Bath Spa University and WECA secure £1m for Culture West

Bath Spa University has partnered with the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority who have successfully secured £1m through Arts Council England’s National Lottery Place Partnerships Fund, contributing to a £3,127,828 investment into the region, £1.5m from the Mayoral Combined Authority and the remaining from their regional partners.

The funding is for a two-year region-wide programme called Culture West which will enable every child and young person to access a cultural experience each year, commission two new festivals, support and provide work for 425 creative freelancers, engage over 109,000 people in arts and cultural experiences with live audiences of more than 270,000. 

This new programme was co-created with over 150 regionally-based creative and cultural organisations, creative freelancers, cross-sector partners including health, education and environment and the Unitary Authorities to establish a series of priorities for the region.

Bath Spa University is one of the key regional experts and the only university working with the Mayoral Combined Authority and the four unitary authorities (Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City Council, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire) to deliver an interlinked series of programmes designed to ask three questions about creativity and culture in the region: 

• How can creativity positively transform lives?
• How can anyone become a creative practitioner?
• How can everyone help to shape our region’s culture?

Bath Spa University will support the delivery of a new regional Creative Agency, creating a network of employers and training providers that will support creatives at every point in their career, increasing opportunities for young people to enter and thrive in the creative sector.

New arts spaces and places will open across Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset through delivery of a completely new Arts Membership model including Bath Spa University campus buildings.

A new residency scheme known as Re-EMERGE will offer low-income artists and makers residencies at EMERGE, Bath Spa University’s unique multidisciplinary creative practice studio. This will be open to alumni and non-alumni graduates very soon.

The university will work with freelance artists to support the growth of high-quality workshops and teaching resources for education and schools and will also be pivotal in the development and launch of new artist spaces across the Somer Valley region in 2024. This includes the launch of a new arts space in Radstock in January 2024.

Professor Sue Rigby, Vice-Chancellor of Bath Spa University, says “Over the next two years, our shared ambition is to create a step change for the region by increasing access to arts and culture in every place for all communities and creatives. Through this, we aim to improve lives, support local economies, help regenerate neighbourhoods and bring people back into work in the  creative industries, post-pandemic. 

Sue continues “Thanks to a £1 million grant from Arts Council England, added to the £1.5 million investment already promised from the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority - plus a further £640 thousand from local partners – we have the opportunity to reignite the West’s creative and cultural offering, and it couldn’t come at a more crucial time.”