Living Places is about helping to create thriving, vibrant communities through culture and sport. Culture means different things to different people; it could mean visiting a museum, reading books or researching your family tree. All of these activities can help bring people together and create a sense of belonging. Culture and sport are important building blocks in our communities. They bring economic and social benefits beyond their intrinsic values. Living Places can help councils reap those benefits.
One of the biggest challenges is to bring these opportunities to bear in areas of housing growth and renewal. To do so, Living Places offers a wealth of experience and expertise in one place, harnessed by a collective ambition and creative leadership.
Living Places has three objectives:
- To provide those who are shaping communities with information, advice and support on the use of culture and sport to create better places.
- To align investment from the sporting and cultural sector with sustainable communities funding across organisational boundaries so it works harder for people.
- To empower communities to make cultural and sporting activity and infrastructure a part of their lives.
Living Places takes a place-based approach and will focus attention on five places that will help the sector to understand the role culture and sport plays within communities of varying sizes. This will help Living Places gain a greater understanding of the pressures on sustainable communities professionals and the innovative policy solutions that can be developed to help them.
The priority places identified are:
- Thames Gateway
- The South West region
- Corby
- Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PUSH)
- Pennine Lancashire.
The priority places initiative will focus on the following issues:
- Understanding: raising understanding of the contribution that culture and sport can make at a range of spatial levels.
- Promotion: promoting practical uses of culture and sport in places of concern or importance to the sustainable communities agenda.
- Best practice: highlighting and sharing good practice between priority places and other places, and sharing learning emerging from new ways of working.