The Greater Cambridge Cultural Infrastructure Strategy – is that it?!?

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

I’ve been waiting a couple of years for this so you can imagine my disappointment when there’s no mention of a new large concert hall within it. Which is inconsistent with the Combined Authority Mayor’s Growth Plan (and thus the strategy should have been refreshed in the light of his election).

Click on the library of documents for the emerging local development plan and scroll down to the heading that says Wellbeing and social inclusion. See the document called Draft Greater Cambridge Cultural Infrastructure Strategy Stage 1 (2025) in the row below it? That’s it. (Or click here)

“In May 2023, Genecon – alongside partners Beispiel and Things Made Public CIC – were commissioned to produce a Cultural Infrastructure Strategy for Greater Cambridge, as Stage 1 of a three Stage process aimed at harnessing the opportunities offered by the exponential growth in the Greater Cambridge region, and ensuring that future infrastructure will meet the demands of residents, businesses, and visitors alike.”

Above – Genecon’s website blurb

Which means this is the document to do a hatchet job on and shred to pieces because by stages 2 and 3 it will be too late!!!

“What’s wrong with their document?”

Where to start…!

Actually, I’m going to keep my criticisms to the issues that I’m familiar with – i.e. the stuff that I’ve blogged about for the past 15 years, and also my own lived experience both in childhood and now as a grumpy middle-aged so-and-so.

If Greater Cambridge is to get a sound Cultural Strategy that enables our growing city to become greater than the sum of its parts, it’s essential that people from across the city and beyond provide their feedback on this document and fill in the many gaps in order to improve it.

Actually, it’s not all bad news.

There are a number of things that councillors, council officers, the local creatives industry, civic society and local residents will need to pick up on and respond to. For all of my moaning, those shouldn’t be thrown out with the bath water. Although the document is not inviting comment on itself (I *really think* it should clearly ask for comments up front!), I’m pretending that it is so please humour me!

The document should have been far more critical and hard-hitting on the situation that Cambridge finds itself in today.

Perhaps the authors felt that this was beyond their remit in a similar way that the authors of the Combined Authority’s Local Growth Plan might have felt its remit was to concentrate only what ministers thought were Cambridge’s strengths – and ignore the Arts completely. (How can you have a sound and comprehensive cultural strategy if it’s not seen as a growth priority by the Strategic/Combined Authority? Again, this is a symptom of a fragmented and over-complicated governance structure. The two groups did not talk /listen to each other well enough – otherwise this would not have happened.

The city’s arts and culture scene is not in a good place – and this is despite the significant population growth

Furthermore, I don’t think this is down to those at the sharp end working at the venues, doing the promotions, or running the events. They are all facing multiple storms the likes of which most of us have not lived through.

  • Rent/leases charged by property owners – especially those owners who themselves owe larger financial institutions large repayments to service debts
  • The ongoing cost of living crisis – fewer people have levels of disposable income that previous generations had
  • Changing habits and behaviours – young adults are drinking less than the same age-cohort in previous generations
  • The chronic problem of violence against women and girls – hardly surprising that fewer people want to go out and about especially in an era of declining police officers on the street as a result of austerity
  • The availability and convenience of home-based alternatives – online entertainment on demand vs previous eras of 4-channel terrestrial TV

As I mentioned in back in May 2025, the Junction and the Cambridge Leisure Park should have been buzzing on a warm Saturday night. But it was empty. Why? Where were all the young adults?

That Governance Gap. Again.

Again, it may have been because the authors felt that this was beyond their remit, but I did not get any sense of what a unitary council for the geographical area concerned needs to be like in order to make a success of the strategy and achieve their vision. Furthermore, it’s not clear how other institutions need to interact with that unitary council mindful of the important civic and democratic legitimacy that local government should have. Much harder in an era of outsourcing, commissioning, and contracting out vs a previous era where each local council had its own arts and entertainments committee with serving councillors overseeing things.

I didn’t get a sense of local contemporary [and local political] history of our city

It’s not their fault that they haven’t spent the best part of a decade and a half sitting through hours of council meetings, local plan hearings and the like. That said, had they had a significantly greater level of input from individuals in the arts and culture scenes in and around our city – those who had lived through them over the decades, they would have been far more hard-hitting in their conclusions about the state of the city today. What were the past missed opportunities? (Such as the 5,000-seat Barnwell Road Concert Hall of the early 1980s? Or how information is collated and shared about events today vs eras gone by? Or how previous generations responded to the decline of so many social venues?)

The tensions within the city and economic sub-region

These need to be placed up front and centre because there is one major part of the vision that the consultants have come up with that will come up against stiff opposition – not least because some of the individuals, firms, and organisations stand to lose out, including financially.

Before I get cracking, a pet irritation

If you are the author of a report, a briefing note, or anything that has a recommendation for an action, then own it. Don’t use the passive third term.

Above – Genenco (2025) GCSP Cultural Strategy Stage 1, p71

That demand mapping, stakeholder engagement and ‘policy alignment’ did not happen by itself to ‘form the basis for a Theory of Chance’. It involved people doing work. If you created a Theory of Change for Cambridge Cultural Infrastructure, say so! Be proud of it because chances are it involved a lot of hard work!

“Hang on – you said it was full of holes!”

Because there’s nothing in the document that says: “General public: we want your opinions, comments, and views on this strategy with the view of improving it” – so that when developers and wealthy interests with their £1,000p/h KCs come to challenge this at the later Examination in Public (which they will do!), it’s as strong and as robust as it can be to withstand what will be a far more brutal inquisition than anything I could write.

“So what you’re saying is…”

I want the strategy to be far, far better than what’s in this first stage because I don’t want a speculator going after it with a powerful legal team and crushing it resulting on what we currently have which is an under-provision of infrastructure in previous local development planning rounds.

The vision of the cultural strategy

“Ambitious, equitable, collaborative.”

Which is all well-and-good. I’m just not sure whether as a city we’ve understood what has stopped us from being all of the above.

Ambitious – vs an enfeebled local council structure (Reflected by the ability of ministers to override seemingly local planning applications ie The Beehive Redevelopment to the inability of local government to raise revenues from it’s overheating economic sub-region to pay for under-invested infrastructure and under-funded services)

Equitable – in the most unequal city in the country whose name is a globally-recognised brand that a number of profit-making firms (and the University of Cambridge itself) are able to market services that rely on the sense of exclusivity.

Collaborative – in a city with a University that excluded council housing provision in what is now its exclusive Eddington development – much to the fury of the elected councillors on Cambridge City Council struggling under the weight of a thousands-long waiting list.

“Equitable – everyone living, working and socialising in Greater Cambridge is invited and
supported to participate in production and consumption of culture.”

You can have ‘invitation’ in the strap-line, but if you design and locate a venue such as Storey’s Field or the West Road Concert hall far away from where most residents on lower incomes live, and furthermore far from the main bus routes from the main bus operator, are you really inviting people in?

This for me is why the big acid test for our city is the location of the new Convention Centre and Concert Hall that the Mayor of the Combined Authority has included in his Local Growth Plan – something required by Central Government.

Above – detail from the CPCA Mayor’s Local Growth Plan which I wrote about here.

“So, what are the useful bits?”

It provides a series of summaries that no one else has provided and that really needed to be put on paper by someone that would get taken notice of by institutions. I.e. not by me.

  • Community Engagement in and Ownership of Cultural Infrastructure
  • Addressing Cultural Infrastructure Cold Spots and Future Communities
  • Protecting & Enhancing Key Infrastructure and Cultural Clusters
  • Supporting a Distinctive Independent Cultural Identity
  • Leveraging the Opportunities of the Creative Industries
  • Coherent Delivery of Cultural Infrastructure

Above – the priorities of the draft Infrastructure Strategy – p73

The section on Creative Clusters should prompt us, the people of the city and county to ask what is currently not working

Page 14 / para 1.65 provides a useful checklist against any part of our city looking to brand itself as a creative hub

  • Affordable creative workspace
  • Learning Infrastructure
  • ‘Third Spaces’. – open public spaces with publicly accessible businesses and facilities
  • Affordable (housing) Accommodation
  • Cultural attractions/venues
  • Institutional support

Part of the problem with the sci-tech bubble is that any suitable space that might have made for a larger creative hub (eg The Grafton Centre) has been bought up by the international property market to convert into lab space.

Ask any scientist what ‘non-science’ hobbies they have and you may be surprised by the sheer variety

One of my big regrets from school/college/uni was following the culture of focusing on a small number of linked academic subjects because of exams culture, and not allowing myself to keep going with things that make life enjoyable. (I’ve still not forgiven the teachers, institutions, politicians, ministers, and governments for this – I’m like an elephant with teenage-era grudges!)

This is why for me the cultural strategy needs to make the point more forcefully that sci-tech employment sites cannot become dull monocultures. The people working on the sites won’t thank you! Over the decades the number of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and medics who I have met in music and dance circles is incredible – far more than people in my own past academic fields of humanities and social sciences! Furthermore, there’s the inevitable risk of Cambridge becoming over-exposed to a single industry. Which is why we also need historians!

On the text between the priority headlines

Inevitably I have problems with the judgements made below more than a few of the headlines, but that comes from having spent over 40 years living here. I wouldn’t expect a consultants based in London to be aware of half of the stuff I complain about! What I do look for from any external consultant is what new knowledge they can bring, share, and leave behind for local people to work with. For example how other projects have overcome specific barriers.

The report should not label something as ‘good’ when it is ‘mediocre’ at best

Transport and Communication will make or break the vision

And finally…

To be fair the report makes clear the importance of transport connections – even though it omits the Mayor’s light rail commitment. Given that it looks like this draft wasn’t touched after April 2025 they could be forgiven for that!

In terms of arts and sports facilities for Arbury and King’s Hedges, I’ve been writing about the Milton Road Garage Site for years as being suitable for a swimming pool and/or arts centre – one that could be in-part powered by the heat from the servers and machines on the Science Park on the other side of the busway. With the Science Park’s own proposals for densification, family-friendly active travel routes will be essential if any new facilities are to have a chance at being accessible to local residents.

One of the challenges the planners will face is not so much within Cambridge but in the fields outside of it that get designated for development. One of the things that makes innovation and creativity fun is having to overcome seemingly immovable barriers. That listed building that needs renovating? There are a whole host of things that cannot be touched – but at the same time you need to make the interiors fit for purpose for the 21st century. Or the challenging geographical features that mean you can’t necessarily build what you want where you want in an otherwise easy option?

The challenge with Cambridge is that *everything* seems to be the easy option on the edge of town because much of the land is flat and featureless.

Just the unremitting drab bleached miserableness that is the architecture of Eddington alone is enough to make the artist weep.

Above – Eddington from G-Maps. I despise this building design style with a passion.

And no amount of foliage, no quantity of temporary banners, no volume of ‘pop-up’ things can undo the damage done by such hideous building designs. But then you never know, if we find out that the sci-tech bubble really is a bubble and comes crashing down, could a hollowed-out Eddington (or any other sci-tech park or suite of expensive apartments) become the new creative hubs with low cost rents and tenancies so essential to the formation of creative spaces in the first place? After all, it’s a part of my own personal history during my time at university living in Brighton and Hove between 1999-2002 as the Millennium City was emerging out of the dark years of Thatcher-imposed austerity and social oppression. The place where I spent most of 2001/2002? North Laine.

If you want to see a creative quarter or three, head down to Brighton for a few days in the very late spring for the Brighton Festival 2026. You’ll see a creative quarter and colourful arts scene in full flow.

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: