The Sutton Trust’s Elitist Britain 2025 report paints a sobering picture of who holds power and influence across UK society. For those working in the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem, the findings underline the urgency of ensuring our fields are genuinely open to all – not just the privileged few.

Dr James Hickson (Heseltine Institute) and Dr Jack Newman (University of Bristol) — both contributors to our flagship Future of Cultural Decision Making in the UK programme — have published a new article in The Political Quarterly. The piece digs into how different “justifications” for devolution often pull against each other, leaving ambiguity and frustration in their wake. We consider the potential implications for culture, creativity and heritage.

Culture Commons’ influential report on Creative Improvement Districts (2022) has been cited by researchers from the University of Manchester and included in a new paper published in City, Culture and Society.

Launch of a review of the history of devolution and the UK's creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem.

Culture Commons publishes a new Insight Paper laying out a variety of perspectives from some of the UK’s largest Grant Giving Bodies shared at a special roundtable as part of a major open policy development programme exploring cultural devolution.

Today we publish a new Discussion Paper by Professor Leila Jancovich (University of Leeds), Dr Lucrezia Gigante (Culture Commons) and Dr Claire Burnill-Maier (Culture Commons) that unpacks some of the main models that have supported people to participate in decision making about the cultural life of their local area.

Culture Commons Director Trevor MacFarlane FRSA attends the launch of ‘Pandemic Culture: The Impact of Covid-19 in the UK Cultural Sector and Implications’ - a book he contributed a chapter to covering the UK's national policy response.

Over the last nine months, the Culture Commons team has been working closely with leading universities and research institutions across the UK to develop new research exploring devolution and increased local decision making as part of a major four-nations open policy development programme. Today we make all that research publicly available to uphold out commitment to open and transparent policy making.

We share a readout from a high-level meeting with local and combined authorities officers across England exploring how ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ tier authorities already collaborate to support the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem in their regions.

Director of Culture Commons, Trevor MacFarlane contributes to a new book series exploring how the creative, cultural and heritage ecosystem responded to the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022.