The West Midlands has a rich and diverse cultural and creative ecosystem. West Midland’s Combined Authority’s (WMCA) primary role around culture and creativity is as an enabler, champion, and influencer to support the cultural and creative sector to thrive in the West Midlands. WMCA work in close partnership with local authorities, government, arms-length bodies, universities, culture and creative industries sector partners, and regional and national bodies, to support culture and creativity across the region.
WMCA commission industry led sector body Create Central who bring together some of the region's most successful TV, film, games, and wider creative content business leaders. These leaders offer their time and experience to develop innovative approaches to turbo-charge the West Midlands creative content sector. Create Central was developed with national bodies to build on the region’s existing creative and cultural talent and take it to the next level, helping to drive investment, growth and thousands of new jobs.
Activities of the WMCA's creative and cultural work include:
- Ensuring the wider benefits of creativity, culture, and heritage are embedded across WMCA policy areas such as Economy, Skills, Transport, Housing and Land, Communities and Wellbeing
- Championing our creative and cultural sector nationally and internationally
- Working in partnership with government and stakeholders to develop the sector and increase investment for culture and creative industries, building on regional strengths to foster innovation and support creative clusters
- Advocating for projects that bring wider benefits to our region
- Enabling research and data-driven innovation within the creative sector
- Delivering the WMCA’s Culture and Creative Framework and Heritage Framework priorities
- Supporting the Innovation Accelerator programme, led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, to invest in transformative R&D projects to accelerate the growth of the West Midlands high-potential innovation clusters
- Collaborating with Arm’s Length Bodies of the DCMS to share expertise and insight across culture, heritage, sport, communities, and the visitor economy, to maximise the impact of funding and policy decisions taken within the region
Advisory Groups and West Midlands Combined Authority
West Midlands Combined Authority's primary role around culture has been as an enabler and influencer to ensure our arts, cultural & creative sector can thrive through launching new funding streams and working in closer partnership with government and arms-length bodies, such as Arts Council England.
To support and inform our decision-making, WMCA has two advisory groups that ensure we are fully informed of the sector, its needs, opportunities and how these are changing.
Our Cultural and Creative Strategic Advisory Group (CCSAG) is a collective of sector specialists from the full breadth of the cultural and creative sector who support the WMCA's policy work around creativity and growth with representation from different parts of the cultural & creative sector across the WMCA geography.
Our Cultural Officer’s Group (COG) is made up of senior cultural officers from our constituent and non-constituent local authorities, and until recently also included Local Enterprise partnerships, which now longer don't exist.