Cultural Policy, Governance and Urban Diversity: Resident Perspectives from Birmingham, UK

Within a paradigm of culture†led urban competition, discourse and debate has focused on attracting the mobile creative class, diverting attention on cultural resources for lesser privileged groups, both established and new. Policy agendas behind culture and the arts at the neighbourhood level are quietly shifting however, with increasing emphasis on social cohesion and integration. This paper investigates for the first time how co†producing cultural activities can be used to stimulate more distributed and discursive strategies of decision†making at the neighbourhood†level. Bringing together debates on cultural policy, urban governance, and diversity this paper makes two key points: (i) geographical discourse on cultural and arts needs to reflect more upon gender, faith, ethnicity and race; (ii) dialogue enabled by focus groups can generate new participatory strategies for pluralising cultural governance in multi†cultural and disinvested neighbourhoods.