Culture Strategy Action Group - Meeting 1

The Culture Strategy Action Group is a direct response to the first outcome of the Culture Strategy Activation plan, which is: “A more equitable, collective leadership model is established leading to a better connected and coordinated culture sector”. As a group of people experienced in making culture happen every day, the CSAG will focus on what it can achieve collectively to strengthen and connect Sheffield’s cultural sector, whilst also helping to deliver the aims of the Culture Strategy.

On Thursday 18th September a group of Sheffield creatives gathered at Utopia Theatre to help deliver the city’s new cultural vision. This is a new formation of people, brought together to create a new type of collaborative leadership to support the delivery of the Sheffield Culture Strategy. The Culture Strategy Action Group comprises 17 individuals from across the city, selected for their skills, knowledge of different artforms, and commitment to collaborative leadership.

Some have deep community knowledge or lived experience of barriers to participation, others have pioneered city-wide initiatives, and a few have experience of working in Sheffield's formal cultural institutions. The skills and the connections each person brings will be valuable over the next three years as we work together to deliver a thriving, inclusive and diverse cultural sector with opportunities for creative expression and collaboration at all levels.

In this first session, we started to get to know each other, expressed our hopes and fears for the group, and asked questions. For this session we mainly shared our perspectives about how we think we should work as a group, how we can best represent our colleagues and communities, and how we will be accountable. We learned what we each did and how we were connected to culture in Sheffield, and what we hope to achieve as a collective. We don't have all the answers yet, but we're looking forward to meeting again in November to get into the detail.

We left feeling ‘the right amount of hopeful’. We have fears: about how we'll take action, how we'll communicate what we're doing, how we'll share wider perspectives, and that we don't want to be gatekeepers. But we also have hopes: we're optimistic, we feel more connected to each other, we're grateful for the opportunity, and we're excited by the potential and richness of what we’ve heard. We are leaving full of questions, but also hope for the future.

You can meet the group here!