Arts and culture play a vital role in making Wandsworth a prosperous, healthy and attractive place to live. Arts and culture brings people together and provides a sense of vitality and belonging. This Arts and Culture Strategy is Wandsworth Council’s commitment to a long-term creative vision for the borough. We aim to be bold and ambitious, and to embed arts and culture at the heart of Council’s work.

We see ourselves as playing a vital role in supporting, coordinating, convening and promoting the borough’s cultural life. We aim to use our cultural assets and programmes as the building blocks of place-shaping, and as key elements within new developments and regeneration.

We look to work with partners to ensure a strong and thriving arts and cultural offer that benefits not only individuals, but also families and wider communities, as well as contributing to the vitality of the borough’s neighbourhoods and town centres.

Through collaboration with our cultural and creative practitioners, freelancers and organisations, we animate our local economies, foster our strong sense of community ownership, raise aspirations, and support residents in leading healthy and happy lives.

Through this strategy we set out our ambitious offer for arts and culture within the borough, and our vision to establish Wandsworth as one of the country’s leading examples of how to integrate cultural opportunities and engagement into the delivery of all the Council’s priorities.

The Arts and Culture Strategy 2021-31 is focused around seven key goals:

• Place-shaping: Ensuring arts and culture is integrally linked to the development of different parts of the borough. We want to contribute to the improvement of the borough’s neighbourhoods, high streets, and regeneration areas by ensuring that art and culture are accessible to all, grow with the ambition of the borough and reflect the needs and opportunities of the residents and supporting creative clusters.

• Economic Growth: Recognising that the growth of Borough’s cultural ecology (both as part of the day and night-time economies) is an important contributor to the livelihoods of many residents as well as the economic development of the Borough as a centre of innovation, creative employment and the arts at all levels, from the global to the hyper local.

• Communities and Partnerships: Supporting residents to develop their own cultural resources to meet specific needs, support stronger neighbourhoods and enhance community cohesion.

• Learning and Education: Embedding cultural engagement opportunities in the lives of young people growing up in the Borough from early years, at school and in further and higher education; supporting young people to access creative outlets to develop their talents and create pathways to paid employment in the cultural and creative industry sector that reflect the diverse make-up of the Borough.

• Health and Wellbeing: To support residents to start well, live well and age well, using culture as means to improve health and wellbeing, as well as promoting lifelong learning.

• Access for all: ensuring access to culture is available to all parts of the community, actively addressing identified needs to improve access, and that extra support is given to the work of improving inclusion and diversity.

• Sustainability: Identifying how the arts and culture community can contribute to tackling climate change at a strategic and operational level, in line with the Wandsworth Environment and Sustainability Strategy.

The Arts and Culture Strategy builds upon the strong foundations that have been laid by the Council, cultural organisations, residents and community groups and have created a myriad of vibrant creative offers. These case studies reflect on some of the projects and organisations already working to support the 7 key goals outlined in the strategy.

Our Arts and Culture Strategy 2021-2031 was formerly adopted in December 2021. We have now started work on delivering it and developing our rolling three-year action plan. 

We welcome participation in the development and delivery of the strategy and if you would like be part of delivering the vision please email [email protected] to let us know your ideas and plans. 

In developing the Arts & Culture Strategy, we hosted various conversations on many themes with our cultural partners, stakeholders and local creatives.

Wandsworth’s What Next? Chapter were key to the initial direction of the Arts and Culture Strategy research and approach, as they helped guide the initial thinking and making sure we were asking the right questions.

The Wandsworth Art Service Youth Forum helped to shape our future visioning. As this is a ten year Arts and Culture Strategy it has been very important for us to make sure the youth voice has been heard.