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Neighbourhood renewal: the contribution of arts and culture

(Draft - not to be quoted without the author’s permission)

Ron Griffiths
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK

Address:		Faculty of the Built Environment UWE Frenchay Bristol BS16 1QY UK
Tel:		(+)117 344 3067
Fax:		(+)117 344 3002
Email:		Ron.Griffiths@uwe.ac.uk

Paper presented at the Danish Building and Urban Research/European Urban Research Association conference "Area-based initiatives in contemporary urban policy", Copenhagen, 17-19 May 2001.

1. Introduction

During the course of the last two decades, the cultural sector has become ever more closely implicated in processes of urban transformation, and many commentators have pointed to the subtle and complex interplay between regeneration strategies, cultural policies and cultural projects (Bassett 1993; Bianchini and Parkinson 1993; Griffiths 1993; Landry et al 1996).

Since the 1980s, policies for urban regeneration in the UK have undergone a significant change of emphasis. The priority attached to inward investment and business leadership in the 1980s and early 1990s has been superseded by a new preoccupation with social regeneration and neighbourhood renewal. This reorientation in the field of urban policy has been paralleled by changes in the way culture has been employed at the urban level.

The main aim of this paper is to consider the role that the arts and culture can play in neighbourhood regeneration. In the next section, a brief overview is given of the evolution of UK urban policy and its relationship to developments in the cultural sector. That is followed by a review of recent thinking about the role of arts and culture in social regeneration and neighbourhood renewal. Finally, some evidence is presented on the way the arts and culture have been incorporated in the most recent phase of area-based regeneration initiatives in Bristol.

2. Arts, culture and the urban policy cycle

Urban policy in the UK was initiated in the 1960s, in a context of mounting fears in some quarters about the prospects of escalating social unrest in the so-called "inner city" areas, especially those with relatively high proportions of ethnic minority residents. Over the 20 year period of its life, the Urban Programme underwent various refinements and changes of emphasis, but with a continuing focus on enhancing social integration, improving co-ordination between central government and local authority departments, and mobilising community self-help. The framing of the problem at that time drew strongly on notions of multiple deprivation and spatial concentrations of social disadvantage.

During that first major phase of urban policy, there was little explicit attention given to the role which cultural activity and cultural provision might play in addressing urban problems. The concern of policy makers to bring about closer co-ordination between the fields of education, social services, policing, housing and physical planning did not extend to the field of culture and the arts. A number of the community development projects funded under the Urban Programme had begun to form insights into the significance of cultural processes in the reproduction of social disadvantage, and a lively "community arts" movement had come into existence in some parts of the country, linking community workers with socially committed artists (see Kelly 1984). However, the arts remained marginal to the mainstream policy agenda. This was hardly surprising, given the history of detachment of cultural policy from broader economic and social concerns. During the thirty year period of the post-war social democratic consensus, the policy of the national state in the cultural field had revolved around two basic principles: safeguarding a (unified and hierarchically ordered) national culture; and maintaining standards of artistic excellence. At the municipal level, the arts were generally seen as a relatively minor service, concerned mainly with providing access to a cultural heritage whose social and ideological content was largely unchallenged, and thus of little strategic or political significance (Mulgan and Worpole 1986; Bassett 1993).

In the 1980s, urban policy went through another stage in the cycle, as the social democratic orthodoxies of the earlier phase were displaced by the neo-liberal worldview which came to prominence after the election of the Conservative government in 1979. In this new political and ideological context, the focus of urban policy was redirected away from social welfare issues towards economic priorities and strengthening the apparatus of social control in cities. The new watchwords were deregulation, attracting inward investment, and imbuing public policy with the principles (and the personnel) of the business world. These themes translated, at the urban level, into a stronger emphasis on property-led initiatives and place marketing; the strategic use of public investment to attract private capital; and a reduction in the role of local authorities and elective democracy in favour of government-appointed quangoes (Atkinson and Moon 1994; Oatley 1999). Underpinning the government’s actions in the urban arena was a legitimating rhetoric which held that the economic benefits would "trickle down" to the poor. The retreat from welfare provision was also justified by mobilising a distinction between the "deserving poor" and the morally deficient "underclass"(Cameron and Davoudi 1998).

In contrast to the first two decades of urban policy, the dominant themes of urban policy in the 1980s were also reflected in the cultural policies adopted in many cities. Throughout the UK, and in Europe more widely, culture became tied to a narrowly-conceived economic boosterism. This was expressed in a variety of ways: the construction of new flagship buildings for cultural consumption; the use of cultural and sporting events as tools of place marketing; the creation of entire zones dedicated to the commodification of entertainment and round-the clock pleasure; and the exploitation of heritage as a resource for urban tourism (Griffiths 1999).

By the 1990s, however, the limitations of 1980s-style approaches had become apparent, as a series of studies revealed that the property-based approach had not had the anticipated economic and social benefits (Audit Commission 1989; National Audit Office 1990; Imrie and Thomas 1993; Robson et al 1994). Over the course of the 1990s, a new era of urban policy began to emerge. One aspect of the change was that the preoccupation with economic boosterism and physical upgrading was modified by a renewed concern for the social aspects of regeneration. There was also a reassertion of the importance of incorporating "the community" into regeneration partnerships, and a renewed concern to tackle problems of fragmentation and lack of co-ordination in policy making and implementation. These changes were accompanied by a shift from needs-based to competitive methods of distributing urban funding, and by the spread of a new language, of social capital, community capacity and holistic approaches

The introduction of the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) in 1994 represented a key stage in the transition to a new phase of urban policy. Its distinctive features were the adoption of a more inclusive approach to partnership, tied to a stronger emphasis on ideas of social responsibility; and the use of competitive bidding as a deliberate strategy for stimulating "local creativity". With the election of the New Labour government in 1997 a number of these themes were further reinforced. The commitment to pursue a "people-based" approach to social and economic regeneration, and to replace narrow departmentalism with more integrated, "joined up" ways of working, were signalled early on by the setting up of a Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) in the Cabinet Office. Much of the work of the SEU has been directed towards the development of a National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (SEU 1998; 2000). One of the first products of this work was the introduction of a new programme, the New Deal for Communities (NDC), in 1998, to channel additional funds into deprived neighbourhoods and provide "joined up solutions to joined up problems" (DETR 1999). The NDC is an experimental programme which complements rather than replaces the SRB. It differs from the SRB in two main respects: it is directed towards small, tightly focused localities; and the schemes funded by the programme are supposed to take their lead directly from the priorities defined by local communities. In other words, NDC is, in theory, both "neighbourhood-focused" and "community-led".

As in the 1980s, it is possible to observe certain similarities between the developments that have occurred in the field of urban policy, and those which have occurred in the sphere of cultural policy. In particular, the earlier preoccupations with flagship cultural projects, cultural consumption and place marketing have been joined (though not entirely displaced) by a new interest in the social impacts of participation in the arts, and in the role of cultural activity in community building and neighbourhood renewal. These issues are examined in more detail in the next section.

3. Cultural action and neighbourhood renewal

Although it gained a substantial impetus from the move to a new phase of urban policy in the 1990s, recent thinking about the potential of the arts and cultural activities to assist in the revitalisation of poor neighbourhoods in fact has roots in ideas and movements stretching back over more than 30 years.

One of its key sources is the community action movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This developed as a reaction to the top-down professionalised delivery of welfare services which, it was argued, had had the effect of individualising problems which were essentially social, and reinforcing the dependency of disadvantaged communities on state bureaucracies. It argued instead for the development of partnerships between local authorities and local communities based on the principle of sharing power, resources and information. This would enable communities to define and realise their own aspirations, and help individuals and groups to develop skills and abilities to organise their own community provision.

Another important source is the community arts movement, which was another strand of the social activism that came to life in the late 1960s. The community arts movement grew out of a critique of the social exclusivity of mainstream cultural policy and arts provision. It has long been recognised that audiences for the officially sanctioned and subsidised "high" art forms are heavily skewed towards the higher social strata (Lewis 1990). Establishment responses to this have typically focused on ways of widening access through various means. But, for the community arts movement, this was inadequate because it ignored a more deep-seated problem - namely, the disconnection between cultural production and cultural consumption. Mainstream cultural policy was considered to be defective not primarily because it validated and subsidised the leisure pursuits of the professional and managerial classes, but because it rested on an artificial divide between the creative artist and the passive audience. The primary issue for proponents of community arts was not whether more people would benefit from exposure to acknowledged great works of art, but that this could not on its own be a substitute for "direct participation in the production of a living culture" (Kelly 1984, p.100) The latter would only be achievable by breaking down divides, between artist and audience, but also between separate art forms, and between art and politics. In the words of a report by an advisory panel on community arts to the Greater London Arts Association:

"the term community arts does not refer to any specific activity or group of activities; rather it defines an approach to creative activity, embracing many kinds of events and a wide range of media ... The approach used in community arts enjoins both artists and local people within their various communities to use appropriate art forms as a means of expression, in a way that critically uses and develops traditional arts forms ... Frequently the approach involves people on a collective basis, encourages the use of a collective statement but does not neglect individual development or the need for individual expression ... Community arts proposes the use of art to effect social change and affect social policies, and encompasses the expression of political action." (quoted in Kelly 1984, p.1-2)

These, and related, strands of community activism and social criticism retreated into background in the 1980s. But they began to be recovered in the 1990s, as disillusionment grew with the narrow economic instrumentalism that had swept over the field of cultural policy, and as the reaction to property-led approaches to urban regeneration gathered force. An influential report by Comedia in 1996 picked up on the new mood. It pointed out that arts and cultural activity had become increasingly important aspects of urban regeneration, but the bulk of effort and resources had been on capital investment. This, it argued, had resulted in a failure to exploit the capacity of participatory arts activities to support community-led renewal.

"Compared to high-profile capital projects, community-based and participatory cultural activity is seen to have several key strengths:

– Cultural activity is relatively cheap and very cost-effective

– It can be developed quickly in response to local needs and ideas

– It is flexible and can change as required

– It offers a potentially high return for very low risk

– It can have an impact out of all proportion to its cost"

(Landry et al 1996, pp.28-29)

These ideas were further developed in a subsequent Comedia report which presented the findings of an 18-month long investigation into the social impact of participation in the arts (Matarasso 1997). On the basis of a series of case studies and interviews, the report set out a range of ways in which participatory arts programmes could achieve personal and community benefits. First, they were an effective route for personal growth, leading to enhanced confidence, skill-building and educational gains that can improve people’s social contacts and employability. Second, they could contribute to social cohesion by developing social networks and mutual understanding, Third, they could foster community empowerment and self determination by helping to build local organisational capacity and encouraging local self-reliance and creativity. Fourth, they could make a major contribution to strengthening local image, identity and belonging, by developing pride in local places, traditions and cultures. In addition, the report argued that participatory arts programmes had a unique ability to engender higher levels of imagination and vision - helping people to develop creative responses to personal and organisational problems, challenge conventional service delivery, and accept risk positively. Moreover, these were benefits that could be achieved flexibly, responsively and cost-effectively. In a widely cited summary table, the report identified no less than 50 different social outcomes that had been produced by arts projects examined in the study, with an added qualification that the list was "not complete, and there are many others which might emerge from a different analysis" (Matarasso 1997, p.x).

The arrival of the Labour government in May 1997 created a receptive context in which these ideas about the arts, culture and community development could flourish. From the outset Labour were explicit about seeing cultural activity and the "creative economy" as mainstream concerns, capable of playing a significant role in achieving the government’s stated political objectives of social and economic regeneration. The desire of the government to establish a new, broader, agenda for culture, and to distance itself from what it saw as the nostalgia, introspection and lack of ambition of the previous period, was symbolised early on by the change of name of the main cultural ministry, from Department of National Heritage (DNH) to Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). As articulated by Labour’s culture secretary, Chris Smith, the work of the department was to be built around four key themes: access, excellence and innovation, education for creativity, and realising the economic value of the creative industries:

"Access, in ensuring that the greatest number of people have the opportunity to experience work of quality. Excellence, in ensuring that governmental support is used to underpin the best and the most innovative, and the things that would not otherwise find a voice. Education, in ensuring that creativity is not extinguished by the formal education system and beyond. And economic value, in ensuring that the full economic and employment impact of the whole range of creative industries is acknowledged and assisted by government. All of these themes are interlinked around the focal point of the individual citizen, no matter how high of low their station, having the chance to share cultural experience of the best, either as creator or as participant. This is a profoundly democratic agenda." (Smith 1998, p.2-3)

The emphasis on connecting action in the cultural field to wider government goals through measures to enhance co-ordination, integration and "joined-up" action has been evident in relation to the setting up of a task force on the so-called "creative industries" (Creative Industries Task Force 1998), and in relation to the government’s social inclusion agenda. Following a 1998 report on neighbourhood renewal by the Cabinet Office’s Social Exclusion Unit, eighteen Policy Action Teams (PATs) were set up to try to look in an integrated way at the problems of poor neighbourhoods. One of the teams, PAT 10, focused on ways of maximising the impact on poor neighbourhoods of government policies and government spending on arts, sport and leisure. In his foreword to the PAT 10 report, Chris Smith stressed the wide range of social benefits that could potentially be achieved through cultural and sporting activity:

"This report shows that art and sport can not only make a valuable contribution to delivering key outcomes of lower long-term unemployment, less crime, better health and better qualifications, but can also help to deliver the individual pride, community spirit and capacity for responsibility that enable communities to run regeneration programmes themselves." (DCMS 1999a, p.2)

Echoing the conclusions of the Comedia study published two years earlier, the report cited a number of distinctive attributes which cultural and sporting activities possess that enable them to "make a real difference" in deprived communities (p. 8). The first is that they are personally meaningful: they "appeal directly to individuals’ interests and develop their potential and self-confidence". Secondly, they can be important factors in creating a sense of common identity and common interest: they "relate to community identity and encourage collective effort". Thirdly, they foster networks of social connection: they "help build positive links with the wider community". And finally they offer the prospect of routes into employment because of the fact that they "are associated with rapidly growing industries".

These arguments, like those in the earlier Comedia study, were picked up with enthusiasm by arts organisations and local authority arts development officers around the country. Not only did they give a powerful stamp of legitimacy to community-based arts provision; they also offered a language through which cultural policy could be inserted into the wider corporate goals and strategies of local agencies. The next section looks at how this was played out in one of the UK’s main regional cities.

4. Cultural action and area-based initiatives in Bristol

Bristol is a relatively prosperous regional city in the south-west of England, with a resident population of close to 400,000. It is the only member of the Core Cities group (an association of the seven largest English cities outside London) in which the average income is significantly greater than the national average (The Guardian 29.01.01). But beneath its apparent prosperity and dynamism, the city also has marked concentrations of poverty and disadvantage, especially in its southern and inner eastern districts.

In the 1980s the city council was slow to adapt to the new partnership-based styles of urban governance which were being strongly promoted by the national government (Malpass 1994; Miller 1999). For example, the strength of its opposition to a government plan to set up an urban development corporation in the city in the late 1980s resulted in the council taking its case to a House of Lords inquiry. The council was unsuccessful and a UDC was eventually imposed. The council’s reluctance to embrace the partnership philosophy was also a key factor in the city’s failure to secure regeneration funding under the City Challenge programme in the early 1990s.

Bristol’s relative civic backwardness was also evident in the cultural field. In contrast to the situation in many other UK cities in the 1980s, where civic leaders were beginning to recognise the strategic importance of the cultural sector, and to make substantial political and financial investments aimed at strengthening the cultural infrastructure, the attitude towards the cultural sector of Bristol’s civic leadership at that time was largely characterised by apathy and prevarication. It was not until the early 1990s, when the regional arts body, South West Arts, joined forces with a grouping of local business leaders to encourage the city council to participate in a new Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (BCDP), that the city began to formulate a proactive cultural policy agenda. Consultants were employed in 1992 to produce a cultural strategy for the city, and a Head of Cultural Development was appointed by the BCDP to take the strategy forward. Although the work of the BCDP in its early years was dominated by plans for a number of city centre flagship projects, with relatively little attention given to fostering neighbourhood-based arts, a capacity for collaborative action in the cultural field was now in place.

By the time the Single Regeneration Budget was introduced in 1994, Bristol had also begun to build a network of inter-sectoral collaboration and partnership needed for success in the competitive bidding game. The key element in this network was the formation of a strategic regeneration coalition, the Bristol Regeneration Partnership, in 1995. Since 1995, some £50 million in regeneration funds have been awarded to the city through the first five annual bidding rounds of SRB alone. These funds have been directed towards four geographical priority areas, in the northern, inner eastern and southern districts of the city, with more than 100 separate projects awarded funding.

Although it is possible to discern an arts-related element in certain SRB-funded projects, they have in the main reflected traditional regeneration concerns of physical renewal, training and skills, and an increasing focus on issues of health. The absence of an explicit arts dimension in Bristol’s SRB-funded projects has been noted in one of the evaluation studies of regeneration activity in the city:

"While some organisations feel they lack the capacity to get involved, others feel they are often overlooked in generation initiatives. Professionals working with the arts and media believe that they often fight an uphill battle to get local groups and statutory agencies to accept the value of arts and media to urban regeneration. This is despite the government’s recent attempt to highlight the vital role that arts can play in not only building local capacity and self-esteem but embedding it into the community." (Kimberlee, Hoggett and Stewart 2000, p.8)

The main exception to this is the SRB4 scheme, which began in 1998. In contrast to Bristol’s other regeneration schemes, SRB4 has been thematic rather than geographical in orientation. Titled YOUR (Youth Owning Urban Regeneration), its focus is on involving young people in finding solutions to youth issues within specific areas around the city. This explicit focus on young people has had the effect of drawing the whole scheme towards arts-oriented activities. The scheme includes what is probably the city’s most significant regeneration-funded arts project to date, the Knowle West Media Project, which provides opportunities for young people in one of the city’s most disadvantaged communities to participate in digital arts. Several other projects within the scheme have also had a strong arts dimension:

"Successful media projects and art work have already taken place in several areas. These have drawn on the tireless efforts of local media and artistic professionals (who often work well beyond the hours funded by SRB); and as a result a group of young people from Lawrence Weston have now performed at Colston Hall and delivered their own theatre productions to schools in their local area. Young people have also got involved in radio projects, and young people’s graffiti art work has helped to adorn a couple of areas where physical regeneration has taken place. In Southmead in the near future young people will be involved in sculpture work in their local community. Without SRB4 it is doubtful whether the profile given to the arts and other creative activities would have been such an important feature of area regeneration." (Kimberlee, Hoggett and Stewart 2000, p.5)

The SRB4 scheme therefore shows that it is possible for arts-oriented activities to gain support from SRB programme funds, but it has been untypical. One of the main problems for the arts is that the project appraisal regime under which the SRB programme operates is essentially output-driven. To gain approval, projects usually have to show that they can deliver on specific output measures (eg buildings improved; qualifications gained; number and range of people attending events). This is not a method of assessment in which issues of cultural value can be comfortably accommodated. Although certain aspects of cultural activity can be quantified in output-terms, their main social and cultural benefits are intangible - they relate, for example, to the heightened spiritual energy, or empathy, or appreciation of human possibilities, or sense of collective identity, that people gain. These qualities are hard to build convincingly in to conventional processes of project appraisal. Consequently, in so far as art has been incorporated in SRB-funded schemes, it has tended to be in an instrumental manner. Art-related elements have been included where they have been seen as a means to achieving other more directly tangible regeneration objectives.

While the SRB has not provided an especially rich seam of funding for cultural action at the neighbourhood level, recent years have seen a proliferation of new sources of financial support for neighbourhood-based arts activity. The creation of the National Lottery, in particular, has helped to breathe life into all manner of cultural projects. In the main, lottery-funded cultural projects have been buildings-based rather than community-based, and have so far enjoyed a very uneven record of success. But it has been possible for astute arts organisations to find ways in to the lottery treasure chest for non-venue-based projects. ACTA, a community theatre company, is probably Bristol’s leading example of an arts organisation that has succeeded in weaving together different sources of funding (lottery, regeneration, council, etc) for projects that use creative activities for individual and community development in areas of high social stress. Its Making a Difference project, for example, worked with residents in four council estates to write and perform plays, using funds from the National Lottery Charities Board. People of all ages participated, including those who do not usually become involved in community activities, such as single parents and their children, elderly people and people with learning difficulties. Unspent funds from the project were subsequently used to carry out a survey of 500 people who had taken part in ACTA projects over the period from 1985 to 1998. The responses demonstrated the long term impact that participation in the arts can have, with many respondents citing their involvement in community theatre projects as a "turning point" in their lives.

In 1998, there was a change in the regeneration landscape, following the government’s announcement of the New Deal for Communities programme. A series of meetings and roadshow events was held in Bristol to decide what to include in a bid. These meetings culminated in a "community conference" in October, at which residents from eight localities, chosen on the basis of deprivation indices, put forward proposals for their own area. In an open vote, the proposal for the Barton Hill area was selected to go forward. In the months that followed, a further round of meetings was held in Barton Hill to raise awareness of the possibilities and involve residents in developing the ideas, in keeping with the principle that NDC schemes should be community-led.

Barton Hill is a neighbourhood in the inner-eastern part of the city, the NDC scheme area having a population of close to 6,000. Because of its nearness to the city centre, and the availability of relatively low cost housing, it has been a popular area for artists and culture sector workers of different kinds, and has a strong tradition for avant-garde artistic activity, especially in music. In the meetings to explore themes for the bid, a number of local artists became involved and put forward the idea that the arts should be one of the main thematic elements of the NDC scheme. The arguments struck a chord with other residents as the area had suffered in recent years from disinvestment in local amenities. In the bid for NDC funding that was eventually submitted in September 1999, the arts and sports were identified as one of eight specified "outcome areas", alongside employment and business, sustainable health and well-being, tackling crime, raising educational achievement, housing, community services, and tackling racism.

What is of particular interest in this case is not just the energy and commitment displayed by local artists in the formulation of the bid, and the existence of a specific arts element, but also the rationale used to justify it. In the bid document, there is a single outcome specified for the arts strand: to achieve an "increase in numbers of local residents involved in an artistic project". In other words, the rationale is essentially a cultural one, and not an instrumental one. Participation in the arts is given as a goal in its own right, rather than presented as a means to achieving some other, non-artistic, end. The way in which the projects funded under the arts strand (called "Arts motivation and participation") will help to deliver this outcome is described in the following terms:

"There is almost a total absence of arts related activities in the NDC area. There is a low expectation from local people and a lack of resources to encourage arts as a means of raising capacity and developing the confidence of individuals. We want to set up spaces for recording music, performance, rehearsal, teaching. We want to promote multi-cultural arts and purchase a digital arts computer. We will provide a yearly support fund for the arts, managed by a panel of local people and other artists. Criteria for grant aid will demand that arts activity shows a linkage in meeting educational, employment and capacity building targets. All this will be guided by a paid arts motivator." (Community at Heart 1999)

It can be seen that reference is made to educational, employment etc targets, as this is part of the protocol of bidding for regeneration funding, and demonstrates a necessary sensitivity to "joined upness". But these are presented as supporting arguments and not as the primary driver. The Barton Hill NDC scheme wants to increase participation of local people in arts activities because this is a worthy regeneration goal on its own merits. In this respect, the scheme appears to represent a new departure for area-based regeneration, at least in the Bristol context. It is important to ask, therefore, what has made this apparently new departure possible. A number of factors seem to have been significant: first, the community-led and outcome-based philosophy of the NDC programme has created a space for initiatives that fall outside mainstream regeneration strategies; second, the social make-up of the Barton Hill area has produced a constituency prepared to speak up for the use of arts-related activity for neighbourhood renewal; third, developments in the national agenda on exclusion and regeneration have given added credibility to the role of cultural action; fourth, because artists tend by necessity to be "light on their feet", they have been able to take advantage of the new landscape of possibilities.

In March 2000, it was announced that the Barton Hill scheme (called "Community at Heart") had been successful, with an award of £50 million over 10 years. To oversee the arts strand, an arts forum was constituted, to which over 40 local artists and arts groups signed up. Working with the city council and Community at Heart’s newly-appointed chief executive, an elected committee of the arts forum drew up an arts strategy statement for the first three years of the scheme. The strategy has three main elements, with a total budget of £400,000: a fund to provide grants for events, productions, workshops, bursaries and other forms of support for arts work; the appointment of an arts motivator to co-ordinate and facilitate arts activities; and a fund to undertake development work on a number of major "landmark projects" including accommodation for an arts centre, the setting up of a record company and a film production company, and a photography project.

It is too early to comment on the progress or the effectiveness of the arts strategy. One year in to the scheme, the existence of major tensions between the arts forum committee and Community at Heart’s paid officials have already become apparent. The main area of contention has been over the capacity of the arts forum committee to make decisions about how the funds earmarked for the arts should be used. For example, committee members have wanted to use funds to pay for local artists (rather than outside consultants) to undertake the research work for a capital purchase of PA equipment, and to make a visit to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The scheme officials have been reluctant to approve these expenditures. At the time of writing, the arts forum committee had temporarily closed itself down, out of frustration, and to draw attention to the reliance of the scheme on the work of unpaid volunteers.

Conclusion

There is now a growing awareness of the role which arts activity can play in the regeneration of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Cultural action has the capacity to engender pride and self confidence, create a sense of mutual respect and shared identity, overcome social divisions and foster networks of social connection In the UK context, the Social Exclusion Unit and the Department of Culture have played key roles in developing this understanding at the centre of government, and the contribution of the arts is one of the themes in the government’s new National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. As part of this strategy, the New Deal for Communities programme was introduced in 1998 in an attempt to find more holistic and community-based solutions to disadvantage and exclusion. The Bristol experience indicates that the regeneration philosophy on which the NDC programme is based is capable of generating responses that depart from mainstream strategies, including cultural action. However, the new philosophy appears not to have fully penetrated the administrative mindset of the local NDC office. This may prevent the benefits of arts-based action from being fully realised. It also remains to be seen whether the arts activity that is facilitated is effective in drawing in all parts of the local population (ie its social impacts), and in changing people’s understandings of what exclusion means and how it can be combated (ie its cultural impacts).

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