LEEDS 2023 & Bradford 2025: Shared Cultural Futures
Insights from a knowledge transfer partnership between two major events organisers
The ‘Year of Culture’ produced by LEEDS 2023 started to come to a close just as Bradford were making plans for the delivery of UK City of Culture 2025. A grant was awarded to support the knowledge exchange project Shared Cultural Futures, with the aim of strengthening evaluation and learning capabilities for two major events both taking place within West Yorkshire: a combined authority under a Mayor that has put cultural regeneration at the heart of her plans for the region. The senior leadership teams at LEEDS 2023 and Bradford 2025 were already working together informally, and wanted to do more.
Spirit of 2012 wanted to understand the value in properly funding knowledge exchange, and what opportunities and challenges this would present. We awarded a grant of £249,950 to support the collaboration between the two teams, with the funding to support staff to prioritise learning and reflection. In LEEDS 2023, it gave staff coming to the end of their roles a structured opportunity to reflect and pass on what they had learnt whilst still in post. Members of the team at Bradford 2025 gained insights into the challenges that staff in their equivalent role at LEEDS 2023 had faced and could take this into consideration early on in the planning stages. The timings of the organisations and their events produced some challenges for knowledge exchange, due to the fact that they were at very different points in their life cycles.
A key learning from Shared Cultural Futures was that knowledge exchange must be understood in the context of the event. Whilst geographic proximity and existing relationships were instrumental in facilitating knowledge exchange, it was acknowledged that LEEDS 2023 and Bradford 2025 are different organisations, with different structures and needs. The project granted both teams the opportunity to reflect while managing the pressures of delivering at pace, and emphasised the value of learning and collaboration.
The report outlines a number of insights and recommendations for major event organisers and funders to take forward.
Recommendations
1. Embed knowledge exchange from the beginning
Embedding knowledge exchange at the early stages of an organisation and starting activities earlier can maximise opportunities for knowledge exchange and enable organisations to plan key activities at a time when they have capacity.
2. Have a dedicated knowledge exchange role at Cities of Culture
Project participants felt that there was scope to do more but capacity needs to be built into bids to facilitate this. Ideally there needs to be a dedicated person within a City of Culture to convene the knowledge exchange space. This would ensure that the process is ‘led’ but also that each department is involved in knowledge exchange.
3. Produce a toolkit or start up pack for major events
A key recommendation from this project is for a toolkit or asset bank to be created for Cities of Culture or other major events to use at set-up stage. This could include draft role descriptions, templates, options analyses, keypolicy and process documents, guidance on economic impact evaluation and on engaging with local funders, so that they don’t have to create everything from scratch. There was a sense that for Cities of Culture this should be a DCMS-funded, centralised resource that could be updated as needed.
4. There should be a formal expectation of knowledge exchange from funders
Participants reflected that a more active, structured approach from funders around knowledge exchange would be valuable – alongside a toolkit – so that expectations are more formally built in from the outset. Suggestions included DCMS facilitating an official roundtable between the handing over and new City of Culture which forms ‘part of the relationship with any designated winning city of culture’ where key learnings are shared efficiently.
5. Share relationships with local authorities and local funders
The Bradford 2025 team reflected that conversations with regional funders sometimes felt that they were starting from scratch. Though this recommendation relates mostly to the North of England, the team felt it would be valuable to explore ways of cultivating funder circles at regional levels, particularly in relation to philanthropy and individual giving. One suggestion would be to have other agencies work with Cities of Culture to encourage that activity, or to host an annual conference for arts philanthropy in the North of England.
6. Share relevant evaluation and benchmarking data
The Bradford 2025 team felt that one of the things that was missing from the knowledge exchange project was the sharing of benchmarking data, particularly in relation to campaign activity. Sharing evaluation and benchmarking data, even if it is provisional, may help new Cities of Culture to develop their own benchmarks, and to have more consistency in the development of KPIs.
7. Streamline systems and processes
Participants felt that there was an opportunity to streamline systems and processes to make the knowledge exchange process more efficient and effective. This included informing staff earlier that the knowledge exchange initiative would be taking place so that they knew to keep documents, records, and logs and having a defined structure in place early, so that staff felt more comfortable about passing on information.
8. Share within as well as between organisations
It was felt that there was an opportunity for knowledge exchange to be more cross cutting so that learning is shared across the organisation instead of being ‘trapped’ within teams. Suggestions for this included bringing together all of the heads of teams in one room and having an induction to the new City of Culture and their team.
9. Build a fellowship or network of major event experts
It was acknowledged that knowledge transfer between Cities of Culture is often based on goodwill and that there is a large pool of untapped knowledge and potential which could be drawn upon by having a live network or fellowship of people with relevant experience.
10. Is making mistakes part of the journey?
When reflecting on whether there is an ‘ideal or better model for knowledge transfer’, one of the most interesting questions that emerged is the extent to which Cities of Culture need to make their own mistakes as part of their individual journey. While there is a clear call for not reinventing the wheel or wasting resources, some participants talked about the value of pulling something apart and rebuilding it as part of the learning process.
Kully Thiarai, Creative Director and CEO, LEEDS 2023Opportunities to come together as a major events sector and discuss weaknesses as well as successes are few and far between. If those organising and delivering these events are facing similar challenges year on year, what are the ways in which we can collaborate to address these and embed a stronger culture of knowledge sharing and capacity building for the next generation of major cultural programmes?
Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director, Bradford UK City of Culture 2025