Citizens for Culture

Community Celebration, Trinity, Sep 2024. Credit Alastair Brookes

In 2025, in collaboration with St Pauls Carnival CIC, Citizens in Power and West of England Combined Authority, we will launch the first regional Citizens' Assembly for Culture.

This bold new approach to cultural engagement will bring together citizens - people living, working or staying across the West of England - to explore how creative opportunities can be inclusive and accessible for everyone in the region.

Guided by the four pillars of the West of England's existing cultural plan - skills, the economy, placemaking and well-being - the Assembly will create a series of recommendations that will help to define priorities for regional cultural output; what takes place and where, who is involved and how our regional offer is shaped and defined.

The project so far:

In 2021… the project was initiated by St Pauls' Carnival CEO, LaToyah McAllister-Jones, and Trinity's CEO, Emma Harvey, who, as community leaders, began to think about how people in Bristol – particularly those from under-represented groups – could help to inform cultural plans for the city. The pair began working with David Jubb from Citizens in Power to build democracy into cultural decision-making.

In 2022… Funding secured from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) which enabled the partners to begin the initial research phase. During this period, collaborators from the cultural sector helped explore how a Citizens’ Assembly for Culture could be used to co-create a cultural delivery plan During this phase, it was recommended that the plan should incorporate the wider region.

In 2023… the West of England Combined Authority agreed to join the partnership and support the research phase. One of the objectives of this phase was to create a series of citizens' panels with representative groups of citizens from across the region selected by the Sortition Foundation. These citizen panels created the design principles for the Citizens’ Assembly for Culture.

In 2024… the partnership secured further funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for the delivery of Citizens for Culture.  Citizens for Culture was announced as part of the delivery plans for  West of England Combined Authority’s Culture West programme.

Keep up to date

Email Imogen Imogen@trinitybristol.org.uk to join our mailing list and stay up to date with the project.