Report to Arts, Culture and Recreation SPC

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Report to Arts, Culture and Recreation SPC

9th May 2016

Item No. 6

Report on Implementation of Cultural Strategy

Priority 2

To increase cultural participation and practice through:-

Conduct cultural audits (qualitative and quantitative) in all city areas paying particular attention to developing cultural clusters, in the context of the revised development levy funding.

This specific action of the City Council Cultural strategy is included in the latest draft of the City Development Plan.

A Cultural audit was conducted in Docklands as part of the SDZ process and has proved valuable in identifying deficits in cultural provision and opportunities for private sector funding through the Docklands Arts Fund.

A Cultural audit seeks through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research to list the cultural assets and deficits of a defined city area. Given the Unesco definition of Culture as adopted by Dublin City Council is:-

“the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. (Unesco 2001)

It follows that these cultural audits will include all aspects of Culture from the Boxing Club and all other sporting activities to artistic initiatives and organizations to Arts in Schools, Public Art, Libraries, Community Halls and as importantly not just ‘hardware’ but the ‘software’ skills and professional ability locally or not yet available. Audiences and Audience Development, Participation Education and Learning as well as opportunities for professional cultural practitioners will feature in the audits. The audits are intended to guide Dublin City Council in the area of Cultural Development and to embed cultural provision throughout communities.

As part of the Development Plan if these cultural audits are comprehensive and identify deficits, they could become a consultative tool in Public/Private Partnerships helping citizens to have their areas become cultural destinations as well as impact local quality of life. The impact of cultural expression on tourism, economic development and as an alternative to anti social activity is well documented.

The audit should set out realistic goals and achievable targets guided by Dublin City Council.

Given the scale of work required due consideration is being given to the quality and quantity of the resources required and the brief needed by the Auditors to be commissioned.

Ray Yeates,

City Arts Officer.

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