South East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

A taster of current projects and areas of work

RES Implementation Plan

Following an extensive consultation across the region the new RES was launched in October 2006.

Since then SEEDA have been working on the development of the Implementation Plan of the RES. In January 2007 an Implementation Plan Framework will be released which will outline the key challenges and priorities for the implementation of the RES, as well as identifying the dependencies and synergies within the target and actions in the RES and how these relate to the cross-cutting themes. The document will also sets out the partners that will need to be brought together to develop specific action plans for each RES Target. Work on developing the action plans for the Target will take place through February and early March 2007, with the final plan being completed for April 2007. Following this the Implementation Plan will undergo a formal twelve week Strategic Environmental Assessment consultation. Feedback from the consultation will be incorporated into the final Implementation Plan which will be released by the end of July 2007.

Culture and the Evidence Base

Culture lies at the heart of successful places, successful economies, successful communities. It gives people opportunities to learn skills, to express their identities, and to share experiences. It gives them a sense of community and a stake in the places where they live. Places which are seen as having a strong cultural identity – London, Glasgow, Manchester, for example – are also seen as successful and attractive to the skilled and enterprising as places to live in, work in, visit, and invest in.

These issues were addressed by the South East England Regional Assembly's Select Committee on Culture and Regeneration, which reported in March 2003. Among the pieces of evidence which the Select Committee drew on was an Economic Impact Study for Creative and Cultural Industries in South East England, jointly published by the South East England Regional Development Agency and the South East England Cultural Consortium in July 2002. This study had assessed the direct economic impact of businesses in the creative and cultural sectors in terms of employment, output, and contribution to business start-ups. Beyond this, it drew attention to the sector's role as steward and manager of knowledge content, with a huge, but largely unexploited, economic value. It referred to the sector's role in building skills which create value across many sectors of the economy, its impact on the quality of life of a community, on the education and ambition of individuals, and on the sustainability of the natural and built environment.

The Select Committee commented that it is vital that cultural projects are not marginalised because their outputs are more difficult to demonstrate, and recommended that SEEDA should develop common assessment, evaluation and monitoring processes with the cultural agencies that capture the 'soft' as well as the 'hard' benefits of interventions.

In reply, SEEDA undertook to aim to improve the evidence base for bringing the cultural dividend into play when decisions are taken. This would build a better understanding of how cultural activity feeds into industry supply chains, create a better climate for inward investment, and increase the attraction of the region to skilled and enterprising individuals and their families. SEEDA would also seek to establish a model, together with the cultural agencies, for assessing the value of cultural inputs to projects and strategies for regeneration, social inclusion, and other objectives, and the way in which the cultural dimension of these activities contributes to the social and economic benefits achieved.

The recently published Regional Economic Strategy for South East England, 2006-2016, is built around three objectives, Global Competitiveness – investing in success, Smart Growth – lifting underperformance, and Sustainable Prosperity – supporting quality of life. Culture is seen as a cross-cutting theme, with the goal of promoting culture as an economic catalyst in developing underperforming areas and growth poles in all economic areas of the South East, including Growth Areas, the Coastal Towns, and the Diamonds for Investment and Growth. Within these areas, culture is seen as contributing to actions addressing the themes of Enterprise, Innovation and Creativity, Skills, Competition and Business Regulation, Transport and Physical Development, Employment, and Sustainable Prosperity.

Culture and Development

The culture team, along with our partners will be ensuring that culture is a valid part of the planning process and SE Plan. We work closely with the area teams and other divisions in SEEDA on Area Investment Frameworks, growth areas, capital projects and new developments and will be advocating the part culture can play in the master planning process.

Thames Gateway

SEEDA recognises the importance of culture to achieving sustainable regeneration and growth in Thames Gateway North Kent. We have recently appointed consultants Agenda UK helping to build culture into this major regeneration project. Supported by us, they are working with the regional cultural agencies in the South East to develop the cultural sector contribution to this Growth Area.

Over the past year this partnership of cultural agencies, with the backing of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), has developed a 'culture toolkit' so that arts, sports, libraries, tourism, museums, archives, heritage and other cultural provision fulfil their potential in the renaissance of North Kent. Now Agenda UK will be taking the work forward – to create an environment where existing cultural assets thrive and new opportunities are created to meet the needs of all communities in a sustainable way.

Cultural Learning Curve

The Cultural Learning Curve Document - This publication aims to set the context for the joint work between the SEEDA, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Culture South East in developing the cultural skills agenda in the region.

Aims: Culture can help improve individuals to engage and re-engage with earning; the conference will focus on showing how culture can engage people of all ages in learning; it would cover all parts of the 'lifecycle' from pre-school, school, 14-19 year olds, preparation for the workforce, and older people.

Key messages for the conference will be:

• Culture provides a gateway to learning for everyone throughout their lives, through libraries, volunteering, media etc.
• Culture is a key medium to reach the most disadvantaged individuals and communities
• There is a large workforce involved in the cultural and creative industries which needs to be skilled up to take full advantage of being a key knowledge economy and to contribute to increasing productivity.
• A cultural flavour to informal learning contributes to the success of educational attainment, boosts creativity and innovation and aids the acquisition of social and community skills.

Art Plus - www.artscouncil.org.uk

Aims and objectives: Set up in 2003, Art Plus is a competitive award scheme led by Arts Council England, South East and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) which seeks to improve our environment - whether streets, schools or other public spaces – by including the creativity of artists in their design. It is an awards scheme for ideas for innovative public art projects that could take place in the South East.

Two types of awards are awarded, organisational awards and artists' awards. Each successful scheme is awarded a development award to develop their scheme to a practical level. Final awards are granted to those schemes judged to have reached an excellent level.

There have been 3 rounds of awards, 2004-5, 2005-6 and 2006-7.

For artists the benefits are:

• Acquisition of new (creative and personal development) skills
• Identification of new professional development opportunities (also formal or informal educational activity and/or links with local education providers such as University or Further Education Colleges)
• Improved capacity to manage budgets and of delivering on target and, more generally, an ability to plan, steer, guide and complete a project
• Improved ability to market projects
• New and innovative ways of working in public art practice
• Development of new tools for consultation and the involvement of local communities
• Increased awareness of the role artists play in both the regeneration of places and communities
• Increased confidence in their own work and in negotiating the presentation of that work in the public realm
• Improvement in the artists' ability to work in teams and to broker new relationships with organisations new to public art (or the arts in general). Related to this is also a capacity to identify sources of funding for future projects

Evaluation: An evaluation of the entire programme will be carried out post 2009 when the projects have finished. Lessons from the evaluation will need to be built into future SEEDA and Arts Council policy. A process for feeding into this evaluation is currently being set up to ensure that the evidence is available.

Sports Events Strategy

SEEDA working with Sport England, Culture South East and Tourism South East formed a partnership to take forward the major sports events strategy. Strategic Leisure prepared the framework for the Region and a Major Sports Events Manager was appointed to implement the strategy.

The research showed that major sports events don't just attract more business and leisure visitors to the region. They also help raise the profile of the regional offer, helping to attract inward investors, making the South East special and distinctive. The study also demonstrated that the people of the South East benefit economically

and socially and major sports events contribute significantly to the quality of life in the South East.

The aim of this Strategy is to identify the ways in which major sports events can generate the maximum benefits for the Region, expressed in terms of the goals set for the agencies in the partnership.

By working strategically and in partnership SEEDA can help capitalise on major sports events across the region. This will create greater potential to boost economic growth making the South East a competitive, professional and desirable destination for hosting sports events.

A portfolio approach to events is taken as any one event will not provide all the agencies in the partnership with all the outcomes they are seeking. This approach to the development and support of events means that different organisations may support and encourage different events, as they are primarily focussed on different benefits and outcomes.

Partners to this Strategy will consider supporting or assisting events that demonstrate one or more of the following features:

• Are consistent with the content of this Strategy
• Achieve one or more of the benefits required by their own organisation and by other partners to
• this Strategy in a cost effective manner
• Sport England require a sports development legacy that encourages participation in sport and activity
• Require minimal infrastructure investment or which are linked to planned infrastructure upgrades
• Provide a boost to the economy during off peak periods to maximise economic benefit
• Deliver a genuine economic return on investment
• Deliver a range of social returns that benefit a community directly or indirectly
• Engender a sense of civic pride amongst local residents
• Achieve a high media profile domestically and internationally
• Showcase the South East and its attributes in a positive manner
• Develop transferable skills amongst volunteers, coaches, officials and other participants
• Are major international sports events with high kudos and wide appeal
• Have the potential to become regular features of the South East sporting calendar
• Are available deliverable within the regional 'hard' and 'soft' regional infrastructure

In particular SEEDA wishes to see sports events supporting the Regional Economic Strategy objectives and link closely with the South East plan for 2012.

Find out more about our partners at:

• Visit www.industry.visitsoutheastengland.com
• Visit www.sportengland.org/southeast_index
• Visit www.culturesoutheast.org.uk

Regional Cultural Observatory - www.seco.org.uk

What the Southeast Cultural Observatory is: The Southeast Cultural Observatory (SECO) is a supported web-based resource that aims to help people maximise the impact of cultural activity in the South East through providing them with the intelligence that will enable them to make the case for culture. It does this by collating, interpreting and presenting information that helps people to:

• understand how culture contributes positively to themes such as regeneration, economic development, learning, health and social inclusion
• make a killer case for culture
• discover opportunities to influence local, regional and national policy

Who is SECO for? The Southeast Cultural Observatory is for people who understand the positive impact that culture can have on local and regional objectives and want to find out more. SECO aims to help people who:

• want to show a potential project partner or funder how cultural activity contributes to the partner's objectives
• work in local or regional governance and want to embed cultural activity across all local or regional governance activities
• are lobbying regional or national government to include cultural activity in its policies
• want an understanding of how sectors like health, learning and skills and local government work

What's on SECO?

• Guides to the cultural sectors in the South East
• Guides to local government, sustainable communities, social enterprise, learning and skills and neighbourhood renewal. More guides will be available soon.
• A searchable eLibrary, which allows you to search across cultural and non-cultural themes.
• Access to research, intelligence, case studies and toolkits

SECO is continually developed.

Who is behind SECO?

• SECO is funded for three years from July 2005 by Culture South East, SEEDA, The Arts Council, South East, Sport England, South East and Museums Libraries and Archives, South East. The SECO manager is employed by Culture South East. SECO works closely with SEE-In and is a member of the South East Regional Intelligence Network
• Governance: SECO has a steering group which meets quarterly. Its membership is drawn from the cultural agencies, Culture South East, SEEDA and local government. SECO also has a Knowledge Team, from which it draws expert comment and ideas in relation to site content.
• SECO's manager is Louise Etheridge who works in SEEDA's culture team. She also sits on the Department of Culture, Media and Sports national Research Group and is vice-chair of the Regional Cultural Consortium's Research Network. Her number is 07813 160623 and email is l.etheridge@culturesoutheast.org.uk.

The Clore Leadership Programme - www.cloreleadership.org

This programme is designed to help develop the knowledge, skills, networks and experience of potential leaders across a wide range of cultural activities. This includes the visual and performing arts, film, heritage, museums, libraries and archives, creative and cultural industries and cultural policy and administration. Twenty-five Fellowships are offered a year to exceptional individuals who are either working within the cultural sector, or are working outside it and can demonstrate a knowledge, understanding and passion for culture.

South East Audiovisual Commercial Development Study

Background: The South East Audiovisual Collections Commercial Development Study, managed by MLA South East, made significant progress in identifying and developing a range of business models to test the commercial potential of partnerships between audiovisual collections and other providers. The project proposed to SEEDA was to develop 'real life' comparable business models for commercial exploitation of the AV material.

The SEEDA Project: SEEDA agreed to fund the capital investment required to make a partnership between Wessex Film and Sound Archives (WFSA – a major public sector audiovisual archive in the South East) and Moving Image Communications (MIC - a commercial image library with national and international clients) viable. The partnership involves MIC in work to make the WFSA material sellable through clips on its website, through dedicated marketing, through management, and promotion.

The capital investment covered:

• Preparation of audiovisual material to make it market ready – tele-cine, logging and digitisation, detailed short-listing, production of clips for website sales
• One off establishment, marketing, sales and management costs – providing professional interface between the WFSA material and MIC's clients, web hosting, launch marketing

Although capital investment was required for year one, the project runs for three years from the point at which WFSA material was launched on the MIC site (26 th September 2006). No further investment will be required after year one as the contract will be funded by a 50:50 split on income from clip sales between WFSA and MIC.

Outcomes: The following outcomes will be delivered to SEEDA in report form after one full year tracking sales activity, due in October 2007.

• Production and testing of a 'real life' business model including anticipated revenue returns.
• Analysis of this business model compared to other commercial case studies.
• Identification of potential scalability of the model for other SE audiovisual archives.
• National and regional dissemination of results.

Status as at February 2007: The material can be viewed on the Moving Image Communications website: www.milibrary.com/html/collections.html

Under the terms of contract MIC are required to report income (ie sales of clips) versus expenditure every six months which will allow us to track success and determine whether the model has wider applicability as a viable business case. The first of these reports is due at the end of March 2007.