I have reviewed the English Devolution White Paper to assess its implications for media, culture, arts, and communications within the context of devolution planning. The White Paper sets an ambitious agenda for decentralising decision-making and funding to regional and local levels, with implications both explicitly stated and potentially emerging for these sectors.
Devolving Culture, Heritage, and the Visitor Economy
The White Paper recognises the significant economic and social role played by culture, heritage, and the visitor economy. It seeks to empower local and regional authorities to align cultural investment with their Local Growth Plans.
Arts and Cultural Funding: The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) will work with Mayoral Strategic Authorities to devolve decisions around cultural funding and ensure that investments in arts, heritage, and sport reflect local priorities.
A review of Arts Council England will ensure regional representation in funding decisions and partnerships with Strategic Authorities.
Creative Industries and Skills Development: The government highlights the creative industries as growth drivers, with a commitment to reset skills pipelines. Local and regional leaders will play a pivotal role in addressing skills gaps, ensuring decisions around creative industry development and training reflect local needs. This approach builds on existing cultural devolution examples, such as the Liverpool City Region Production Fund, which has successfully supported regional film and television production.
Supporting Local Journalism and Media Accountability
The White Paper acknowledges the crucial role of local journalism in ensuring accountability for local governance, while also combating disinformation by providing trustworthy, community-based reporting.
A Local Media Strategy: The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will develop a local media strategy to sustain local journalism. This includes exploring how Local Authorities can better support local media, such as improving access to council information for journalists. This positions local media as integral to the transparency and accountability of devolved governance structures.
Strategic Partnerships for Economic Growth
The White Paper positions Strategic Authorities as key partners for DCMS Arm’s Length Bodies (e.g., Arts Council, Historic England) in delivering local economic growth plans.
Collaboration Opportunities: Devolved institutions will be encouraged to work with cultural bodies to unlock the economic potential of culture, heritage, sport, and tourism.
Potential Future Roles for Media, Culture, Arts, and Communications
While the White Paper does not yet fully detail devolution of media and communications, it creates opportunities for future development:
Media and Communication as a Devolved Power
The White Paper’s emphasis on place-based governance suggests that local authorities and Mayors could, in the future, take on:
- Strategic Communication Roles: Building local media capacity to enhance public engagement and trust in devolved governance.
- Public Service Media Innovation: Supporting localised media initiatives that reflect diverse voices, fostering civic participation through community-based media organisations.
This aligns with the stated intention to align public service delivery with local needs and community engagement strategies.
Supporting Local Media Sustainability
The White Paper’s focus on rebuilding local governance and addressing regional inequalities sets the stage for recognising the role of local media ecosystems.
Further devolution could see local authorities taking responsibility for:
- Targeted funding for local journalism initiatives.
- Supporting media literacy programmes to combat disinformation.
- Establishing media hubs to encourage independent, community-led reporting.
Enhancing Regional Creative and Cultural Autonomy
The recognition of strategic cultural planning through Spatial Development Strategies and Local Growth Plans provides a framework for local control of creative economy investments, enabling more agile and regionally specific cultural strategies, and community asset ownership of cultural spaces (via the “Right to Buy”), empowering communities to preserve and utilise vital civic and media spaces for cultural and communication purposes.
The English Devolution White Paper has the potential to develop a foundation for integrating culture, arts, and communications into the devolved governance model. While the role of local journalism is explicitly acknowledged as vital for accountability, there remains an opportunity to push for expanded devolved powers to support media sustainability and regional communication strategies.
To ensure the potential is fully realised, however, independent and community media advocacy should focus on:
- Strengthening the role of local media in supporting transparent, devolved governance.
- Championing creative industries as cornerstones of regional economic growth.
- Pushing for formal recognition of local media, communications, and digital inclusion as essential devolved priorities.
This would ensure that devolution not only transfers power, but also equips regions with the tools to foster vibrant civic dialogue, robust local journalism, and thriving creative economies.
Public Purpose and Role of Media in Devolution
As part of the ongoing discussion on devolution, it is crucial to recognise that media’s role must extend beyond the narrow definitions of journalism and news provision. While news and information are vital components of local accountability and democracy, a truly place-based approach to media must encompass broader forms of communication that facilitate discussion, conversation, and a sense of belonging to places and communities.
The current focus, particularly in the context of the Local Media Review being undertaken by Ofcom, risks perpetuating a limited understanding of media’s potential. By prioritising journalism and news in their traditional sense, this review overlooks the holistic and multifaceted role that media plays in supporting social and cultural life. Local media is not only a vehicle for disseminating information, but is also a foundation for fostering civic identity, community dialogue, and shared experiences.
To generate engaged local audiences with a strong sense of community identity, devolved media provision must actively incorporate the cultural and creative elements of community life. This includes local radio, podcasts, digital storytelling, arts programming, and platforms for creative expression that celebrate regional voices, experiences, and histories. Media that showcases local culture, creativity, and shared stories can bridge divides, enhance local pride, and encourage participation in community life.
Incorporating a broader vision for local media into devolution planning would ensure that community media reflects the full spectrum of local identity and experience. This approach goes beyond “news” to recognise media as a means of strengthening social cohesion, stimulating cultural development, and building sustainable, vibrant communities.
We must advocate for a devolution model that not only empowers local governance but also embeds local media as a vital tool for community connection, cultural representation, and creative growth.
As public services and local authorities assume newly devolved powers, there is an urgent need to reform the way they communicate with the people they serve. Traditional models of mass communication and marketing, where authorities act as providers of media and information to passive audiences, are no longer sufficient to meet the challenges of a devolved, place-based future. Instead, devolved authorities must invest in communities’ capacity to communicate to and about themselves.
This transformative approach shifts the focus from broadcasting information to creating enabling infrastructures that empower citizens to represent their own experiences, aspirations, and challenges. By fostering opportunities for participatory communication, local authorities can help build trusted, accountable relationships within and across communities, ensuring that people’s voices are central to local governance and public life.
Such an approach demands leaving behind top-down, one-way communication models and embracing new participatory models of media and communication. These models focus on:
- Empowering citizens to express themselves and engage directly in shaping the narrative of their communities.
- Facilitating social cohesion by creating spaces for inclusive dialogue, shared understanding, and the co-production of solutions to local challenges.
- Building participatory media literacies, so citizens are equipped to critically engage with, produce, and share media content in ways that are meaningful and trusted.
- Enabling active and involved citizenship, where residents see themselves not merely as recipients of public services but as participants in public life, contributing to strategic public purposes such as economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability.
Devolved authorities must therefore invest in community-led media ecosystems, including local radio, digital platforms, community journalism, storytelling initiatives, and spaces for cultural and creative expression. By supporting such initiatives, local authorities will not only enhance transparency and trust, but also ensure that citizens are active agents in building resilient, vibrant, and cohesive communities.
In this reimagined communication landscape, the role of devolved authorities is not to dominate the conversation but to act as enablers and facilitators, empowering people to communicate on their own terms, in their own voices, and for their own purposes. This is essential to realising the full democratic and civic potential of devolution and ensuring that communication serves as a bridge between citizens, communities, and public services for the benefit of all.