Reading across the published material, the principal aims for the new Cultural Strategy in Sheffield appear to be along the following lines:

1. To leverage culture to attract more visitors to Sheffield.
2. To increase participation in the cultural sector from under-represented communities.
3. To promote the creation of training opportunities (such as apprenticeships) and good jobs for people (especially young people) who wish to work in the cultural sector. 
4. To facilitate better collaboration and cooperation between cultural organisations with a view to attracting more funding for culture.
5. Presumably, graduate retention and attracting talent to the city are related strategic goals for the council.

Possible actions for consideration by the newly recruited Head of Service for Culture & Place Marketing and Service Manager for Culture.  

These eight ideas are focused on providing the conditions for creative organisations to grow so that they can create more good quality training and high-value work for people. They also include suggestions for facilitating effective collaboration and embedding EDI principles. 

1. Data

It would make sense to build on The Audience Agency population profile report featured in the Cultural Audit paper. Cultural organisations in the city hold a significant amount of data which, combined, could generate value both directly, in terms of sponsorship and brand alignment opportunities, as well as indirectly by informing better planning and decision-making. A consortium bid could generate requisite funding. University partners could act as data controllers to facilitate collective benefit from the resource while ensuring compliance with relevant data-protection legislation. Relevant research centres (such as SPARC) are also in a position to add qualitative depth where appropriate. Other cities are benefiting from a more joined-up approach to audience data (and are drawing on expertise from our city to do so!). 

2. CBA Methodologies for Culture

There is an opportunity to work with stakeholders to develop appropriate Cost Benefit Analysis methodologies for cultural organisations to support better economic analysis of their contribution to a range of indicators across several key policy areas (see NASP for an example). Not only would this help build a broader public case for the importance of cultural activity, it would also help to unlock new funding streams beyond arts subsidy (including private philanthropy and corporate giving).

3. Ethics of Collaboration 

It would seem to make sense from a comms point of view to plan to reiterate and re-emphasise at all times the critical strategic importance for the sustainability of our cultural sector of ethical, non-extractive collaborative practice. Trust is our most precious resource – all else flows from this. We must ensure that the interests of individuals and smaller organisations are fully recognised and respected when working with larger stakeholders. Harnessing the benefits of creative clusters that incorporate profit, non-profit, and institutional partners is likely to involve normalising the co-design of projects.

4. Sectoral skills gaps

The council will want to draw on key partners to fill skills gaps in the sector. For instance, in response to intelligence from the board of industry advisors (including representatives from Tramlines, Tickets for Good, Leadmill, Sheffield Music Hub, Music in the Round, and others) the Department of Music has developed modules around strategic fundraising for arts organisations (bid writing skills), WEB 3.0 (NFTs, DAOs), and strategic design principles for innovation. These highly-transferrable capabilities support successful entrepreneurship and project work across and beyond the cultural sector (in addition to music-related work, our graduates go on to contribute in fields as diverse as supply chain management, data science, and manufacturing).

5. Leadership development

Following from the previous point, I think it would make sense to explore a spin-off of the successful Help to Grow scheme delivered by SHU targeted specifically at cultural organisations in the city. This programme develops strategic leadership skills and helps organisations to understand their business model and innovate to unlock new opportunities. Combined with better audience data, CBA methodologies, clearer expectations around collaborative practice, and strategic leadership from the council, this could have a big impact.

6. Using new spaces to drive collaboration

Continued good work to create new civic architecture around culture (e.g. Events Central, Harmony Works) will be welcome. The Culture Audit document correctly points out the importance of Sheffield’s industrial history in understanding the characteristics of the current cultural sector in the city. Our artists inhabit old mesters works and develop correspondingly tight networks where trust is established among a handful of collaborators only. We need to provide opportunities for trust to extend beyond these cliques so we can more easily scale up areas of strength. Larger, more visible, and more open spaces will encourage the new ways of communicating and working that we want to see.

7. Opening the talent pipeline to all

It might be possible more effectively to promote the Enterprise Advisor network to cultural workers in connection with the EDI strategy for culture. The goal would be to get more cultural workers into schools in all areas of the city to share with pupils and teachers the details of how they make a living. This will help schools meet the Gatsby Benchmarks 4, 5, and 6 and will also help to ensure that children from a variety of backgrounds understand the types of roles that are available in the cultural sector. It will also give teachers across the city a better understanding of how the cultural sector works. Perhaps Create Sheffield could be a useful partner here.

8. Sector-mapping

Finally, sector mapping across the region needs to be both spatial and relational. A spatial map (e.g. GoogleMap) can highlight places that lack physical infrastructure for culture. Whereas a network map will indicate which organisations act as connective tissue linking the different constituent elements of the action system for culture. An organisation may not be large, or particularly visible, but might nonetheless be strategically vital for the functioning of the whole, and, in particular, for the system’s ability to generate the new business models that are required.

The context for this is that successful business models for Global Entertainment have, in some respects, become detached from the operation of the grassroots and independent cultural sector. More effective lateral integration and business model innovation are required to take advantage of new opportunities.

The mapping process should generate dynamic, digital tools (not static documents) that can be kept up to date via an annual review, supported perhaps by students from our universities, where curriculum design might, to some extent, integrate the work. An annual mapping review process could act to support a regular review of audience data as well. These intangible resources might be viewed as part of a Library of Things offer for the cultural sector.

Music in Sheffield Strategy & Innovation Forum

_{Written without the use of generative AI tools}