Leicester's Cultural Strategy -
Diverse City: A Vision for Cultural Life in Leicester - takes on the immense and important task of summing up the spirit of Leicester and how its residents would like life to be.
It focuses specifically on the ways in which culture and cultural services can change our city. Our definition of Culture is about improving the quality of life and well being of Leicester's residents, workers and visitors through the provision and development of cultural activities, events and facilities and by helping to achieve other quality of life goals such as providing life long learning opportunities, improving health, stimulating economic development and helping to improve safety and cohesion in our communities.
Our definition of culture is broad, and it is deliberately so. Our definition embraces culture as cultural or leisure activity, the culture of an individual when describing their ethnicity or religion and also the culture of the city, neighbourhoods and community, or the identity of a particular place or group.
Leicester's Local Area Agreement reflects this definition and includes the following on culture:
"Cultural activity is linked with people's identity, confidence, self-esteem, joy and pleasure. It helps people learn. It helps them stay healthy. It helps communities grow together, understand each other and discover shared experience. It helps neighbourhoods and the city as a whole to develop a sense of place, and culture brings jobs and wealth to the city. The vitality that comes from having many different cultures living and working together is expressed everyday in Leicester through a range of cultural activity - such as arts, sports, libraries, museums, heritage, archives, architecture, children's play, parks, tourism, creative industries, media and markets"
The values, objectives and priorities of the Cultural Strategy provide an overarching framework for our vision of cultural life in the City. It provides a distinctive and long-term vision for the development of cultural activities, facilities and services to help all providers across the City and to co-ordinate the work of the many agencies and partners who are directly or indirectly involved in cultural provision.
The Cultural Strategy outlines 80 challenges under 7 key objectives for the City, the challenges vary from small, local projects to large scale culture-led regeneration in Leicester.
The Cultural Strategy is underpinned by the Cultural Strategy Action Plan. The first Action Plan was completed and reported on in 2004 with 61 out of 62 projects successfully implemented. The Action PLan has been developed alongside the Strategy, to monitor cultural projects and activities working to achieve this aim which are undertaken by CSP Partners. To find out more about the
Action Plan, please follow the Action plan link on the left-hand side of the page.
