Cork City Council Arts Strategy 2022-2026

Policy context

Cork City Council’s Arts and Culture Strategy sits within and responds to a number of national and local policy frameworks and plans as follows:

With specific regard to arts and culture, this strategy aligns with and seeks to advance the following national strategies and policies:

Culture 2025 is the Government’s framework policy for culture. It aims to ‘enrich the lives of everyone through engagement in the cultural life of the nation’, and to ‘create opportunities for increased citizen participation.’ Making Great Art Work (2016-2025) , the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy, which sets out priorities focusing on the artist, public engagement, investment, spatial and demographic planning and capacity development. The Arts Council’s Equality, Human Rights and Diversity Policy which ‘strives to respect, support and ensure the inclusion of all voices and cultures that make up Ireland today, from all sections of society, from existing and new communities, and from all social backgrounds, ethnicities and traditions.’ The Arts Council’s Paying the Artist Policy promoting ‘equitable and fair remuneration and contracting within the arts’.

Project Ireland 2040 , published in 2018, is a 116 billion National Planning Framework which aims to guide Ireland’s development in the next two decades. It identifies ‘Culture, Heritage and Sport’ as one of its ten Strategic Investment Priorities, particularly in relation to improving quality of life and adding to a sense of place. The Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy (RSES) for the Southern Region of Ireland defines the strategic regional development framework to implement Project Ireland 2040 at the regional tier of government. It supports the achievement of balanced regional development across the nine counties and three cities which make up the Southern Region. Cork City Council’s Development Plan (2022 – 2028) currently in draft form, sets out how Cork City will grow and develop over the next six years and continue to be an innovative, vibrant and healthy city, consistent with the RSES, national policy and the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Arts Council’s Place, Space and People Policy , a new framework for socio-spatial equity in the arts presenting a vision ‘for a country where everyone has the opportunity to create, engage with, participate in and enjoy the arts and culture, regardless of who they are or where they live and work’. Creative Ireland , the all-of-Government creativity and well-being programme will now run until 2027. In this extended period of the programme it will organise its work around five pillars: Creative Youth, Creative Communities, Creativity Health and Well-being, Creative Climate Action and Sustainability, Creative Industries. Each local authority will develop and publish a local Creative Ireland strategy for the period 2023 – 2027.

Cork City Local Economic and Community Plan (LECP) is an integrated plan to guide the development of Cork City from an economic, community, cultural, sporting and recreation perspective. The current plan 2022 – 2027 is pending. We attend to all other Council strategies, as appropriate, on an on- going basis, with particular reference to the Cork City Heritage and Biodiversity Plan (2021-2026) and Cork City Council Libraries Plan (2020-2024) and forthcoming Cork City Climate Action Plan. We also understand the European context of our work. We continue to monitor and situate what we do in relation to longstanding development programmes such as Creative Europe , to transformative new initiatives such as the European Green Deal which seeks to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent and to projects such as the New European Bauhaus which aims to bring citizens, experts, businesses, and institutions together to reimagine sustainable living in Europe and beyond.