£125m of investment for six devolved English regions
At the Labour Party Conference, the UK Government has announcement £25 million over three years for six mayoral regions - a significant boost for creative industries. Beyond the headline, the question for us at Culture Commons is: how does this investment advance the case for cultural devolution?
The Headlines
The new Creative Places Growth Fund will help strengthen the creative industries across England.
The details you need to know:
Total investment: £25 million per region, spread over three years (from 2026 onwards).
Regions receiving funding:
Greater Manchester
Liverpool City Region
North East
West of England
West Midlands
West Yorkshire
Delivery model: Funds allocated directly to Mayoral Combined Authorities, giving regions control over investment decisions.
Support for smaller businesses: An additional £8 million will be distributed through grants of £20,000–£140,000 to over 100 micro, small and medium creative enterprises across 12 other regions.
Policy principles reflected: Subsidiarity, place-based and long-term investment, and support across the creative ecosystem — principles championed by Culture Commons.
Devolution in Action
Culture Commons’ open policy development programme on cultural devolution has made the case that cultural investment must be not just redistributed, but also restructured.
Alongside our 30 programme partners, we argue that: investments should be made closer to communities; funding should be longer-term and “place first”; and governance should be inclusive, participatory, and accountable.
Encouragingly, we can see some of these principles beginning to be reflected in this new devolved funding package:
Subsidiarity and local decision-making: By routing money through Mayoral Combined Authorities, this new fund embraces our principle that decisions should sit closer to communities, with regional leaders empowered to design and deliver cultural investment for their own areas.
Place-based and long-term investment: The three-year horizon signals a shift away from short-termism, enabling regions to plan strategically and embed sustainable cultural growth. Of course, we think the time horizons could go further, but his is an encouraging start.
Support across the ecosystem: The combination of large regional allocations and smaller enterprise grants mirrors our call for investment that supports both anchor institutions and the pipeline of micro, small and medium creative enterprises to irrigate the ecosystem effectively.
Integration with economic strategy: Positioning creative industries within broader regional industrial strategies reflects our recommendation that culture and creativity be treated as a central driver of local economic and social infrastructure.
Where the Gaps Remain
The scheme stops short of fully realising the full framework we proposed:
Inclusive governance: There is no requirement for regional Culture Forums or other participatory structures to ensure that communities, civil society and creative workers have a meaningful voice in decision-making. There could be opportunities for Cultural Compacts, Neighbourhood Boards (recently announced as being central to the Pride in Place funding also recently announced) or Citizens’ Assemblies to participate in decision making.
Bundled, devolved settlements: This is still a top-down allocation from Whitehall based on their own prioritisations, not the type of multi-year, pooled settlement we’ve proposed through vanguard cultural devolution deals set by regional governments.
Data and accountability: There is no explicit provision for building the cultural data infrastructures we’ve argued is essential to measure impact and support learning across regions.
A Potential Turning Point
This new funding shows that the principles we have long championed — subsidiarity, place-based investment, and ecosystem-wide support — are beginning to shape national cultural policy. But for this to spark real structural change, we can go even further: embedding participatory governance, devolving multi-programme settlements, and building stronger cultural data capacities.
If regions grasp this opportunity to use the funding as a testbed for advanced cultural devolution models, the Creative Places Growth Fund could become more than a welcome investment - it could be the start of a new chapter in cultural policy, one that delivers on the vision set out in our The Future of Cultural Devolution in the UK programme.
At Culture Commons, we will continue to shine a light on how this funding unfolds across the six regions and what lessons can be learned. If delivered well, it could open the door to the next phase of cultural devolution in the UK. Our commitment remains clear: to help shape a future where cultural policy is rooted in local voices, long-term investment, and stronger, fairer systems of governance.
