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Arts centres are unlike any other cultural organisation. Rooted in their communities, open all day, balancing artistic ambition with civic responsibility, often on razor-thin margins. Yet they're still not getting the recognition they deserve.
In this episode of CultureTalk, we're joined by Annabel Turpin, CEO of Storyhouse in Chester and a member of the National Council of Arts Council England, and Gavin Barlow, former chief executive of the Albany in Deptford, where he spent over two decades building one of London's most successful cultural hubs. Together they co-lead Future Arts Centres, a network of over 180 art centres across the UK dedicated to peer support, advocacy and leadership development.
Future Arts Centres started in 2013 with just nine arts centre leaders who wanted to talk to each other. Today it's a nationally recognised network with real policy influence, and a track record to match.
But beyond the advocacy wins, it remains at heart a peer network: a space where leaders can share the pressures of running organisations that are simultaneously charities, businesses, community anchors and producers of art.
Those pressures are real. Financial sustainability, growing civic expectations, staff wellbeing, crumbling buildings: these are the conversations that keep coming up. And yet, despite all of it, Annabel and Gavin are unambiguously optimistic about the future of arts centres and the unique role they play in communities across the country.
It's an honest conversation – about funding, about advocacy, about mindset – and one that will resonate well beyond the arts centre world. If you work in, lead, or care about cultural organisations of any kind, there's something here for you.
We talk about what makes arts centres different, why their potential is still underestimated, and what it would take to truly unlock it.
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