As part of Radical Listening Week, Culture Central brought members together for a focused conversation on Leadership and Governance.

Guest blog, as part of Radical Listening Week, by Kat Hughes, theatre director and producer from Stoke-on-Trent, who runs Stoke Exchange Forum.

Join Culture Central on 16th July to hear the latest and most detailed picture of cultural engagement and creative participation in the region.

Culture Central x people make it work x Collective is a leadership programme for those traditionally excluded from senior roles in the cultural sector.

This is an invitation for you to join us to explore and support how we make change for ourselves, our peers, the cultural sector and the people and places of the West Midlands.

This document by Dr Mark Taylor, University of Sheffield, uses Census 2021 data to provide an overview of the West Midlands cultural workforce. This regional overview has been undertaken to support the development of a workforce strategy for the cultural sector.

Culture Central is pleased to be supporting CreaTech Frontiers, the West Midlands’ new creative industries cluster, and share details of its first funding call for creative innovators in the region.

Charlene Carter-James, Partnerships & Development Manager at Culture Central, on Radical Listening Week 2025 and our flagship event for the week, Opening Up Access Symposium on Monday 16th June 2025 in partnership with Open Theatre.

Culture Central is recruiting two leadership associates for two annual contracts of £2,500 to support an individual (either freelance or working in an organisation) to work alongside the leadership of Culture Central for up to ten days over the year.

Charlene Carter-James, Partnerships & Development Manager at Culture Central, reflects on our Inclusive Network programme.

Guest blog by independent researcher Dr Lucy Lopez about the development of a Charter for Equity for the cultural sector in the West Midlands.

In this second year of a three-year leadership programme for those traditionally excluded from the cultural sector, we have recruited 12 people to learn alongside and explore how we can make change for ourselves, our peers, the sector and the people and places of the West Midlands. Meet the second cohort of Collective.

In this guest blog, Dr Cara Courage, Culture, Communities & Place Consultant-Director, reflects on placemaking through the Future City Plan Makers Bootcamp and Conference.

Culture Central and West Midlands Cultural Compacts Network are releasing findings of their Growth enquiry into the future of cultural investment in the West Midlands, which calls for government, local authorities, cultural organisations, and private sector partners to take immediate, collective action to safeguard the future of the region’s cultural sector.

Culture Central and the West Midlands Cultural Compacts network are working with City-REDI at the University of Birmingham to understand the finances of the cultural sector in the West Midlands region after March 2025.

Co-created by over 125 leaders from the region’s cultural sector, Collectively Strategising Culture outlines our priorities and ambitions as a sector in the West Midlands. This plan has been designed to create a shared sense of direction, purpose and responsibility to ourselves and our stakeholders.

Upon coming to the end of his time with us as an intern for Culture Central, we caught up with Mohammed Usman to look back on some of the highlights of his invaluable work and take stock of new skills learned and how his role fitted in with the Culture Central team.

Culture Central x people make it work x Collective is a leadership programme for those traditionally excluded from senior roles in the cultural sector.

This is an invitation for you to join us to explore and support how we make change for ourselves, our peers, the cultural sector and the people and places of the West Midlands.

Sector change is core to Culture Central’s work as an organisation, and as part of this we are announcing the development of two new Leadership Associate roles in 2025, alongside announcing Dr. Anthony Ruck’s new role as Culture Central’s Chief Strategy Officer. Hear more about the role, and our planned Leadership Associate programme here.

The Activate Professional Development Grant programme has been launched to support freelancers, micro and small organisations in the West Midlands Creative and Cultural sectors to fund skills development projects and support the development of skills across the region.

Culture Central and the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) on behalf of their regional stakeholders and partners are seeking proposals for a research project to understand audience’s cultural and creative participation in the West Midlands geographic region.