Earthen Lamp’s Senior Research Executive Maike Ludley tells us more about Coventry’s Great Place scheme, and how it is part of the city’s preparations for UK City of Culture 2021.

In 2017, Coventry was selected as one of 16 pilot areas to be funded by the Great Place scheme – a joint funding programme from Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund. Coventry City of Culture Trust bid successfully for £1.5 million to invest in arts and heritage projects across the city and grow the cultural infrastructure.

Shop Front Festival in the City Centre, workplace choirs performing at the Albany Theatre, dance and theatre performances in the former Coventry Telegraph building, an outdoor light installation in the Cathedral ruins, vertical dance performances high up in the air …. and so much more! Since 2017 Coventry has seen a wide variety of projects and performances across the city, fitting within four programme strands:

• Embedding culture in place policy
• Diversity engagement
• Art, architecture and civic pride
• The city is the festival

Since October 2017, Earthen Lamp has been working on the on-going evaluation of Coventry’s Great Place scheme. The evaluation involves working alongside producing organisations to understand the impact and reach of the individual projects and performances. The evaluation of projects in the city is contributing to the national evaluation of Arts Council England’s Great Place Scheme. The evaluation activities are also firmly focused on learning from the experience and building the cultural infrastructure of the city. Working together with cultural partners we’ve collected feedback from over 1,200 individuals to date building a picture of cultural participation in Coventry.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England have now published the full evaluations of Years One and Two of the scheme. You can find out more and read the reports in our Resources section.

The next project funded by the Great Place scheme in Coventry is Humans at Work. Performances take place at. Warwick Arts Centre on 20 – 21 February. More about Humans at Work.