Creating Hampshire
A Draft Strategic Plan for Arts and Museums 2012-2016

Executive Summary

Culture is the expression of ideas, stories and voices on a local, national and international stage that inspires Hampshire people to explore and grow confidence in their own identity. It is the creative heartbeat of Hampshire. From culture grows our individual ability to innovate, invent, understand and enjoy the world around us.

The real benefits to society are both economic and social. A strong and vibrant cultural offer supports inward investment from tourism. It helps to create an attractive living environment which draws in businesses and a professional working population. It inspires local people of all ages and backgrounds to discover their skills and passions and focus these into valuable abilities. Every so often, culture creates opportunities for real genius. Hampshire County Council's role, with the invaluable support of its district and borough council partners, is to champion an environment which enables this cultural creativity to flourish and realize it's economic and social benefits. Arts and museums are a vital ingredient in this cultural mix and this draft Strategic Plan 2012-16 outlines the role it is proposed that HCC should play as a strategic authority.

The HCC Arts and Museums Service aims to deliver and enable an innovative, high quality cultural offer of national standing that involves and inspires the people who live, work and spend time in Hampshire.  In terms of an ongoing mission or vision it seeks to provide access to the County’s museum collections, creative talent and quality artistic experiences for a wide range of users and audiences as part of an integrated cultural offer.

These users and audiences are drawn from across the 1.3 million local residents and 31 million visitors to the county each year. During 2010/11 over 600,000 people participated in the cultural offer provided directly by HCC Arts and Museums alone, with many thousands more involved through the wider arts and heritage offer that HCC supports with grant aid.  

This draft plan sets out an ambitious and bold approach which, if achieved, will enable this work with local and visiting audiences to continue and flourish within the context of diminishing public sector budgets. It builds upon the great achievements already delivered during the last decade with partnership support from the district and borough councils and strategic funding from national government via the Renaissance and Find Your Talent schemes. It sets out the wider corporate, regional and national framework looking forward which will help shape HCC Arts and Museums activity over the next five to ten years.

The draft Plan recognizes and addresses the financial savings which will need to be made as an outcome of the October 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, both in terms of local and national government sources. Given the scale of these reductions, it will be necessary to do things differently, and this draft Plan adopts a creative approach to finding solutions that minimize the impact on public service. These may not be the easiest options to deliver in the short-term and will rely on strong partnership support but they will fundamentally enhance sustainability and public benefit in the medium to long-term.

In summary the draft Plan proposes the delivery of three integrated elements of provision:

• Flagships – both directly delivered and grant-aided – that have regional and national programme reach and attract both local and visiting audiences
• Arts and Museums in the Community – that encourage and facilitate participation by local residents and develop activities in support of engaging visitors in the local community economy.
• Centralised Specialist Services – that support both the Flagship and Community elements by efficiently delivering high quality collections stewardship, exhibitions and business development services of a national professional standard

It is also proposed that HCC Arts and Museums Service continues to develop an ‘enterprise culture’ which enhances its ability to deliver customer-focused services, generate income and secure external investment opportunities to support future delivery. This work incorporates a close examination of governance options, including the potential for a wider Hampshire-Solent solution that maximises the collective economic and social impact of the rich and diverse cultural offer in this internationally significant geographical area.