BARC New Year Reception: Manchester’s Cultural Strategy

Apr 22
2 min read

Manchester’s Cultural Strategy: Always, Everywhere

Today’s webinar, which also served as BARC’s New Year Reception, gave us valuable insights into Manchester City Council’s innovative cultural strategy, Always, Everywhere, presented by Sarah Elderkin, Policy and Programme Manager, and Dave Moutrey, Director of Culture and Creative Industries. The strategy focuses on cultural democracy, inclusion, and shared ownership, and presents a model for how cultural policies can create both engagement and impact.

Key-points:

Cultural Democracy in Practice: The strategy prioritises inclusion, with a particular focus on marginalized groups and independent cultural organisations, as well as larger institutions. Tools such as the Cultural Impact Survey and co-design processes ensure that local communities have an active voice in the development of cultural offerings. A significant insight from the survey showed that 70% of citizens wanted to “see more people like me” in cultural offerings, underlining the need for representation and equality.
The Three Main Themes: Everyone, Everything, Everywhere:
Everyone: Expanding participation by engaging residents, tourists, and diverse communities.
Everything: Broadening the meaning of culture to include stories, creative expression, and local initiatives.
Everywhere: Embedding culture throughout the city and increasing accessibility within cultural institutions.
Engagement Tools and Insights: The strategy is based on online surveys, expert consultations, and co-design approaches to involve underrepresented voices, which proved essential for securing local ownership.
Tools such as tailored strategies for engaging marginalized groups have been crucial to the development of the strategy.
Collaboration Through the Manchester Cultural Consortium: The consortium ensures coherence and visibility across the city’s cultural ecosystem while promoting transparency and shared ownership. Collaboration between public institutions, local stakeholders, and independent creative forces has been essential to implementing the strategy.
From Strategy to Action: The ongoing five-year action plan ensures that the strategy remains flexible and measurably forward-looking. A focus on co-design rather than traditional ticketing models has changed the approach to creating more inclusive and meaningful cultural offerings.

Highlights from the discussion:

Citizen engagement: How the survey results are translated into concrete decisions on priorities and support.

Barriers to participation: Identifying and removing obstacles for underrepresented groups.

From participation to co-creation: A shift in focus from passive participation to active co-creation.

Final reflections:

Manchester’s cultural strategy, Always, Everywhere, demonstrates how cultural policies can balance local needs with global ambitions and create a more equitable and accessible cultural sector. The strategy’s focus on partnerships, co-design, representation, and collaboration offers a valuable model for cultural organisations and municipalities seeking to rethink their approach to community and engagement.

As Sarah and Dave demonstrated, success is about seeing culture as an integrated part of people’s lives — something that can create connection, identity, and lasting impact.