The provision of cultural and creative spaces and facilities has not always been planned with the same rigour that is found in other sectors such as retail or commercial development. Inadequate planning of cultural provision can hamper the long term viability of projects. Business of Culture has been at the fore front of developing a better approach to development cultural planning combining techniques use in commercial with their specialist knowledge of the cultural and creative sectors. We have advised on single projects through to the planning if new urban and rural communities.

• Capital projects – development and management
• Sustainable communities
• Cultural provision, entitlement
• Cultural Planning gain
• Public real planning for cultural and creative activities
• Business Planning
• Project Management and client representation
• Spatial analysis, perception testing and brand development

Case study Luton Carnival  UK Centre for Carnival Arts

We worked with Luton Centre for Carnival Arts to build the case for a National company, the first of its kind in Europe, to display and develop all the skills for carnival arts.  This included:

· Demand Assessment – market research into the potential audiences for a new centre.  We used quantitative and qualitative research, post code analyses, drive-time research, and synthesised them together to build profiles for the different audiences for the different aspects of the centre – from crèche users to University of Luton tie-ins, local, regional, national and international demand for the centre, with all other potential audiences assessed.

·  We wrote the development plan for the Centre, and helped them in raising funds from major funding agencies – ACE East, ERDF, EEDA, Luton Borough Council and others, and put in place the structure for the Centre to grow its own fundraising team, using databases of potential donors we helped create and an integrated management team structure.

· On the Development side, we put in place governance and board management structures to ensure the new Centre had the appropriate mechanisms to ensure further approaches for funding were supported by robust governance.

The result is that the new UK Centre for Carnival Arts is due to open in 2009 in a brand new building, designed by Ash Sakula, and with a well managed capital programme leading to an appropriately revenue funded organisation.

See Clients for Cultural Planning