Craven District Council Great Place: Crossing the Watersheds Programme Manager Recruitment Pack
Great Place: Crossing the Watersheds Contents Background 3 Our project Vision 4 Our project Mission 5 Craven and South Lakeland 6 Our Values 8 2
THE PROJECT Great Place: Crossing the Watersheds BACKGROUND Our project is one of 16 projects funded in England by Heritage Lottery Fund/Arts Council England/Historic England under the Great Place funding strand, whose ambition for this programme is to support local areas to: Inspire a vision of how culture can change your place how the arts, culture and heritage create a sense of place, build social capital, grow local economies and align to local plans for cultural education, making for prosperous, healthy and cohesive communities; and how they can help us to think through change, by bringing communities, people and organisations together. Connect culture with new partners to help change places for the better arts, culture and heritage organisations, citizens, civic leaders, community groups, Local Cultural Education Partnerships, schools, education and youth work settings, public agencies and authorities and businesses - at all levels working together to form strong, sustainable partnerships. Incorporate a vision for culture into ambitions for your place develop new ideas for making better use of arts, culture and heritage, into the emerging social, economic and spatial plans for a local area, supported by the relevant partners Build and share learning develop new ideas for cultural projects in unusual settings, pilot new activity and form new partnerships, changing the places participating in the Great Place Scheme, and inspiring similar activity across the rest of England and the UK as a whole. The project is going to operate locally with the title Great Place: Lakes and Dales 3
Skipton OUR PROJECT Craven District Council and South Lakeland District Council share similarities in terms of the net migration of young people from both districts, and this is true of most rural areas in the UK. We need 44% more 16 34 year olds just to reach the national average. We have a significant number of second homes in our region. Without more young people and young families we will have fewer village schools, depriving rural areas of cultural, community and service delivery centres; a lack of skilled employees for local businesses, and an impoverished cultural offer. Without addressing the aging of our rural communities now, they will soon become unviable. New ways of working, new business models and new creative businesses will benefit all members of our rural communities improving access to arts, heritage, culture and services. Our Vision Our Great Place will be where a sustainable, resilient, creative community and economy exists, celebrating the distinctiveness of place, the skill and experience of creative people and a good quality of life, which in turn will retain and attract younger people to our districts to influence, support and create our future economy. 4
Our Mission We want to make a step change in the perception of our place finding new ways to work, new partnerships and new descriptors. We will pilot new ways of working and new partnerships to retain and attract younger people to our Great Place. We will break new ground and be outward looking, experimental and exploratory, to see how the distinctiveness of place can both retain and attract a new generation of dynamic individuals that will drive forward the future economy of our rural communities and contribute to the resilience of our culture, economy and communities. Our geographical focus is the rural corridor linking Skipton (Craven) in the south and Grasmere (South Lakeland) in the north, including the market towns and rural hinterlands. Our Great Place includes the market towns of Skipton and Kendal and the area characterised by the Yorkshire Three Peaks, the Lune Valley and the approaches into the central Lake District. The area straddles two partnering local authorities Craven District and South Lakeland District Councils and the two National Park Authorities Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. Our Great Place has outstanding cultural landscapes which inspire creative people and visitors, past and present. Yet our population is ageing and our economies face fewer economically active residents. We want to continue to have new ideas, new generations interpretations of the past in the modern world, new value added to our great natural, heritage and cultural assets, and we need to retain and recruit younger people and fresh ideas to enable us to do this. Promoting culture as a catalyst for change, we seek to revitalise our rural economy and energise opportunities with Leeds, Lancaster, Manchester, the Northern Powerhouse and beyond. The delivery of the project will focus around six main areas of activity: 1. Researching and defining our cultural distinctiveness and its offer 2. Placing culture, arts and heritage at the core of local strategies, plans and policies 3. Diversifying, retaining, attracting, supporting and growing the creative economy 4. Developing new relationships across business sectors using the Great Place message 5. Taking advantage of digital opportunities to grow the rural economy 6. Building, sharing and using learning. This is an ambitious, exciting, transformative project. 5
CRAVEN AND SOUTH LAKELAND The Programme Manager s role straddles two local authority areas Craven in the south and South Lakeland in the north and two National Park Authorities Yorkshire Dales in the South and the Lake District in the north. Both Craven and South Lakeland are areas of outstanding natural beauty, sharing between them dales and moors, lakes and mountains. They both have low crime rates, friendly communities and great schools. Most of Craven district is within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Towns include Cross Hills, Settle, Bentham and Ingleton. Skipton is the district s capital and largest market town with a population of 14,600. South Lakeland district lies within and between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales National Parks. Villages and towns include Ambleside, Sedbergh, Kirkby Lonsdale, Milnthorpe and Ulverston. Kendal is the district s capital and largest market town with a population of over 28,400. The Lake District National Park has just been awarded World Heritage status. Between them the area has a great cultural offer, including a wide range of festivals including Grassington Festival, Skipton International Puppet Festival, Yarndale, Kendal Mountain Festival, and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Museums and galleries include The Folly, and Craven Museum & Gallery; Dove Cottage, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Blackwell Arts & Crafts House and the forthcoming new museum Windermere Jetty amongst many others. Skipton Town Hall is currently being developed into a cultural hub and the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal offers a wide range of arts and cultural activities. The area also provides an unrivalled outdoor leisure offer, some of the finest walking, fell running, climbing and caving country in Britain. There are excellent cycling routes and opportunities for sailing, canoeing, canal boating, kayaking, windsurfing and swimming. The landscape is famously stunning. 6
Journey times By train/ Car Journey times By train/ Car Skipton - Leeds 45/60 minutes Kendal Penrith 40 minutes Skipton - Bradford 45 minutes Kendal - Carlisle 1 hour Skipton - London 3¼ /4½ hours Kendal - London 3 hours/4¾ hours Skipton - 2 hours/1¼ hours Kendal - 1¾/1½ hours Manchester Manchester Skipton - York 1¼ hours Kendal - Newcastle 3 hours/2 hours South Lakeland 7
CRAVEN DISTRICT COUNCIL S VALUES We believe our first responsibility is to the people and communities who live in, work in, or visit Craven. In serving those communities everyone within Craven District Council will: Treat everyone with respect Act with integrity and honesty Show commitment and flexibility Strive for improvement and excellence. In addition we want arts, heritage, culture and creativity to be genuinely accessible to all including taking into account the nine protected characteristics of age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. Grassington Festival 8