingly concentrated in London (Labour Party, 2022).

Since 2010, the relatively modest attempts of the last Labour government (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2015) to rebalance the UK economy have been largely dismantled. What was once called Regional Development Agencies across the English regions were replaced with Local Enterprise Partnerships with considerably fewer funds and less political clout. Various underpowered regional initiatives such as “The Northern Powerhouse” or the “Midlands Engine” have waxed and waned and attempts to improve regional transport appear largely to have failed. Competitive allocation of funds from central government to local government tends to favour areas that already have the capacity to bid for such funds, and hence reproduces inequalities (Durrer et al., 2023). There have been attempts to boost local democracy through the creation of new “Metro Mayors” – directly elected leaders of combined local authorities. This has met with some success, but the overall approach has been piecemeal and unable to keep up with, let alone reverse, the pressures of austerity. Large numbers of local authorities are now struggling to provide the most basic services and there are an increasing number of technical “bankruptcies” being declared. In September 2023, the city of Birmingham – the largest municipal authority in Europe – issued such a declaration. Small wonder that the system of local authority funding is now – according to the Chair of the UK Local Government Association – fundamentally “broken” (Boakye, 2023).

Faced with growing social needs and shrinking revenues, UK cities and towns have been forced to adopt a variety of different strategies to raise funds. Some, with large amounts of council-owned land or property, particularly in high-value areas such as London boroughs or major city centres, have followed what is sometimes called a “municipal financialization strategy” (Barnett et al., 2022; Hatherley, 2020; Russell et al., 2022). This mainly involves selling off council-owned land to private developers. While justifying such sales or leasing agreements as ways to raise much-needed revenue, the problems are obvious – land once sold cannot be used for council housing or other municipal buildings and the role and sway of private development over public needs remains unchecked. Some of the results of this approach for the UKs grassroots cultural infrastructure have been dire, as we will discuss below.

Despite the pressures and constraints, however, some UK local authorities have been creatively devising new municipalist approaches, the original and best known of which is perhaps the “Preston Model” (Manley & Whyman, 2021). Here, the Labour-controlled council in the city of Preston, Lancashire has led the way in using the power of public procurement to support local firms and co-operatives, with the aim of keeping wealth circulating locally. Over the last decade, its strategy of community wealth-building has included supporting ten new worker co-operatives, co-operative housing, a community land trust, a regional bank and a policy of “insourcing” local services and paying living wages to employees. It has used its anchor institutions – such as the Council itself, the University of Central Lancashire, and local police and housing associations – to increase and direct local spending in what is widely seen as one of the most comprehensive attempts to use the local state in this way. In expanding its focus to consider wider environmental concerns, Community Energy Preston and the Brookfield Retrofit Co-operative are now partners in the city's new “net zero” strategy. Outside of Preston, other, less well-known examples of the municipal initiative include Stevenage which has developed a “Social Value Measure” to monitor the effectiveness of local procurement and works with its local University – in this case, Hertfordshire – to expand the local procurement base (Brookes et al., 2021). Inspired by Preston, North Ayrshire Council in Scotland has focussed its community wealth-building efforts on local economic development in partnership with key anchors such as NHS Ayrshire and Arran, and Ayrshire College. Alternatively, and somewhat larger in size, the city of Plymouth in the South West of England has focused its efforts on building up the co-operative and social enterprise sector rather than using local government as the principal vehicle – a strategy also favoured by inner London authorities such as Lambeth or Islington. In addition to their other benefits, co-ops, with their emphasis on worker voice and participation help develop democratic structures and practices to a greater degree than either market-based or public ownership models may do. The overall picture, then, while still small is one of both expansion and diversity, with the CLES website now identifying some kind of new municipal innovation in over a dozen locations, in towns as different as Luton and Lewes, and regions as far apart as Sussex and the West of Scotland.

Compared to its role in previous waves of locally led economic development, however, culture remains relatively marginal. A recent report (Whyman et al., 2023) looked at the potential of the Preston model to support “creative industries” development in Lancashire (further discussion of this is below). The study looked at a somewhat wider category than the cultural sector with which we are concerned, as evidenced by the fact that IT services and “advertizing and marketing” made up 54% of the creative industries and the “cultural sector” itself was described as “under-represented” in the area. Nonetheless, most of the creative industries organizations surveyed for the study had never heard of the Preston model and were unaware of any distinctiveness of the approach taken. That is not to say there are no links; Preston has established connections with the Harris Museum and the Preston Digital Foundation to name but two. But we note that, crucially, to date, none of the new UK approaches to municipalism focus explicitly on the use or delivery of culture or provision of cultural services, and much less on the way in which cultural or creative industries might play any significant role in “wealth building” or addressing social or democratic deficits. So why exactly is culture not part of the new municipal vision in the UK?

No place for culture?

Perhaps, the absence of culture in the UK municipalism first reflects something of its wider peripherality in other “actually existing municipalisms”. For example, Cumbers and Paul (2020) outline a range of international locations where resurgent local strategies have been in evidence and identify some of the key sectors where municipalist action has been effected, including in “water, energy, waste, local government, transport, education, and health and social service” (2020, p. 45) – but not in culture. More recently, Roth et al. (2023, p. 2020) provide a summary of the foundational necessities for “living well” that ought to be the focus of municipalist strategies – with (again) no mention made of the arts, culture or cultural industries.

Some of this absence is of course part of the general difficulty of recognizing and integrating “culture” as a local policy priority. Not only has culture usually been something of a minor concern, but it has also suffered from an innate slipperiness or imprecision of meaning, as well as uncertain advocacy, often affecting its usefulness as a delivery output for local administrations. As O’Connor (2024) has noted, the absence of culture from some of the more newly-minted local and “foundational” economic agendas reflects something of culture's historically ambivalent status as an object for organizing any kind of development policy approach – partly rooted in established anxieties about how to ascribe value to culture's mysterious intangibility while also measuring its more concrete effects. This is, of course, before we get to the much thornier question of what – or whose – culture might be regarded as amenable to (or in need of) some kind of useful policy intervention.

In addition, a brute fact is a hugely significant reduction in local authority funding from the central government, which has strongly hit funding for arts and culture since the global financial crisis. The austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-Liberal coalition government from 2010, and continued under successive Conservative administrations, have seen arts funding steadily and substantially decline. While establishing precise figures is difficult, estimates have variously suggested around a 43% decline in local authority arts and culture funding since the start of the global financial crisis (National Campaign for the Arts, 2020), with the National Audit Office more recently suggesting a 41.6% decline in spending on culture and related services between 2010 and 2020 (National Audit Office, 2021). Despite a brief upturn in spending during the pandemic, there are now further real terms cuts of around £60m being estimated for local cultural services in 2023–2024 (Puffet, 2023). While the effects of austerity have been by no means uniform or evenly distributed, and some local authorities have been able to maintain or even increase culture funding (Rex & Campbell, 2022), the general picture is one of a slow (or occasionally dramatic) withdrawal of foundational financial support for local cultural institutions, activities and services. Simultaneously, as a further consequence of austerity, there has been an estimated 40% reduction of jobs within local authorities (Cooke, 2022) including a huge number and range of positions dedicated to supporting and develop arts and culture, further ensuring that cultural concerns will inevitably obtain less purchase in strategic discussions of local development, including any emergent municipal strategy.

Culture is a non-statutory service at the local authority level in the UK. Apart from offering some form of library service, UK local authorities have no legal obligation to provide any specific cultural provision. It is therefore understandable that hard-pressed local councils have looked to limit or offload the costs of many of their discretionary cultural services. There are several ways in which local authorities have sought to address the problem of providing cultural services – ranging from simple closure to offering partial service reductions or job cuts, to expanding the use of outsourcing or commercial tendering, to utilizing the process of Community Asset Transfer (CAT). Here, the community is encouraged to take over the running of cultural “assets” – such as museums, community centres, arts centres and leisure facilities – either solely, or with partial financial support. While this, in principle, sounds like a progressive example of municipalism in action, and can indeed have some positive outcomes (Turnbull, 2023), it is also a process fraught with difficulties and inequalities. One of these is the danger of local authorities opportunistically “dumping” some costly or difficult-to-run assets on community groups. Even if the asset is viable, problems might be presented in terms of maintaining quality, guaranteeing a stable income or resource availability, and establishing a community management capacity. As Rex (2020) has noted, the CAT process has been less about “community ownership” and more about the emergence of leasing arrangements whereby cultural assets are run by charities or social enterprises. These are frequently operating under conditions of limited capacity or severe financial constraint and are weakly supported by diminished local authority culture departments. The potential for further involvement of “the community” in cultural service provision remains somewhat underdeveloped and uncertain.

Severe funding cuts and the ambivalent position of culture as a local authority service are general and longstanding problems for UK cultural provision, and while they form the backdrop for any new municipal strategy, they do not fully explain why what Thompson and other commentators see as a new radicalism, has no room for culture. Some practical clues may be gleaned from a recent report into the Preston model and Lancashire's creative industries (Whyman et al., 2023). While the report's authors endorse the idea of using local authority procurement as a way of supporting the wider creative industries sector, they also recognize that the role of “anchor institutions” is perhaps more complicated than in other parts of the economy. While many larger theatres, museums, galleries, art centres and the like are already long established as locally and regionally important cultural institutions and recognized as vital for the provision of different social and community functions (see, e.g. Bartley, 2021; Morse, 2021; Nicholson et al., 2022) they also often lack the resources, or procurement power to make a significant difference. In addition, the nature of the cultural sector, heavily weighted towards microbusinesses, particularly in a small and dispersed economy like that of Lancashire, means that most arts organizations are unable to take advantage of local authority procurement policies, even when they are geographically focused. Indeed, the Lancashire example suggests that the ecosystem of small arts organizations, with its strong reliance on reputation and personal relationships, finds open tendering processes more difficult to adapt to than businesses in other sectors (Whyman et al., 2023). Thus, while Whyman et al argue that a Preston-model type approach could boost local cultural organizations, this would not happen without other supporting policy measures.

Established and exacerbated problems of staff retention, poor pay and declining working conditions also serve to undermine the efforts of arts and cultural organizations to act in ways that support any municipal initiative. The exception here perhaps is universities – most of which are (relatively) financially stable, and resource-rich, and do indeed often act as direct funders of supporters of local arts and culture – but which tend also to act more prominently across a range of other sectors and have many different and contradictory local “effects”; not all of them conducive to community or cultural development (James, 2018; McNeill, 2023).

We would also argue that, under austerity, there has been the decline of many of the embedded ecosystems that have traditionally supported local cultural production systems and arts and cultural activity, and that might otherwise support a new municipalist strategy. While successive central UK governments have focussed on promoting the more glamorous and (supposedly) lucrative aspects of the commercial “creative economy” – mainly the global market for digital technology, AI, screen and other virtual experience industries – they have presided over the managed decline of the actual public infrastructures necessary for sustaining diverse ecosystems of local cultural industries production. Notwithstanding the effects of more recent crises, a long-established combination of political centralization, austerity, unfettered real estate development, commercially driven “cultural regeneration”, unsympathetic licencing and planning, lack of affordable housing, and diminishing welfare supports, has almost destroyed the field conditions that first made UK cultural industries both possible and visible as any kind of national (or global) “asset”. Indeed, it was within the UK's diverse geographical patchwork of cities and municipalities – through active combinations of both public and private funding and enterprise – that first emerged what later became rendered more ideologically as the “creative industries” (Banks & O’Connor, 2017). In destroying these generative conditions, the UK creative economy has effectively consumed its own tail.

Today, the UK creative economy has “matured” into an essentially London-centric, tech-driven phenomenon, largely devoid of social diversity – supported by some small and highly – specialized pockets of regional activity. At the same time, many regional towns and cities that once had thriving local and independent arts and cultural sectors, sustainably arranged in effective networks of suppliers, producers and consumers, with myriad small and mid-sized venues, community facilities, rehearsal rooms, studios, galleries and youth centres, co-existing within central or centrally-adjacent neighbourhoods of relatively affordable higher education, premises and housing – and all supported by more generous local authority settlements – have now been largely denuded of these most vital elements. Recently, Angela McRobbie et al. (2023) have argued that the capacity for most people to sustainably live and work in the cultural industries is much diminished, since the once more widespread opportunity to do so has been so effectively dismantled by advanced austerity, the general application of a neoliberal governmental rationality, and the effective downplaying of the pernicious and accelerating effects of social and spatial inequality.

Finally, while some faith remains in the idea of culture production as a community value, especially amongst cultural practitioners themselves, among municipal authorities, who might be assumed to make more “public good” choices, the idea that cultural activity is primarily a discretionary spend, rooted in consumerism, and so best left to market providers, has also exerted a strong ideological grip. This belief has underpinned the rise of many “flagship” cultural regeneration developments of UK towns and cities, most of which are of course driven by retail and leisure chains, real estate companies and construction firms, and the creation of privatized “public space” of a uniform and sanitized kind (Oakley & O’Connor, 2015). As we have seen, the current municipal financialization strategy involves selling off public buildings and land, often at discounted and non-commercial rates, since cashing in such assets this is one of the few revenue-raising options now open to local authorities. Manchester is one exemplary case. While always poor and divided, in the twentieth century the city was famously regarded as a crucible of grassroots (and often working class) urban creativity and known for possessing a diverse and organic cultural (especially arts and music) infrastructure. Yet, in the twenty-first century, the local city council has entirely embraced the redevelopment of much of the city centre by commercial property developers to the extent that any meaningful contribution to nurturing the “culture” for which the city was so long renowned has entirely evaporated. What often remains, in terms of cultural provision, is a hollow and commodified pastiche of a once vibrant and organic counterculture – which the council and its partners trade on relentlessly to lever yet more inward investment (Gillespie et al, 2021; Russell, 2020). Yet, while “entrepreneurial” Manchester has “pragmatically” embraced commercial cultural regeneration, many of its public cultural infrastructures such as youth and community services, leisure centres, parks, theatres, small music venues, concert halls, rehearsal rooms, meeting spaces, and affordable small business premises have suffered cuts, been sold off, or else significantly disappeared as a consequence of this “pragmatism” and a decade of centrally imposed austerity.

Certainly, these factors might explain why culture – as we have seen, once at the UK municipal vanguard – has less of a presence in its new and resurgent variant. It's also possible that the mood or enthusiasm amongst cultural workers and communities to become part of the emergent municipalist project might be somewhat less than we would expect. This is not to say many arts and cultural organizations are not committed to community work, or already engaging in community wealth building of different kinds – indeed, austerity and the pandemic drew sharp attention to the ways in which many such organizations were picking up the pieces locally, offsetting the decline or disappearance of many local authority services. The arts have always striven in some respects to do social good – now more than ever, perhaps – but there is also an ambivalence here in the sense that practitioners might not wish to take part in activities of “community” work, “managed municipalism” or initiatives that appear instrumentally-oriented to the provision of some designated “cultural service”. However valuable arts and culture might happen to be for (say) community-building, health and well-being, or the local economy, the core or defining the purpose of arts and culture – variously understood as aesthetic production, symbol-making, or as some kind of creative, autonomous, or world-disclosing expression – can sit somewhat uneasily in the often-instrumentalized conspectus of the local authority development initiative.

In addition, since the late twentieth century and the resurgent optimism of the “creative industries”, many local authority cultural strategies (and indeed arts organizations) have become absorbed by the philosophy of the “creative economy”, which in turn has become an expansively commercial, property and capital-led approach. There is thus some reluctance on the part of cultural workers to locate themselves within the confines of a development-oriented cultural strategy (Boren & Young, 2017; de Peuter et al., 2023; D’Ovidio & Cossu, 2017; Sandoval, 2018). For an increased array of cultural workers and organizations, it is the creative economy mantra that in many cases is identified as part of the prevailing problem of local cultural decline.

Conclusion – new municipal dreams?

By way of conclusion, we want to identify some reasons why culture should – and could – become more central to the UK municipalist project, and, indeed, to wider contexts where a cultural lack might be identified in local government. These are indicative and intended simply as departure points or an agenda for further reflection or action on the role of culture in more “managed” municipal contexts.

Culture and the cultural economy remain vital to localities and – properly nurtured – the source of different local goods and “assets”. The history of culture and the cultural industries shows us that these activities emerge and grow best as part of a rich and locally embedded infrastructure of possibility that relies significantly on municipal investment and public good initiative – the dominant model of creative economy is devastatingly undercutting this possibility, as are swingeing cuts to foundational infrastructures. The political rationality of the present is having the opposite impact on culture and local cultural economy than is claimed by central government; local authorities ought to recognize this and bring culture into the new municipal “mix”.

Opportunity arises as the shrinkage of the UK state is driving local initiative, since under the banner of “freeing” localities to make their own responsible decisions (while undermining their financial capacities to do so) there is at least some devolutionary headwind for new autonomous strategies. The role of combined authorities, Metro Mayors, and the new municipalism more regionally co-ordinated, or aligned, does suggest an emergent potential, one in which the arts and culture might seek refuge within, as well more positively and vitally extend.

The rise of alternative and heterodox economies – often concerned with local “foundations” – cannot afford to overlook the social and economic value of culture. O’Connor (2024) makes a persuasive case for the absorption of culture into the developing conspectus of the Foundational Economy, by identifying not only the important role played by culture economically at different scales and in different “zones” of exchange, but its standing as part of the basic infrastructure of life; a foundational necessity for enabling both common participation and collective liveability, that begins (unlike current UK government policy) with a scheme of definition that recognizes culture as an essential rather than a discretionary component of public policy.

In UK municipalism, research on the role of cultural institutions as local “anchors” suggests that work needs to be done to adapt the model for the cultural sector but that there is potential for larger cultural organizations to become integrated actors within a local network of “service” delivery or civil society activity. There is potential for the generation of reciprocal benefits, for local councils, as well as cultural institutions working under accelerated financial and existential pressure. As Whyman et al suggest, one way to do this might be through the development of a platform co-operative where a collectively owned digital platform could allow (member) creative firms and arts organizations to bid for and undertake relevant work. Combined administrative resources might ease the complexities of the tendering process and there are many examples to learn from. A co-operative model would work within the ethos of new municipalist approaches and allay concerns about platform control.

There are other reasons why culture should not be ignored in the municipal experiment – reasons that take us somewhat beyond the current pragmatism of a “managed” local authority survival. One of the criticisms of UK’s new municipalism is that it might be focussing too inwardly on the priority of expanding the local economy. This carries the potential risk of protectionism in awarding local contracts, while excluding the possible gains to be had by engaging businesses from neighbouring or more distant localities; it also includes the danger of beggaring other equally worthy but non-local suppliers from similarly deprived regions (Thompson, 2021). A corollary criticism here is the possibility of local authorities and organizations fetishizing the innate good of their own locality, or regarding themselves as somehow disconnected from the wider landscapes of crisis and challenge. We would argue a progressive municipalism is one that makes positive connection in and beyond the locality – articulating the diversity and distinctiveness of place, as well as the shared and common experiences that bind all those struggling to sustain and subsist in today's most difficult political and economic climate. The arts and culture – as a prominent voice and potential agent for change – has surely some role to play in countering reaction and the dangers of any insular provincialism, while making the case for trans-local social and economic solidarities and gains; culture, in short, is one of the means through which we might hope to create a more relational and radical municipalism (Featherstone et al., 2020; Thompson, 2021).

Further, when the Covid pandemic forced us back into the “local”, our cultural lives often shrunk into the domestic, aided by widespread digital technology. Enthusiasts for online culture proclaimed a new era of “access” with no one having to leave their living room to encounter the best of global culture, though research suggests that many of these offerings were just super-serving those who were already online enthusiasts, rather than making new converts (Walmsley et al., 2022). Nonetheless, while home-based leisure seems certain to expand, an enhanced focus on local cultural provision is also likely to remain, not least as climate change shrinks peoples’ travel horizons. In such a situation a thriving local offering is what is needed to revitalize town and city centres and offer an opportunity for collective experiences.

And finally, let us not (again) forget the foundational purpose of arts and culture – the desire to offer some aesthetic, symbolic or world-disclosing goods; goods that might not necessarily be fashioned for some instrumental purpose, but created only for the occasioning of the values of (say) experience and wonderment, or joy or pleasure. While, as we’ve seen, municipal thinking can clearly develop without a cultural element, local authorities might do better to help support and develop the cultural potentials, pleasures and desires of the people they are elected to serve. Just as Emma Goldman didn't want to be part of a revolution where she couldn't dance, the local economies of the future surely need some foundation in the arts, culture and ordinary expressive life. And, however austere or responsible government must strive currently to be, we ought not to forget that dispensing with arts and culture, or disregarding their essential value, is not simply to diminish the immediate quality of local life, but to undermine the potential for fomenting the attachments that would give rise to positive municipal feeling and action in the future; short-sighted, we feel, is the authority that denies its communities the earthly pleasures of cakes and ale.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 UK Local Authorities have three main sources of income; central government (a “Revenue Support Grant”), the locally levied Council Tax (a property tax on residencies) and Business Rates (a property tax on business premises).