In 2025, Trinity Community Arts, St Pauls Carnival CIC, Citizens in Power and the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority will collaborate to launch a regional Citizens’ Assembly for Culture.
This bold new approach to cultural engagement will bring together citizens – people living, working or staying across the West or England – to explore how creative opportunities can be inclusive and accessible for everyone in the region.
Guided by the four pillars of the West of England’s existing cultural plan – skills, the economy, placemaking and well-being – the Assembly will create a series of recommendations that will help to define priorities for regional cultural output; what takes place and where, who is involved and how our regional offer is shaped and defined.
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THE PROJECT SO FAR:
15,000 randomly selected households across the region received invitations to take part in a unique democratic process. Hundreds of people put themselves forward for the Citizens’ Assembly, providing background information about themselves, and from those 52 people were selected, from all walks of life, to reflect the population of the West of England.
Together, they are now meeting as a Citizens’ Assembly for the West of England to answer the question: “What would culture and creativity look like in the West of England if they were for everyone?” Their discussions will help shape a Cultural Plan to be unveiled in early December 2025. This community-led plan will reflect the hopes, values, and creative vision of the region’s residents, serving as a model for citizen-led cultural policymaking across the UK.
The partnership secured further funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for the delivery of Citizens for Culture. Citizens for Culture was announced as part of the delivery plans for West of England Mayoral Combined Authority’s Culture West programme.
The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority agreed to join the partnership and support the research phase. One of the objectives of this phase was to create a series of citizens’ panels with representative groups of citizens from across the region selected by the Sortition Foundation. These citizen panels created the design principles for the Citizens’ Assembly for Culture.
£10,000 of research and development funding was secured from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) which enabled the partners to begin the initial research phase. During this period, collaborators from the cultural sector helped explore how a Citizens’ Assembly for Culture could be used to co-create a cultural delivery plan During this phase, it was recommended that the plan should incorporate the wider region.
The project was initiated by St Pauls Carnival CEO, LaToyah McAllister-Jones, and Trinity‘s CEO, Emma Harvey, who, as community leaders, began to think about how people in Bristol – particularly those from under-represented groups – could help to inform cultural plans for the city. The pair began working with David Jubb from Citizens in Power to build democracy into cultural decision-making. programme.
Monday 10 November
On Sunday 9 November, the West of England Citizens’ Assembly met in person for its final session.
Over the past two months, 52 citizens from across Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire have been meeting to answer the question:
What would culture and creativity look like in the West of England if they were for everyone?
This final meeting brought together all the ideas, discussions and evidence from previous sessions. Citizens arrived on Sunday having voted for their area and region-wide priorities developed in October and set about turning these into practical actions for a new region-wide Cultural Delivery Plan.
The day opened with a welcome and a chance for members of the Assembly to explore a gallery of materials from previous sessions, including citizens’ own notes, extracts from presentations as well as “snapshot” evidence.
The morning focused on an exploration of power. There were discussions about how change happens and who holds the power to make it happen. Citizens returned to the idea of different “Actors” or stakeholders who have different roles and relationships in the creative and cultural sector, including councils, funders, cultural organisations, communities, and creative practitioners. There were a wide range of discussions about who has power, where influence sits and how it might be shared more fairly.
The Assembly observed a two-minute silence at 11am as part of Remembrance Day.
Assembly members then reviewed insights gathered in earlier sessions before working in small groups to draft short, medium and long-term actions under their selected priorities. These covered themes such as Wellbeing, Placemaking, Skills, and Economy, building on the previous eight days of discussion about how culture can support fairer opportunities and grow stronger communities.
In the afternoon, citizens refined their ideas through a process of review and feedback, ensuring that every action was realistic and responded to the Assembly question. The day closed with all groups sharing their final action plans, followed by warm applause and thanks for the collective effort that had brought the Assembly to an exciting conclusion.
One of the next steps will be for a Citizen Oversight Panel to be established from the Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the implementation of the Assembly’s action plan and ensure the principles of citizen-led decision-making continue beyond the Assembly.
Over the coming weeks, the Assembly organisers will be in touch with all the individuals and organisations who have signed up to support the Citizens’ Assembly and its next steps with the outcomes of the Assembly to be shared at an event on Thursday 11 December, in which citizens from the Assembly will share their ideas with the Mayor and the wider cultural sector.
If you are someone who works in or around the cultural sector, there is still time to get involved and support the Citizens’ Assembly and the Cultural Delivery Plan created by citizens — to find out more or register your interest, please email david@citizensinpower.com
Monday 27 October
On Sunday, the West of England Citizens’ Assembly met online to begin drafting local priorities for culture and creativity across four Unitary Authority areas – Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
The day began with a welcome and a reflection on how far the group has come in its journey. On Sunday morning, the Assembly worked together to define the problem that is implied by the Assembly question: What would culture and creativity look like in the West of England if they were for everyone? What barriers currently prevent culture and creativity from being “for everyone”?
To help explore this, the Assembly watched an interview between LaToyah McAllister-Jones and Professor Ele Belfiore who is an academic specialising in cultural policy and democracy.
Professor Belfiore discussed the inequalities built into the UK’s cultural infrastructure. She argued that while everyone makes and experiences culture, publicly funded culture continues to privilege those who are wealthier, better educated and more likely to work within established systems. She highlighted how funding frameworks and decision-making processes reinforce these inequalities, often giving disproportionate authority to a small group of decision-makers.
Professor Belfiore asked the Assembly to think not only about access, but about agency — shifting from a model where institutions “grant” access to one where citizens have genuine power to shape cultural life and funding priorities. She also challenged the language of “hard to reach” communities, arguing that exclusion is systemic rather than personal, and that fairness requires transforming how decisions are made, not just increasing budgets.
In her words:
“Nobody owns culture and nobody controls access to it. There are differences in people’s ability to take advantage of the opportunity to be creative — and that’s the bit we need to focus on. How do you give the widest number of people the richest range of opportunities to create their own culture, rather than keep begging the gatekeepers to let some more people in?”
Following the interview, citizens met in small groups to reflect on the discussion, identifying key ideas and implications for their own areas across the region.
In the afternoon, the Assembly turned its attention to drafting place-based priorities – key issues for the four Unitary Authority areas. Working in groups, citizens generated ideas across four themes — Placemaking, Wellbeing, Skills, and Economy. Ideas were clustered, discussed and refined through facilitated exercises before each group voted on which priorities to develop further.
By the end of the day, each local group had produced a set of priorities for the future of culture and creativity in their area. The next step in the final Assembly meeting on Sunday 9th November is to create a practical Cultural Delivery Plan for the region.
Monday 20 October
This weekend the West of England Citizens’ Assembly met in Bristol for a day focused on connecting what they have learned from previous sessions and beginning to shape early ideas for recommendations.
52 citizens came together from across Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire to continue answering the question:
What would culture and creativity look like in the West of England if they were for everyone?
After two online weekends of place-based sessions exploring themes such as wellbeing, placemaking, skills and economy, this in-person day brought all the citizens together again under one roof. The focus was on linking evidence gathered so far, deepening understanding, and starting to identify priorities for the place-based priorities and the regional Cultural Plans.
The morning began with a welcome from the lead facilitators and time for citizens to reconnect, using conversation cards and small group reflections to share how they were arriving at the day.
The first session was a discussion on Culture and Activism, with James Sardi (Led by Donkeys) and Julz Davis (Curiosity Unlimited), exploring how cultural and creative practice can inspire change and civic participation. The conversation used a “fishbowl” format, encouraging participation, listening and reflection across the room.
This was followed by a short presentation from Rachael Fagan (Equity), who shared insights into the experiences of freelancers and performers, and the role of the union in supporting fair pay and representation. Citizens then worked in groups to reflect on what they had heard and to feed back key insights to the room.
After lunch, the Assembly moved into a series of interactive and deliberative activities. Citizens took part in a creative “snapshot scavenger hunt” to explore new evidence on topics such as education, inclusion, heritage, and volunteering.
The afternoon concluded with a World Café-style workshop, in which citizens discussed the four pillars of the existing West of England Cultural Plan – Wellbeing, Placemaking, Cultural and Creative Skills, and Creative Freelancers, Start-Ups and SMEs (the creative economy). Citizens explored key challenges, possible actions, and what progress might look like on issues they believe are most important.
Facilitators helped capture ideas and observations, which will now be used to support the next stage of the Assembly — identifying draft recommendations for both local and regional Cultural Plans.
The next Assembly day will be on Sunday 26 October, when citizens will work together on place-based priorities for the four areas engaged with this Citizens’ Assembly.
