Developing a community cultural plan is a bit like creating a family budget — we all know we should have one, but we don’t know where to begin. Thanks to the good folks up north at the Creative City Network of Canada, communities now have a colorful and clear ”how to” resource for creating that cultural plan (for the family budget, you’re on your own).
The Cultural Planning Toolkit is a free download and a helpful web site developed for Canadian communities and government officials, but it’s flexible enough for use in any setting. Says the promotional text:
The toolkit has been developed to encourage community leaders, planners and local government staff to explore the potential of cultural planning. In particular, we hope to demonstrate how cultural resources can support the delivery of a spectrum of community priorities.
Also available is a toolkit for cultural mapping, to help communities gather and track the cultural assets and activities already at work.
Thanks, Andrew! This is SO cool! I’ve been doing cultural planning for over 20 years and so many of the resources listed here are new to me. Partly that’s because of the somewhat impermeable barrier between Canada and the US, to say nothing of Australia, where so much interesting cultural policy stuff is going on.
I really enjoyed this quote from New South Wales:
“Cultural planning is not a matter of directing people’s values and aspirations. It is about providing opportunities and removing obstacles to people’s cultural expression, creativity and sense of place.”
Thanks for opening this up!
Marc
Andrew:
Thanks for this post. Yes they’re doing great work in Canada. I found the mapping examples particularly helpful.
Jerry