Culture Central and the West Midlands Cultural Compacts network are working with City-REDI at the University of Birmingham to understand the finances of the cultural sector in the West Midlands region after March 2025.

Co-created by over 125 leaders from the regions Cultural Sector, Collectively Strategising Culture outlines our priorities and ambitions as a sector in the West Midlands. This plan has been designed to create a shared sense of direction, purpose and responsibility to ourselves and our stakeholders.

Upon coming to the end of his time with us as an intern for Culture Central, we caught up with Mohammed Usman to look back on some of the highlights of his invaluable work and take stock of new skills learned and how his role fitted in with the Culture Central team.

Culture Central x people make it work x Collective is a leadership programme for those traditionally excluded from senior roles in the cultural sector.

This is an invitation for you to join us to explore and support how we make change for ourselves, our peers, the cultural sector and the people and places of the West Midlands.

Sector change is core to Culture Central’s work as an organisation, and as part of this we are announcing the development of two new Leadership Associate roles in 2025, alongside announcing Dr. Anthony Ruck’s new role as Culture Central’s Chief Strategy Officer. Hear more about the role, and our planned Leadership Associate programme here.

The Activate Professional Development Grant programme has been launched to support freelancers, micro and small organisations in the West Midlands Creative and Cultural sectors to fund skills development projects and support the development of skills across the region.

Culture Central and the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) on behalf of their regional stakeholders and partners are seeking proposals for a research project to understand audience’s cultural and creative participation in the West Midlands geographic region.

The IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund is a five-year, £2.5 million national partnership programme of artist commissions inspired by the heritage of conflict, running from 2021-2026.

Through a facilitated conversation hosted with Culture Central, IWM would like to establish a commissioning opportunity in the region, in consultation with local organisations and artists.

In February 2024, Culture Central brought together over 125 people representing the leadership of our regional cultural ecology to ask each other ‘What are 'our' components of a collective, actionable, cultural strategy for the West Midlands?’ 

In this blog, Culture Central, CEO, Erica Love, summarises some of the reflections from the day as well as premiering the reflective video made of the day.

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. Our next session invites Baker Richards Chief Executive, Robin Cantrill-Fenwick to explore ‘Britain Votes: What’s About to Happen to Culture?’.

Grow is our regional mentoring scheme that works across art forms, skills and experience levels. We have already made a number of successful matches, and now we are looking for a new cohort of individuals who are keen to help shape the future of the sector by building lasting connections either as a mentor or a mentee.

As part of Culture Central’s Birmingham 2022 Festival Legacy activity, we are pleased to publish an insightful new evaluation of our Creative City Grant Legacy Development Programme. The report offers compelling evidence for investing in grassroots community arts organisations in the region.  

As well as the Culture Matters campaign, Erica Love, CEO of Culture Central shares an update about the work we have been doing both publicly and with local and national government and other regional stakeholders and with our members since the section 114 announcement.

Culture and Creativity connect to every part of our lives - whether that is listening to music, watching a film or TV programme, going to the theatre, a gallery or a concert or how you express your own creativity.

In light of many local authorities reducing funding for culture, we want everyone to know why culture matters and to celebrate culture and creativity across the West Midlands. Here’s how you can help…

Culture Central was a proud supporter and strategic adviser to Birmingham Festival 2023. We're pleased to share this evaluation of the festival demonstrating a positive impact on the city.

Through Cultivate Heritage, we want to help organisations design and pitch creative projects which explore and celebrate the heritage of communities across Birmingham and the West Midlands. In this strand of our 'Birmingham Festival 2022 Legacy programme', we are raising awareness about The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s recently launched new funding programme, National Lottery Heritage Grants, which supports heritage-focused projects.

With ‘Collectively Strategising Culture’ just over a week away, Dr. Anthony Ruck, shares some of our contexts and thinking behind the development of the summit, and introduces the main question we’ll be asking throughout the day.

In this first year of a three-year leadership programme for those traditionally excluded from the cultural sector, we recruited 20 people to learn alongside and explore how we can make change for ourselves, our peers, the sector and the people and places of the West Midlands. Meet the first cohort of Collective.

Join Culture Central, and other leaders to reflect, celebrate and strategise as a sector in the West Midlands.

For Culture Central, 2023 was a year to catalyse and drive activity focussed on our priorities of collective action, inclusivity and supporting a dynamic and collaborative cultural sector, for the benefit of the region.  In this blog CEO, Erica Love reflects on the achievements and challenges of the year for our organisation and the sector.