Celebrate / reflect / share

As the year comes to an end, we’re celebrating 2022, reflecting on what we’ve achieved and sharing what’s been happening in London and our work.

?I’ll talk about…

• Overcoming barriers London’s cultural spaces face
• How we’re engage young Londoners
• A review of the year

Before I do, new things that you can see and do…

• Watch a brand new short film about the life of Dr Beryl Gilroy, the first black Head Teacher in Camden and the brilliant artwork we unveiled in her honour.
• Download our London Unseen guided walks for a selection of fantastic community-based trails and walks that you can explore at your own pace.

If you want to find out more about all the exciting work we’re doing, you can scroll our web pages.

Confronting barriers facing London’s cultural and community spaces ?

This year has brought with it many challenges to London’s creative people, organisations, cultural and night time venues. The cost of living and doing business has spiralled, many London organisations lost or received less funding through the government’s cuts to London’s Arts Council England funding, and inflation is rising at pace – all whilst we are still recovering from the impacts of Covid-19 and lockdowns.

Through the Mayor’s Culture Strategy and vision for London to be a 24 hour city, Justine Simons, Amy Lamé and my brilliant team are all working hard to help.

Our approach to making sure London works betters for everyone around the clock has gained momentum, for example through working with boroughs to develop holistic night time strategies.

In November, I joined the Mayor and Night Czar Amy Lamé as they announced investment in London’s new Night Time Enterprise Zones. Over the next year, Bromley, Vauxhall and Woolwich will benefit from ￡390,000 investment from the Mayor to help make town centres more inclusive and welcoming after 6pm. They’ll also look at how night workers can be better supported. I can’t wait to see what we’ll learn as the projects develop.

Supporting businesses as they deal with the effects of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, the Mayor and Amy also announced he was giving ￡25,000 each to Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Harrow and Islington. Each borough will pilot ideas that make licensing policies and processes less time consuming and costly for local businesses, and hopefully, these ideas can be rolled out in other areas.

In September the Mayor pledged ￡1.2m funding to enable workspaces in London’s nine Creative Enterprise Zones to become greener and more sustainable, as small creative businesses and organisations struggle with the pressure of rising energy bills. Local authorities with accredited zones were invited to apply for grants of up to ￡200k to invest in practical and achievable measures that will improve energy efficiency, resulting in more environmentally-friendly creative workspaces across the capital. Find out where the awards went next year….

Last month, we launched our first ever Pop Up shop! 14 London-based creative businesses selected from our Creative Enterprise Zones came together in an intensive training programme to learn how to build and trade their own shop experience on our world famous Regent Street. London Made Me was a boutique store featuring unique gifts made by these talented makers and artists. The programme aims to tool-up and empower the city’s most exciting creatives to ultimately launch their own curated spaces in their areas, and help transform our high streets.

Are you looking for advice and support on how to run a cultural or community space? Our new Guide for Opening, Running and Growing a Cultural or Community Space takes you through the legal, operational and financial steps to set up a space and help turn your idea into a reality. Developed by Counterculture Partnership LLP, the guide aims to help local artists, community groups, venue operators, poets, painters, potters - the people and groups who are bringing life into your local areas.?

And if you’re looking at ways to make your organisation more sustainable, we can help with that too. This month, with Arts Council England we launched the Arts Green Book: Sustainability Buildings. It provides organisations with clear, structured guidance to help make cultural buildings more sustainable. Aimed at owners, operators and renters of cultural spaces, it explains sustainability, is open about the hurdles, and breaks down actions into clear, logical steps. Please spread the word!

Engaging young Londoners

Last month, the Mayor went to Lewisham, London Borough of Culture to launch Breathe: 2022, a spectacular new artwork was projected onto Lewisham Town Hall. Artist Dryden Goodwin worked with local residents, clean air activists and over 130 secondary school pupils to create new animated projections lighting up the sky. Relating to the death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah and the growing battle for climate justice, the project connects this global health emergency to the daily lives of local Lewisham residents and activists.

We also marked the closing of the Museum of London's London Wall site, as it prepares its exciting plans for the new London Museum opening in Smithfield Market in 2026. They celebrated the end of an era with a fun-filled and free festival for all the family, with DJs, London’s biggest table football competition, immersive theatre, late-night cinema and for the first time the Museum was open 24 hours on its Saturday. Don’t worry, there’ll still be plenty to see at the museum’s Docklands venue and we’ll keep you posted about the exciting plans for the new London Museum.

Not long now until we launch ‘Unpacking the Credits’ – a programme providing films and resources for teachers and parents – engaging young Londoner’s to consider careers in the creative industries. Sign up to receive updates.

The year in review – highlights of 2022!

Despite many challenges for our sector and London as a whole, 2022 has been a year where our team have done so much to help London get back on its feet. 2022 Review of the Year.

• We are helping venues across London to become more accessible to people with dementia with our Dementia Friendly Venues Charter, now with 129 organisations pledging to make changes.
• ‘We Design for the Community’ was a pilot scheme we launched in April, pairing students with cultural and creative organisations to provide marketing resource and allow students to work on a design brief and earn London Living Wage. It provided real-life experience for the students, improving their skills and affordable marketing plans for the organisations.
• In May, as ABBA Voyage opened their doors (you have to see it...), 2.8 Million Minds launched. We worked in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, Bernie Arts Centre and Madlove putting children and young people at the heart of the conversation. Three groups of young people worked together to design a manifesto about mental health and how culture can support them – and presented it to a full audience in a chamber at the Houses of Parliament. And this important work was highly commended in the Creative Health and Wellbeing Alliance Awards in the Collective Power Awards section!
• In June the Mayor announced the expansion of the Creative Enterprise Zones with an investment of ￡800,000 to support thousands of jobs and create affordable studio space across the capital. Hammersmith & Fulham and Ealing also became the Mayor’s latest Creative Enterprise Zones, joining Croydon, Haringey, Hounslow, Lambeth, Lewisham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest. All the zones received a share of ￡800,000 which will help support 5,000 young Londoners to enter the creative sector and create more than 25,000 sqm of new, permanent, affordable workspace for the sector by 2025.
• Debbie Weekes-Bernard, Deputy Mayor for Communities unveiled the final installation of LDN WMN at West Hampstead Primary school. Celebrating Doctor Beryl Gilroy, the first black headteacher in Camden and created by artist Fipsi Seilern. We’ve just launched a short video of the day. LDNWMN is a series of free artworks across London, mainly produced by women and non-binary artists.
• In July the Mayor officially opened Talent House, funded through his Good Growth Fund, delivered by the Regeneration team and supported by the Culture team. This revamped building brings together UD Music and East London Dance under one roof providing a pioneering music and dance hub for the young people of East London.
• The 10th anniversary of the London Olympic and Paralympic games was marked in style with the Great Get Together (a family festival at the park) and a summer season of art led by our East Bank partners. East Bank is a new cultural quarter supported by the Mayor, creating opportunities for the local community and everyone who visits, lives and works in east London. Our partners are BBC, Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion, University College London and the V&A. It’s beginning to open, University College London welcomed their first students this year.
• In its first phase of its Cultural Impact Award, Hammersmith & Fulham carved pathways for young people to make music, through over 120 music workshops for young people across the borough. This summer, The Big Gig at Westfield London showcased the work of 26 budding musicians.
• The safety of women and girls around the clock remains a priority, the Mayor invested ￡108,000 earlier this year to boost his Women’s Night Safety Charter and the support available to signatories. In September, we passed the 1,000 mark in terms of venues and organisations that have signed up to the Charter, keeping London safe.
• Antelope by Samson Kambalu was unveiled as the latest sculpture on the Fourth Plinth. Antelope is a restaging of a photograph from 1914 of Malawian Baptist Preacher and Pan-Africanist, John Chilembwe and European missionary, John Chorley. Chilembwe keeps his hat on in defiance of the colonial rule that forbade Africans from wearing hats before white people. Check it out on this great Google Arts & Culture page.
• ?In October, the World Cities Culture Forum celebrated 10 years with the Helsinki Summit bringing together cultural leaders from over 40 global cities to share best practice in policymaking to address local and global challenges within the culture sector. The city of Helsinki provided a much-admired example of how they responded to the pandemic.?At a time when travel was severely restricted, Helsinki helped people experience culture at the hyper local level. Through the city’s Gift of Art project, the public could ‘gift’ an outdoor performance via a digital app to friends and family on their doorstep. At the summit the 2022 report was launched exploring how creativity drives recovery.
• November saw the last events of London Unseen - a season of trails, tours and events about the many incredible histories of the city, told by communities, practitioners, artists and activists. Curated on behalf of the Mayor’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. The season provided over 40 free public events, telling many rich, exciting and moving histories: from the invisible tales of Indian seafarers in WWI, to Black History in Elephant & Castle, from LGBTQI+ stories in North London to legends of nature in the woodlands of Barham Park.

I hope you have the opportunity over the festive break to enjoy some of the incredible arts and culture events, venues and talent that our city has to offer. So proud of everything our Culture and Creative Industries and 24 Hour London teams have achieved this year.

A very happy and healthy break to you – and great New Year wishes when it comes!

Shonagh