By supporting and cultivating a thriving culture, tourism, leisure and sport offer, local authorities can foster places that are attractive for residents, workers, and visitors alike.
The LGA’s Culture Hub includes how leisure, tourism and sport can be used to facilitate and promote a vibrant culture and tourism industry.
The main aim of the UKSPF is to instil a sense of place-based pride and enhance the life opportunities throughout the UK. By investing in and championing the culture and tourism industry, local authorities can take strides towards realising this ambition.
How the UKSPF could be used:
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Communities and Places: there is an opportunity to improve the number and quality of tourism, sports facilities, cultural and heritage assets. It could also support communities to attract more visitors and improve the sense of pride in their surroundings.
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Supporting Businesses: by investing in the local culture and tourism industry, authorities can stimulate visitor numbers and increase visitor spending in local businesses, benefiting the local economy. Public investment in culture also supports wider growth in the rapidly growing commercial creative industries sector and benefits the wider hospitality and night-time economies.
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People and Skills: UKSPF can support ambitions to build a capable and trained workforce which is essential to the success of the culture and tourism industry. Cultural venues such as libraries also have a significant role to play in supporting the development of local skills for employment in the wider local economy, with a wide culture, tourism and sport offer creates better health and wellbeing in a community, which boosts productivity. Nesta and the Creative Industries PEC’s research on future skills found that jobs asking for creativity are also far more likely to grow as a percentage of the labour market by the year 2030: creativity was one of the greatest predictors of a job’s future prospects.
