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The application for the first round of peer challenges has closed and we are notifying the successful councils. Round 2 will open shortly, so please start thinking about how your council could benefit from a peer challenge – feedback from councils that have had a peer challenge is extremely positive.
The LGA and Arts Council England are providing the opportunity for councils to participate in a fully-funded peer challenge of their cultural or library services. These can be tailored to your local needs and the expert peer challenge team will spend one-and-a-half days in your council meeting key councillors, officers and partners, and seeing your work in both theory and practice.
Sport England has invested £1.5 million of lottery funding into The Daily Mile scheme, which encourages primary school children to have a 15 minute outside run or walk break every day.
This new partnership with The Daily Mile will fund the recruitment of national and local coordinators to support and encourage more schools in England to sign up – with a vision of helping all 20,000 primary schools in the country to take part in an active mile a day.
A three-day celebration took place over the weekend of 11-13 January to mark the beginning of Waltham Forest becoming London's first Borough of Culture. The Borough of Culture programme was launched by Sadiq Khan "to put culture at the heart of local communities”. The borough's council said it would be "the biggest party that Waltham Forest has ever seen”.
22 boroughs submitted bids to be named Borough of Culture, with Waltham Forest and Brent chosen for 2019 and 2020 respectively. They were awarded £1.35 million of funding to deliver a programme of cultural activities, while six other boroughs were also given finance for individual projects.
Supporters of teams allied to the English Football League Trust will be welcomed into grounds for a three-month programme of exercise and healthy eating advice.
The Government has published its response to the Running Free consultation on preserving the free use of public parks. We are pleased that Government has listened to us and decided not to introduce legislation restricting councils’ ability to charge for certain events and activities. Our survey of members found strong support for Parkrun and no intentions to charge for it.
Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the LGA’s Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, responded to the NICE draft quality standard for encouraging physical activity. Please do ensure your public health colleagues are aware of this and the support you can offer on it.
We also responded to an inquiry from The Times concerning the impact of budget cuts on libraries, which was quoted in full in both The Times and The Express. Our response recognised the ingenuity among staff and volunteers in keeping services open and innovating, but highlighted the impact of losing £15 billion from council budgets.
The Guildhall, London, 5-6 March 2019
Be sure to book your place at our flagship annual conference, hosted by the City of London Corporation in their Guildhall. The theme this year is culture-led regeneration and will focus on the launch of our research into how councils can transform their communities using culture. We are also delighted to offer walking tours covering the City’s Cultural Mile, Waltham Forest and Brent as the first London Boroughs of Culture, and a tour of the British Library. Further details will be forthcoming in future bulletins and an exciting programme of speakers and tours is taking shape.
We are coming together at a critical time for publicly funded cultural services. Through your participation in the event, ACE and the LGA hope to support you to respond to the challenges and explore the opportunities posed by a changing landscape, single cultural offer, transforming culture through new delivery models, commissioning and public health reforms. We will also be discussing the contribution of culture to wider community outcomes.
Thursday 24 January – Friday 25 January 2019
Places are limited to one member per council. Accommodation, meals, course materials delegate fees are funded. Accommodation is available for the pre-night.
To book your place, email grace.collins@local.gov.uk
Following 21 successful Leadership Essentials Sport programmes in the last five years, the LGA and Sport England are pleased to offer further programmes to assist cabinet members/portfolio holders with the responsibility for sport to lead transformational change in their service. It is also a very beneficial experience for new portfolio holders.
Thursday 28 February – Friday 1 March 2019, Warwick Conferences, Coventry CV4 7SH
Places are limited to one member per council. Accommodation, meals, course materials delegate fees are funded. Accommodation is available for the pre-night.
To book your place, email grace.collins@local.gov.uk
Local councils are being invited to bid for a share of a £675 million government fund set up to help rejuvenate the country’s high streets. The fund, which aims to help retailers address the challenge of online shopping by turning town centres into “vibrant community hubs”, will allow councils to plough money into transport and converting retail units into homes.
The Minister for High Streets, Jake Berry MP, has also spoken about the opportunity this may give councils to have the funds to put libraries and other services at the heart of the high street.
In January 2019, a new round of Creative People and Places funding opens. ACE will be allocating £24 million for this new programme of funding between 2019-2023 to places identified as the 'least engaged' in arts and culture across England.
Voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations can apply for funding to run projects focused on improving children and young people’s mental health. Lots of scope for cultural, artistic, and sporting ideas.
This online hub, developed by the LGA and ACE, highlights good practice in the delivery of cultural services by councils and their partners.
One particularly illuminating example is our latest case study on the links between cultural heritage and renegeration. Following industrial decline, Longton, one of six historic towns in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, has suffered. Stoke on Trent City Council appointed a Heritage Champion to lead a successful bid for a Heritage Action Zone, which is helping to encourage residents to move back into the town centre.
The LGA has recently published a guide for councils on how to identity and help carers. The publication notes the importance of the role services such as libraries and leisure centres can play, recommending that councils should be speaking to frontline services like libraries and leisure centres which are often in touch with carers and providing informal support.
This guide introduces Sport England's community asset fund, which is available for grants from £1,000 to £150,000, and advises on how to apply.
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