The tip of the Iceberg

Bristol Cultural Development Partnership

Case Study Report
Arts Management in the 21th Century
MA Arts Management

November 2019

Maria Santelices

The Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (BCDP) is a non-profit organisation, which has been
delivering cultural projects for the city for the past 25 years to ‘build a better Bristol.’ (BCDP, 2017)
Founded in 1993, this partnership was conformed at the beginning by Arts Council, Business West
and Bristol City Council. Later they added the participation of University of Bristol and University
of the West of England. Each identity had it’s own motivation to be part. On one hand, the Arts
Council thought that Bristol was underperforming, it was the mayor city in the South West but it
was not developing, as it should be in cultural terms. On the other hand, Business West (which was
then Bristol Chamber of Commerce) knew that in order to get the attention of investors and support
economic growth, Bristol had to develop infrastructure that made it more attractive: restaurants,
cafes, venues for business meetings and cultural activities. The Bristol City Council realised that
they needed help from others in order to find new approaches to raise money and diversify their
cultural offer. Finally, both universities wanted to support the transformation of the city into a
vibrant, dynamic space for their students and be able to add that asset to their offer.

Since it started operating, until nowadays, the partnership has been in charge and has supported the
development of projects with one main focus: the city. Their first commission was the renewal of
one section of the Harbourside area (At Bristol, now We The Curious), which at that time was a
parking lot. The Old City Docks were already in a path of ‘culture-led regeneration’ and the
creation and involvement of the BCDP was seen as a positive innovation. (Boyden 2013, p.11)
After this time consuming odyssey, came a long list of projects in which the BCDP has been a key
element, whether being the head of them or lending them support and expert consultancy. As to
know: Festival of Ideas, Great Reading Adventure, Bristol Legible City, Making the bid for Capital
of Culture, among others. These recognised events are just the tip of the iceberg; behind them there
is important amounts of research, networking and overcoming external obstacles.

The present report aims to go deeper into the organisation using the PESTLE + C framework to lead
the analysis. This perspective allowed us to consider how political, economical, social,
technological, legal, environmental factors and competitors might be affecting the organisation in
the present and how the BCDP is integrating this to its strategy.
Political Factors

Cities need cultural facilities. People need cultural facilities. What the evidence shows is that cities
that have outstanding cultural facilities do attract more people and are more prosperous. The 2017
European Commission Report showed that ‘that higher GDP per capita and more jobs are found in
the top-scoring Cultural and Creative Cities, suggesting that culture and creativity on one hand,
and economic and social prosperity on the other, may mutually reinforce each other.’ (Montalto et
al. 2017, p.27) In this scenario, what The BCDP stands for is that despite the motives that people
might have to come to cities: setting up business; studying; tourism; among others, they want to
have theatres, cinemas and venues for conferences and events. This implies to get involve in large-
scale cultural projects and applying for awards in order to get credibility, visibility and of course,
founding. What the BCDP has learn from having experience bidding, winning and failing is that
political leadership needs to be solid behind a bid. Specially if a member of your partnership is a
City Council that has traditionally been run by the left wing, so it can inevitable clash with the
national government when the conservatives are in power. In the past, this happened over a number
of issues predominantly over development in the city. (Kelly 2017, pp. 18-19)

Regarding to Brexit, and how can this affect the organisation, Kelly (2019a) expressed that they
share the view that most of the cultural sector has about the UK leaving the EU, as its expressed in
the Arts Council report on Brexit Impact: ‘many (arts and culture stakeholders) feel that the arts and
culture sector is by definition internationally-oriented and geared towards intercultural exchange,
and therefore suggest that Brexit is likely to undermine the perceived identity of the UK as a
country with an internationally connected, thriving arts and culture environment.’ (ICM 2017, p.
75).

Two consequences that might become a problem for the BCDP are, in one side, loosing the chance
to participate in Capital of Culture. For 2023 was allocated to Britain, but after the Referendum the
European Comission blocked the UK to participate in the action: ‘After consulting relevant services
of the Commission, I would like to inform you that following its withdrawal from the European
Union, the participation of the United Kingdom in the European Capital of Culture action will not
be posible.’ (Martine Reichters, Director-General for Education and Culture at the European
Commission.) Fortunately, Bristol had not started preparing for its bid, but still there was not good news
for the BCDP because as Kelly mentioned, ‘what is interesting about Capital of Culture, is that
biding gives you the opportunity to think, create and develop a plan. Get everyone planning
together.’ (2019b)

In addition to this, the mobility within European countries post-Brexit could become a problem. As
the Arts Council report states, ‘the primary concern here is the possible need for visas for travel
between the EU and UK’ (ICM 2017, p. 76). For BCDP main projects as Festival of Ideas and
Festival for the Future Cities this could bring additional costs into bringing speakers and experts
from outside the UK. Not to mention the extra time they would need to consider visa applications
into the planning.
Economic Factors

The BCDP core funders are Bristol City Council, Businesswest, University of Bristol and
University of the West of England. Also is a National Portfolio Organisation, so they get ‘little bit
of money from the Arts Council, we get around 50.000 pounds per year’ (Kelly, 2019a)1, which is
the second lowest in the South West. To raise the money the need to bridge the gap and achieve
their goals, Kelly (2019a) mentioned that they ‘are really good at raising money from other
sources. This year we have raise nearly half a million pounds from other resources.’

Nevertheless according to what Andrew Kelly mentioned there is an idea about Bristol being a
difficult place to do business, therefore to invest. This idea comes from the past. Several plans for
the city, for example pushing a big road trough Clifton o concreting part of the water down the
Harbourside where heavily rejected by citizens who expressed their concern about heritage. That
concern lives until the present ‘people are nervous about development in Bristol which can change
the look of the city, simply because of the bad experience of the past. Which makes it a slightly
conservative place’ (Kelly, 2019)

Furthermore, the work of the BCDP is not always visible. They don’t have their own building, and
in many cases, their involvement in projects has not been loudly recognized. Due to this, they can
be the type of organisation that is difficult to found because ‘people wanders what you are doing’
(Kelly, 2019a). That’s why they have developed a strong publication collection, partly to show up
their work and more importantly, to systematise and share the process that’s behind what they do.

Also, there is a particular issue about Arts Council founding at the moment, which is that exciting
organisations are not allowed to apply for more than they currently get, where as a new organisation
you can apply as they much as you want. ‘We haven’t got an increase from the Arts Council for the
past 14 years and inflation is getting in to the way as well.’ (Kelly, 2019a)

The other important mechanism to get founds is biding. This way of founding can be a risk to small
organisations that are not able to resist going from bid to bid without winning. For the BCDP this is
an opportunity, because it allows them to go over full time into working on a project. BCDP is
fortunate in that way, because as it was mentioned, the organisation counts with founding from
other sources depending on the project. Also, the funding can be monetary or help in kind.

Table 1: BCDP Sources of funding

Project Sources of Funding

Bristol City Council, HLF, Wilmott Dixon,

Housing 100
Curo.

ESRC; YTL; University of Bath Institute of

Festival of the Future City
Public Policy Research; Wilmott Dixon; Cabot
Institute; Bristol Inclusive Economy Initiative;

1
According to the NPO Annual Data Survey - Open Data the BCDP portfolio funding is £50.290
 University of Bristol Temple Quarter; Innovate
UK; BFI, British Council; University of
Cambridge Bennett Institute.

Bank of England; Government Economic

Service; Economics Network; Princeton
Festival of Economics
University Press; Triodos; Royal Economic
Society; Office for National Statistics and more.

Social Factors

From the social perspective, one of the most important concerns for The Bristol Cultural
Development Partnership has been related to access. According to Kelly (2017, 2019a) one of the
questions that the organisation faced after delivering the renovated Harbourside was: What is the
point of building new cultural facilities if people can’t find them?

In 2001, having this issue in mind, they got involved in a project known as Building Legible Cities
which followed the approach of Kevin Lynch (1918-1984). The author used to argue that the
starting point for developing cities should be users, not constructors or urban planners. Having this
ethos at the base, BLC tried to step forward on giving solutions to understanding and navigating the
city. (Kelly 2001 pp.31-33)

Another force that comes from the social environment has to do with the friction that can cause
having housing issues around the city and developing leisure and cultural areas. As Kelly (2019a)
mentioned, that is one of the big problems you face all the time and it has two dimensions: The first
one related to space, and in order to deal with it, the projects they developed are always in leisure
use areas so they don’t take away land for public housing. Also they work under a principle, which
is not building new spaces, but re using and renewing old buildings as factories, good yards for the
railway, among others. An the second one, regarding funds: ‘Do you spend money on the arts or do
you spend money on houses of course the first duty must be shelter and wellbeing of your
population, but the arts is a tiny part of the budget, and getting tinier, so you would not be able to
fund a public housing project with the budget that we manage.’ (Kelly, 2019a)

Finally, it is important to mention that for the BCDP redefining culture and coming out with a wider
definition of the concept is fundamental. In this regard, the way we that people live their lives
community, arts, science and how all of this come together in spaces that cities can offer, is culture.
Therefore, being able to keep the pulse of citizens wants and needs is always challenging, specially
when it comes to deliver projects and activities that, despite the content, can engage diverse
audiences. (Kelly, 2017)
Technological Factors

Considering that one of the principles of the organisation is to base their work into research and
bring massive amounts of information together, one of the issues that this can bring is related to
how your organisation manages, systematizes and delivers that information in order to make it
useful in the decision making process. ‘Anyone running the kind of programme we do – a
programme which changes radically every one-to-two years – needs to have wide interests.
Extensive reading and the assiduous gathering of information it is essential. I guess this is why
books and writing play such an important part in our work.’ (Kelly, 2019a)

Regarding to this, Miller (2019a) argues that in the past they run online queries in order to measure
variables as impact, satisfaction and interests of their audiences. Now, they realise that handing
surveys personally at the end of events has brought an increase of the answer rate up to 80%.
(Miller, 2019) Having this in mind, they are not considering investing in upgrading their system
into one more tech-based.

From a more hypothetical perspective, Kelly (2019) mentioned that there is a concern about how
internet regulations could have an impact on people wanting to come to Bristol to set up internet
based business o simply to work as an independent: ‘Bristol could turn into a less attractive place
to live if you are a digital nomad, for example.’ Some of the consequences that the UK can face
regarding this matter are: unavailability of domains, data protection regulations, missing out the
benefits from being part of the European Cloud Initiative, among others. (Broadley, 2017)

Legal Factors
From the legal perspective, there are very little forces challenging the organisation. Most of the
strategies that the Bristol City Council leads, for example: the Bristol Resilience Strategy is in
coherence with the ethos of BCDP. In this scenario, the legal framework that the city provides to
the organisation is not an issue of great matter.

In terms of finance regulations, the BCDP legally is a private company limited by guarantee without
share capital. This allows them to raise money from the private sector trough loans, grants,
sponsorships and apply and bid for public founds.

Environmental Factors

While at the base of the organisation is the concern about developing sustainable projects for
Bristol, and supporting other cities to do the same. There is an important issue regarding the rise of
urbanisation through projects that not necessarily share the same concern. ‘Cities can offer solutions
to the looming environmental crisis’ (Kelly 2017, p. 17) but in order to do that, they have to be built
in strong bases of sustainability in main areas such as energy, food, nature, resources and transport.

Having the Bristol City Council, Business West, Bristol University and UWE as partners also plays
a relevant rol from the environmental perspective. Particulary because this organisations are part of
the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. This means that in order to be coherent, the initiatives that
they support need to share the same principles. One way of doing it, as the BCDP leaders
mentioned is delivering and supporting projects that not involve developing of new buildings.
(Kelly; Miller, 2019)

Competitors
With respect to competitors, the partnership operates under the idea of being a cooperative group of
people in the arts and in this context they all support each other. Still, there is a competition for
funding.

Bristol is perceived nationally as a wealthy city. It is seen as no needing as Liverpool needs or the
Northern England needs. And there is a truth to that, because the city is quite wealthy in the sense
that it does not cost government to run Bristol. In fact ‘Bristol has been one of the best performing
core cities in the UK and has benefited substantially from the growth of a service-based economy. It
provides an annual net return of £10 billion to the UK Treasury’ (Sunley 2017, p.1) Nevertheless,
there are enormous problems with Bristol, deprivation, poverty, inequality, race issues, housing
problems, the whole how we deal with environment and climate change, so Bristol it could do with
more investment.

One of he main strategies that the BCDP develops in order to make their bids for funding more
likely to succeed is gathering people together. ‘Housing 100’ is an example on how working in a
collaborative environment reduce the competition, minimises the amount of work that people have
to do –very important aspect for organisations with lack of staff – and maximises the potential
income and the impact that projects have.

In other contexts as for example: Capital of Culture in 2008, Bristol is in competition with other UK
cities, which despite of the collaboration spirit that is behind the organisation, ‘it is a fact of life’ as
Kelly (2019) mentions. Then, national and international competitions are a challenge in this matter.

The Future

According to Kelly, the future of the organisation will be affected by the crescent urbanisation,
Brexit and climate change. This would bring changes to the cities, the country and the world.
Therefore, the ethos of the BCDP: ‘getting cities right’ (Kelly 2017, p.76) gains importance.

Raising funds for projects that can cope with the levels of demand that the future brings will be an
issue. The public support for arts and culture sector is getting tighter and, despite the diversity of
fund sources that the BCDP has, it still needs money from the national treasure for long-scale
projects and the trust that this kind of endorsement gives to other investors to commit with cultural-
led projects.

The whole environment has been changing. The organisation is understaffed and the expectations to
keep performing time after time are high. For example, this year they had to become really
knowledgeable in council housing, housing developing, and experts in housing, planning for the
Housing 100 project. Next year they are doing a project on Thomas Chatterton and that will involve
an important amount of research. Planning ahead helps. That is why the BCDP is carrying out
planning until 2023. Festivals of the Future City, work on young talent; celebrating the 250th
anniversary of Thomas Chatterton’s death in 2020; Festival of Ideas are already taking shape and
hopes for future and exciting projects are high.

References

Arts Council England. (2018) 'NPO Annual Data Survey - Open Data '. Available
at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-data/our-npos-and-annual-data-survey#section-4 (Accessed:
5 November 2019).

Companies House (2019) The Bristol Cultural Development Partnership. Available

at: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02775034 (Accessed: 5 November 2019).

Boyden, P. (2013) Culture, Creativity and Regeneration in Bristol. Three Stories. Bristol, UK.
Available at: https://www.watershed.co.uk/sites/default/files/publications/2013-09-
10/CCRB%20June2013.pdf?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign= (Accessed: 20
November 2019).

Broadley, C. (2017) 'Brexit 2019: What Will It Mean For The Internet?’ 21 August. Available
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November 2019).

Frue, K. (2019) 'PESTLE Analysis for Charities', Pestle Analysis, 4 November. Available
at: https://pestleanalysis.com/pestle-analysis-for-charities/ (Accessed: 5 November 2019).

ICM and SQW (2017) Impact of Brexit in the Arts and Culture Sector. London: Arts Council
England. Available at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-
file/Impact_of_Brexit_Research_2017.pdf (Accessed: 20 November 2019).

Kelly, A. and Kelly, M. (2017) Bristol Cultural Development Partnership/25th Anniversary.

Bristol: Bristol Cultural Development Partnership.

Kelly, A. (2001) Building Legible Cities. Bristol: Bristol Cultural Development Partnership.

Kelly, A. - Director of BCDP (2019a) Conversation with Maria Santelices, 21 November.

Kelly, A. - Director of BCDP (2019b) Conversation with Maria Santelices, 25 November.

Miller, N. - Deputy Director of BCDP (2019) Conversation with Maria Santelices, 25 November.

Montalto V; Jorge Tacao Moura C; Langedijk S; Saisana M. The Cultural and Creative Cities
Monitor. 2017 Edition. doi:10.2760/58643

Sunley, P. (2017) Case Study Report. Bristol. Southampton: School of Geography and Environment
Available at: https://www.cityevolutions.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/171127-Working-Paper-7-
Bristol-Case-Study-Report.pdf (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Romer, C. (2017) ‘Gutted: heartbreak as UK blocked from European Capital of Culture.’ Arts
Professional. Available at: https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/gutted-heartbreak-uk-blocked-
european-capital-culture