Cultural Ecosystem
An ecological approach sees culture as a collective and interconnected endeavour, with multiple values.
This is about paying attention to the ever changing, evolving and entangled nature of relationships which can help or hinder cultural possibilities in Dudley borough. It also embraces an understanding of place; ways that our local places shape us and our cultures.
Dudley Creates cultural strategy in action involves convening local creatives and working to create the conditions for them to nurture their relational practice to pay attention to cultural value through interconnections across the ecosystem. This is about conditions conducive to acting collaboratively, to enhancing co-creation between artists, between artists and communities, between artists and non-arts collaborators, and having the time to develop a much deeper place based practice. We observe and track these new relations using local ecosystem vital signs. Our first iteration of vital signs emerged as part of the collective enquiry process which included research with local creatives involved in Creative Black Country’s participatory place-based arts programme Dudley Creates 2020-2022.
What if… we followed nature’s lead?
Navigation Tool: Vital Signs of a flourishing local cultural ecosystem
Our gratitude to Jonathan Gross and Nick Wilson for their work on ecological approaches to culture which we have taken as inspiration. Locally refined ecosystem vital signs are the qualities that help us carefully observe if our cultural ecosystem is growing towards greater system health. Use the Vital Signs Canvas in the Dudley Creates Navigation Guide to reflect on your work.
Our Vital Signs build on the work of Jonathan Gross and Nick Wilson who asked ‘What does a flourishing cultural eco-system look like’ in their research ‘Creating the Environment’ - The cultural eco-system of Creative People and Places’.
