The Cultural Development Fund (CDF) marks a new approach to cultural and creative investment, focusing on geographical location and the effect that strategic investment can have on economic growth and productivity. The fund has been designed to allow us to test, innovate and learn through doing, whilst delivering four key outcomes: unlock economic growth and productivity; strengthen local leadership; enhance creative skills and make places attractive to live, work and to visit.

As a pilot programme, we can take risks and try new approaches, test models and work with new partners. We will develop new approaches within the Creative Estuary project to enable cultural, community and commercial organisations to work more closely together, to re-imagine the Thames Estuary’s future and test and deliver the Thames Estuary Production Corridor’s ambitions and vision in concrete and sustainable ways.

To help us understand the impact of our programme, the strength of our partnerships and the legacy of the investment we have appointed Hatch Regeneris, along with PRD Director Chris Paddock, to undertake our Programme Evaluation. The team delivering this work for us include experts in evaluation of culture-led regeneration and economic development studies. They bring detailed understanding of best practice evaluation methods, extensive experience of developing high quality research tools, and experience of working with delivery partners to gather high quality monitoring data to inform evaluation work.

Creative Estuary are delighted to have been selected by the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport to lead the national CDF Peer Learning Network, offering us national profile, influence and opportunities to capture further learning.

The network will support the successful 2019-2022 CDF projects in Worcester, Wakefield, Plymouth, Grimsby and the Thames Estuary. Our purpose is to be the national collective that ensures the success of CDF investment. By creating the space to share, nourish, innovate and re-energise for all of our trailblazing projects we will; influence, communicate, learn, celebrate and drive further investment, securing the legacy of CDF.
The Cultural Development Fund is a prime opportunity to improve the evidence base around culture’s economic impact. Helping to build the evidence base at a national and local level is an important component of this.

The network will connect practitioners, project managers, directors and research partners with responsibility for evaluation, to strengthen evaluation capability at a local level and to ensure, that by working together, the data collection and evaluation process at a national level is robust and delivers insight and evidence.

We will share our findings widely and join with other place-based networks such as the Great Place Scheme and Creative People and Places. We will actively seek out opportunities to contribute to the national debate around evidence and impact such as that being undertaken by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and The Centre for Cultural Value.