Cultural Planning for Sustainable Communities

This 1 year research project funded under the AHRC’s Connected Communities programme, aims to use cultural planning as a way to explain and value the relationship between arts & culture and the environment. Ideas of and behaviour towards the natural environment, the countryside and 'ecosystems' - whether urban or rural - tend to lack a cultural dimension, or include the cultural sector of arts organisations, artists and other ‘hidden’ community culture. This includes community cultures and local cultural amenities, amateur groups and activities. By using cultural mapping, where cultural 'assets' of all kinds can be mapped using local knowledge and various data sources - social/ demographic, land-use and their catchments/usage, with accompanying visual images and comments 'from below' - a rich landscape of an areas culture can be developed, visualised and appreciated. This inclusive cultural base which will be developed by this project will be used to express how community cultures relate to their environments, how they are used and contribute to development and growth decisions and processes e.g. land use development (e.g. new housing, industry), recreation/tourism, heritage, conservation and resource use (e.g. water – see Hydrocitizenship project).



The project will build on cultural mapping and planning techniques, resources (see below) and data/maps developed for area-based 'Living Places' and Cultural Asset case studies in London Thames Gateway (Rainham Marshes, Woolwich), Portsmouth and North Northants, and consult with these local communities and cultural organisations using GIS mapping-Participation workshops in order to test out and articulate this culture-ecosystem relationship, how the two fields inter-act and opportunities for culture-based sustainable development might be taken forward. The project seeks to develop detailed guidance on how to incorporate cultural planning within environmental decision-making and assessment using the results from case studies, consultation and practical data mapping tools.