A refreshed strategy which pledges commitment to enhancing Liverpool’s cultural offering over the next five years has been launched.
Culture Makes Liverpool: Liverpool Cultural Strategy 2025-2030 sets out Liverpool City Council’s ambitions to drive further local investment and continue to champion the city as a national cultural leader – supporting exceptional creative work and reaching every community.
Commissioned by Culture Liverpool, the Cultural Strategy 2025-2030 offers a ‘refresh’ of the existing 2021 cultural strategy, which was published and implemented post-Covid in 2021.
The strategy is built on a simple belief: participation and global ambition matter equally. It will be delivered through five key principles:
• Empowering arts organisations with the independence and tools to thrive
• Championing high quality across all programmes
• Investing for the long term so culture can grow with confidence
• Encouraging collaboration across sectors
• Staying locally rooted while projecting Liverpool’s voice globally.
Liverpool City Council’s 2021 cultural strategy set out a roadmap to recovery. As Liverpool led the national response to COVID-19, with its groundbreaking events research programme, the Council acted quickly to secure the livelihoods of cultural workers and their organisations through business support, amending grant conditions, and through the furlough scheme.
The 2025-2030 strategy aims to build on the progress of the last four years and pledges a renewed commitment to culture in the city. Three priority areas are retained from the 2021 strategy, which are:
- Culture strengthening our communities
- Culture celebrating our place
- Culture supporting our people.
As part of the 2025 refresh, a fourth priority area has also been added: culture growing our economy.
Following stakeholder engagement, three underpinning principles have been established for each of the priority areas, which will shape actions over the lifetime of the strategy and ensure success in delivering its vision. They are:
- Collaboration & resilience
- Equality & inclusivity
- Environmental sustainability.
Liverpool City Council will work closely with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Mayor Steve Rotheram to meet the ambitions of the wider city region.
Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Health, Wellbeing and Culture, Councillor Harry Doyle, said: “Liverpool is a city that does culture well. From hosting major international events to nurturing a rich ecosystem of cultural organisations – some with histories spanning over a century – the city continues to champion creativity.
“It gives space to emerging voices through world-class festivals, is home to the UK’s longest-running creative communities programme and proudly holds the title of the world’s first UN Accelerator City for climate change.
“Culture is the blood that runs through the city’s veins. It is a proud UNESCO City of Music, host city to Eurovision on behalf of our friends in Ukraine, and home to a constellation of art and artists creating rich and diverse content supporting a £5 billion visitor economy which in turn supports over 30,000 jobs.
“This strategy is a rallying cry for everyone who makes and loves culture in our city. It is for people across the culture sector and those who value and champion culture’s ability to make a difference as part of public health, community cohesion and education interventions.
“We are excited, we are committed, and we are ready. Here’s to the next five years.”
Claire McColgan CBE, Director, Culture Liverpool, said: “Culture Makes Liverpool. It’s the days out at the docks, the major events across the city, visits to museums and galleries, watching great shows at the theatre or in the school hall. It’s the intimate programmes and projects in pubs, cafes, and parks. It’s the paintings on gable ends, choirs in care homes. It’s the thing that can turn your life around. It’s the thing that makes us human, and it’s Liverpool’s global calling card.
“Culture is a societal good, but it is an economic one too – it drives Liverpool’s economy; it gives people great jobs and opportunities, and it makes Liverpool “the most exciting city” in the UK to visit.
“This refreshed strategy is not a change of direction but a commitment to adapting to the world as it changes – our city has been transformed by culture and in the next decade it will change again.
“Collectively, we do amazing things, and we are only getting started.”