Join our next WMCRU session to find out the latest policy and practice in cultural and creative placemaking, and explore how devolution and local decision making will have an impact on these areas.
Following our Placemaking conference in November, this session will be led by Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam. You can find out more about some of the topics we will cover in Dr Courage’s blog post here.
Getting involved
These meetings take place online at 9.30-10.30am on the second Tuesday of every month. If you would like to join the learning sessions, please sign up using the form linked below or email info@culturecentral.co.uk.
We aim to facilitate and accommodate all accessibility needs. Please do let us know below if you have any specific questions, needs or comments and we will do our best to meet them.
About Dr Cara Courage - Culture, Communities & Place Consultant-Director
Dr Courage is a globally renowned placemaking, arts and heritage sector leader, named in the top 10 of place-thinkers worldwide and a ‘strategy angel’ for the culture sector.
Her passion for and dedication to people and place has led her to specialise in practices that are socially-engaged, community-led, and in embedded in place, whether that place be a team, a city park, a national museum or a rural town high street, doing this as a consultant, practitioner, researcher and writer. Cara works with local and national government, network organisations, universities, cultural institutions, artists and communities, and has worked on projects from Plymouth to Basildon, to Belfast to Derby, and across the USA and Europe. Much of Cara’s work is as a Critical Friend to organisations helping them think through what they do why, how and who with.
About Dr Nicola Headlam - Multidisciplinary Researcher & Policy & Strategy Professional
Dr Headlam has 20 years of experience of comparative city governance, economic development and regeneration.
Her core research interests include: the role of public agencies in making place, specifically sub-national spatial and urban policy, and the role of leadership and partnerships in urban and spatial transformations.
As well as running the Northern Powerhouse Strategy Refresh for HMG, Nicola has experience of working successfully with policy-makers at every scale from UN/WorldBank level, European level, through UK-level Civil service and House of Commons, with the Scottish Government, English regional tiers of government and worked for 5 years within local government, focussing on economic and community development and neighbourhood change. Nicola is trained in participatory methods for community development and have also worked at community/neighbourhood level.
Nicola has have published widely on the interfaces between formal and informal governance and am an advocate for ‘multi-helix’ working where innovations sit at the intersections between research, industry, policy and community action.
About WMCRU
Set up during COVID, our regular West Midlands Culture Response Unit (WMCRU) meetings were a vital lifeline for the sector in connecting, sharing and getting practical information and advice. WMCRU has continued to be a useful space for organisations and individuals that Culture Central continues to support as a collective and collaborative space for all those that are interested in the cultural ecology of the region. In 2024-25, WMCRU meetings will explore key strategic challenges and opportunities that affect the sector and the region.