Coventry City of Culture

Coventry City of Culture Trust

Grantholder

Spirit’s funding to the UK 2021 City of Culture supported partnership work with four community organisations to co-produce art, music and theatre.

£1,000,000

Grant amount

July 2020

Date awarded

July 2020-March 2023

Project duration

Coventry

Location

Caring Cities Evaluation Report

Project Detail

Project summary

Coventry UK City of Culture ran from May 2021 to May 2022, the second City of Culture that Spirit of 2012 funded following Hull in 2017. Spirit awarded three grants to support the Trust between 2019 – 2022. The first, an early development grant, allowed the Coventry 2021 City of Culture Trust to increase their capacity during the crucial planning phase and to test delivery approaches to community engagement. The largest grant, of £1million, enabled cultural producers to be embedded into four community organisations for creative collaborations before and during the City of Culture year. A third and final grant supported Coventry City of Culture legacy work. During the year itself the ‘Caring City’ programme successfully embedded associate producers into four community organisations to address social issues through cultural activities.

The four partner organisations for Caring City were:
• Central England Law Centre – an organisation working with individuals with experience of homelessness;
• Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre – an organisation working with asylum seekers, migrants, refugees, and LGBTQ+ people who have fled persecution;
• Grapevine – an organisation working with individuals experiencing isolation or loneliness and those with lived experience of mental health issues;
• Positive Youth Foundation – an organisation that works with young people from a range of backgrounds, including those who have experience of the criminal justice system and those who are not in education, employment, or training. Through the embedding of producers into these organisations, it was hoped to demonstrate the positive impact that arts and culture can have on the beneficiaries of the organisations, ultimately leading to improved wellbeing within cohorts and better social cohesion across the city, particularly around social connectedness and inclusion.

Producers and community members worked together to co-produce an exciting and inclusive programme of events, which took place over the duration of Coventry’s City of Culture year. Highlights included Little Amal The Walk in partnership with Good Chance Theatre, HOME arts and homelessness festival, and CVX Music Festival, which was produced by young people in the city.

The profound impact of COVID-19 on the City of Culture year meant that many of their plans had to be adjusted, scaled or delivered online.

In 2022 a final grant was awarded to support the legacy of the programme funded creative commissions, such as ‘Cosy Creative‘, which offered warm spaces, food, and creative activities in response to the cost-of-living crisis.

After the Coventry City of Culture Trust entered administration in February 2023, remaining grant funds of £25,000 were reallocated to partner organisations to continue legacy work. These were Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre (CRMC) and Grapevine. CRMG developed a five-year creative strategy for their ‘In The City’ event. With this, they aim to deliver an annual programme of arts and events which will acknowledge Refugee Week UK and amplify the voices, experiences, talents and creative skills of refugees and asylum seekers living in Coventry. Grapevine was awarded funds to partner with Coventry Urban Eden, a local Collective committed to promoting green spaces for the enjoyment and benefit of Coventry. The grant was used to support the Collective to increase green spaces, build community leadership and connect ‘green’ community groups and people across the city.

Visit The Caring City Programme Website

Impact & Learning

Key achievements

The Final Evaluation Report for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 provided insights into the programme’s impact and learnings. Achievements included:

significant impact on the local arts sector, resulting in growth and development.
substantial economic benefits, including increased tourism, hospitality and local spending.
increased community cohesion and wellbeing among residents, contributing to a stronger sense of civic pride.
Participants in the Caring City project all self-reported increased subjective wellbeing compared to the start of the programme.
The HOME festival – delivered as part of Caring City – is estimated to have deliver £3.80 in social value for every £1 that was invested.

Key learnings

Coventry was our second experience of being involved with a UK City of Culture so this influenced our Inquiry recommendations around funder collaboration, demarcated funding, governance and accountability.

Our approach to funding was similar to Hull 2017, starting with a development grant to test ideas before moving on to the full grant award. Coventry’s approach was to focus on hyper-local, co-creation throughout the year of Culture. This meant that rather than diversifying Spirit’s funding across a number of different projects, Coventry used the investment to embed producer roles in four community focused organisations to develop work with some of the most marginalised communities in Coventry. Embedding producers from a year before the start of the designation enabled them to co-create and incubate ideas with the community that could be delivered during the designation year, for example the HOME Festival.

However, the impact of COVID-19 cannot be overlooked in terms of it’s impact on both the host organisations and what the City of Culture was able to deliver, and the Caring City projects worked with significantly fewer people than they had anticipated at the time of bidding. Supporting beneficiaries was at times a challenge. The Caring City producers took on pastoral responsibilities in addition to the job of delivering the Caring City programme. Taking on this additional burden did negatively impact on the mental wellbeing of the producers and it is vital that appropriate networks and support are in place when running a programme of this nature.

Post City of Culture year, no funding had been secured to continue work with the Caring Cities beneficiaries. This meant that the projects they had developed and come to rely on, like the Choir with No Name, were in danger of finishing abruptly. It is imperative that post-event funding is secured for legacy projects, particularly when working with marginalised groups to limit the risk of damage to the outcomes from ending on a cliff edge.

over 1 million

points of engagement with audiences, derived through mixed methods, including ticket allocations and free, unticketed events and online activity. Events and activities reaching diverse audiences.

22,000

over 22,000 attended or took part in Caring Cities events

81%

of Caring City audiences stated the event they had engaged with had increased their civic pride.

78%

of survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the event increased their pride in Coventry.

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