In 2025, the West of England will launch its first-ever Citizens’ Assembly for Culture, a unique opportunity for citizens to create a region-wide Cultural Delivery Plan. Citizens from across Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire will come together to explore the question:

“What would culture and creativity look like in the West of England if they were for everyone?”

To ensure the Assembly is built on balanced, inclusive, and engaging evidence, we’re seeking up to 12 Advisory Panel members to help shape the materials and experiences Assembly members will engage with.

We’re looking for people with a range of perspectives, whether through lived experience, cultural expertise, policy knowledge, or community representation. You don’t need to work in the cultural sector to apply – we’re especially keen to hear from people who have often been excluded from cultural decision-making.

 

About the role

As an Advisory Panel member, you’ll:

• Select information and cultural experiences for assembly members to explore, making sure that this evidence is fair, diverse, and accessible
• Include a mix of traditional evidence formats (slides, reports, presentations) and immersive experiences (cultural experiences, workshops, performances) ensuring that evidence is accessible to all participants, considering literacy levels, neurodiversity, and recommending translation where necessary​
• Represent the cultural needs and interests of the four Unitary Authority areas, which are South Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset, and structure evidence around the four pillars of the existing West of England Cultural Plan.

 

Panel members will meet online (3-5 times) between April and June 2025.

 

Payment

We’re looking for people who can both undertake the role as part of their current salaried positions, and people who are unsalaried. Freelancers and those without salaried positions will receive a £750 fee.

 

How to apply

If you’re passionate about shaping a citizen-led approach to culture, we’d love to hear from you! Please read a full description of the role here.

Submit your application via this form by 5pm, 26 March 2025 or upload an audio/video application (up to 5 minutes) via the form. If you have access needs, please contact anjali@citizensforculture.info.

 

Read a full description of the role here.

Everyone Here is a new community arts programme based in West Cumbria that champions the belief that creativity belongs to everyone. Through its citizen-led approach, the programme aims to diversify both participation and decision-making in cultural events while building upon existing creative initiatives in the region.

We spoke to Unique Spencer, Director of Access for Everyone Here, to find out a little more about the programme:

 

Tell us a bit about your work in the creative/cultural sector and what drew you to this field:

I trained as an actress but was drawn to how people without an arts background engage with culture. I began working with disabled and neurodiverse actors, which exposed social barriers that didn’t need to exist. This led me to explore how we can give everyone the “keys” to creativity. Now, as Director of Access for Everyone Here in West Cumbria, I lead “Jury for Joy” a citizens’ assembly putting cultural decisions back into the hands of the people.

 

What do you feel are some of the current challenges within the creative and cultural sector and how would you suggest these could be addressed?

I feel some of the current challenges in the sector are:

Who is in leadership and why: Giving people an opportunity to work alongside people who have a seat at the table and let them observe, learn and challenge them in real time can make a difference. For those people who sit at the top to hand the keys over for real change.

Who makes decisions for communities that are underrepresented: You can’t represent a community you know nothing about, you have to let the people lead or you are a dictator you have to keep challenging your ways of working and ask if this serves the people you are trying to lead.

Access to the arts is not accessible: You have to make changes to society and not the person, work from the social model of disability and then you have access.

 

Can you tell us about the Jury for Joy in West Cumbria?

Jury for Joy is our long-term citizens’ jury for West Cumbria about art and creativity.

The jury is made up of a group of people selected by lottery, who broadly represent the entire community. They learn about issues, discuss them with one another, and make decisions about what should happen and how things should change.

We’re inviting people from across West Cumbria to sign up and help make decisions on how money should be spent on creative activity where they live.

Jury for Joy invites all of us to imagine a future where everyone’s voice matters, where creativity thrives in every corner, and where joy is something we can create and enjoy together.

 

How do you think the creative sector could benefit from a citizens’ jury or other democratic decision-making tools?

You create a new audience you make people feel seen and heard. You give the next generation the hope, passion and faith to be a part of culture and creativity. We keep the industry alive and we make it engaging, fun and exciting for all. We can use it as a breeding ground to have hard conversations to let people have ownership of themselves. You bring back humanity to the core of who we are.

 

What are your thoughts on the upcoming Citizens’ Assembly for Culture in the West of England?

If you don’t talk the language of the people that you are trying to attract you will create the same old model of hierarchy. Being brave and believing in Change is the only way we can move forward. Giving the people back the power will make them want to engage. This is a revolution and I’m here for it every step of the way.

 

Anything else you would like to add?

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Davis.

 

About Unique Spencer

Unique’s work is characterised by a deep commitment to accessibility and creativity. They believe that art should be inclusive, allowing everyone to participate and experience joy trough innovative approaches. Unique’s contributions to the field of creative direction and accessibility have set new standards for inclusivity.

 

Find out more about Everyone Here: https://everyonehere.org/

We recently attended the Festival of Flourishing Regions 2025 (#FoFR2025).  The Festival aims to promote and celebrate the role that cities and regions play in the economy and prosperity of the country and look at how regions can drive the growth agenda of the government. Emma Harvey, CEO of Trinity Community Arts and a key partner Citizens for Culture, blogged about attending:

“At the heart of this week’s Festival of Flourishing Regions 2025 (#FoFR2025) at the Watershed was a recurring question: Who truly benefits from growth? Economic expansion and large-scale developments continue to bypass existing communities, leaving people clinging desperately to their sense of place, fearful of disruption. Nimby-naysayers, blocking our prosperity.

Bristol City Council leader Tony Dyer began with early reflections – and perhaps a warning – about the risks of growth without stability and prosperity without equity. He highlighted the need to shift toward preventative public services that operate proactively rather than merely reacting to crises. This was echoed by experiences of Stephen Peacock, the leader of the Combined Authority, who highlighted the real pressures of escalating expenditure on temporary accommodation hindering efforts to implement permanent solutions. 

Palie Smart from the University of Bristol captured a key theme: The power of powerful relationships… only when we get together can we tackle complex challenges. But, how do we come together to build a vision for region that flourishes for us all when so many are paralysed by the continual threat of precariousness? As Andy Westwood surmised, people are putting more in than they’re getting out”. Why should any of us care about an empty promise of productivity when wealth accumulates at the top while wages stagnate in the middle and those at the bottom are propped up by a living wage that can’t keep pace with an out of control rental market? Why should  I care who’s in charge if power remains centralised and only deepens the majority’s sense of powerlessness? As Arrested Development’s lyrics go, the word ‘cope’ and the word ‘change’ is directly opposite, not the same. 

If we want real progress, we need to move beyond survival and towards meaningful transformation. 

Iain Gray spoke about the need for innovation and the importance of setting clear priorities and pursuing them ruthlessly and talked fondly of memories of the 2012 Olympics. While many remember this fondly for artistic ceremonies celebrating the best of British culture, I can’t help but think about what that ruthlessness looked like in reality; the permanent loss of century-old  covenanted land, the Manor Gardens allotments. I think about that and wonder, more than a decade on, do people still feel the benefits of that cement walkway in the same way as the communal land it replaced?

This tension between social mobility, productivity and asset-based community development ran through many discussions. Harriet Fear touched on the power of new ideas in old buildings with an example of a startup thriving in a former pigsty. It was a reminder that we overlook the value of what we already have we lose those in unusual corners and crevices where minds connect, imaginations are ignited and ideas are formed.  

From public infrastructure projects, the much lambasted HS2 to regional funding pots and the constant churn of central government infrastructure funding pots locked needlessly to short-term political cycles. That churn of out with the old in with the new. 14 growth strategies in 16 years. Yet here we are, no closer to a solution that works for everyone.

Jim O’Neill places some of that blame at the foot of the merciless 247 news cycle that reduces everything to 15 seconds of infamy. As does former Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees who talked of the toxic trolling limiting our ability to attract and keep people even wanting to work in a political space. 

With so much focus on productivity centred around, aerospace, tech, and defence, what actually makes a city like Bristol ‘sticky’ place people want to call home? It’s all about food and friends and gigs and carnivals and sound systems and heritage, and culture and and and…yet if it wasn’t for Katy Shaw who said, “culture isn’t an add-on—it’s intrinsic to regional growth strategies”, you’d be forgiven for thinking our route to happier healthier lives could be delivered by chips and wings and missile nose cones.

When mulling over our collective lot, we can all be too good at talking about what we don’t have. The poverty of capacity, devolved funding for culture that still remains fragmented, or the challenges in land use, where freehold sites are given away for developments never realised. Using your powers wisely, has never been more important. This tied directly into Trinity’s work with partners to deliver Roots of Resilience, which explores how community buildings can be leveraged by the voluntary sector to safeguard spaces, creating a holistic approach that blends the old with the new. 

If we start from a place of what we do have – our wealth of talent, ideas skills, assets – as investment decisions shift to combined authorities – we can try to ensure that investment isn’t just about top-down economic development but enables communities to shape their own futures. As Nick Pearce spoke of the urgent need to structure deliberative democratic processes as part of these devolved regions – ensuring citizens have a direct say in how their regions evolve – I was bouncing out my seat ready to shout about our work to deliver the first regional Citizens’ Assembly for Culture, in September 2025 – giving people a stake in shaping the future of devolved investment in the creative and cultural industries.

In a fractured system where few understand how regional authorities operate, John Denham noted, rarely do we get a chance to sit down and ask, what do we have in common? Citizens for Culture is an opportunity to do just that – in a region of rural and urban wealth and deprivation how do we build a shared identity, weaving and crafting an authentic narrative to define our place in the world.

This isn’t about growth. It’s about betterment. Creating places where people can hope for more than just to survive. Where economic strategies don’t just serve a privileged few but create lasting, equitable prosperity. 

The Festival of Flourishing Regions made it clear: the power to shape our future exists, but only if we have the courage to grab hold of it.”

Emma Harvey, CEO Trinity Community Arts

#FoFR2025