The British Academy’s latest report, Measuring Social and Cultural Infrastructure, marks an important shift in how we understand the assets and systems that sustain communal life. Rather than seeing social and cultural spaces—libraries, parks, festivals, community centres—as peripheral, the report argues for their recognition as forms of infrastructure in their own right. It invites us to think beyond fixed asset lists and narrow economic metrics, and instead to ask: what spaces and platforms enable people to form relationships, express identity, make meaning, and participate in social and cultural life?
This framework has profound implications for community media. For too long, independent, grassroots communication platforms have been seen as marginal—volunteer-driven add-ons to more “serious” media or cultural provision. Yet when viewed through the lens of infrastructure, their foundational role becomes clear.
Community media is infrastructure. It accumulates value through long-term social investment—through hours of volunteering, the cultivation of local knowledge, trust, and shared narrative. It enables activity: discussion, reflection, local coordination, creative expression, democratic accountability. It is available and shared; it is used simultaneously by many; and it is responsive to the specific cultural and social ecology of place.
Crucially, the British Academy’s report insists that measurement itself must serve democratic and place-based ends. It must not flatten diversity or mask inequalities. Instead, it must open space for local determination—measuring with people, not on them. This aligns with the principles that community media has long championed: inclusion, dialogue, co-creation, and independence.
But this work is not just about making the case for community media’s relevance. It is about recognising that if we are serious about social justice, wellbeing, civic cohesion, and long-term sustainability, we need a different kind of economy. The report’s approach resonates deeply with the principles of the Foundational Economy: that the everyday infrastructures of life—care, education, transport, communications—must be protected and renewed, not as commodities, but as public goods.
Community media sits squarely in this foundational domain. It is not a luxury, and it is not an industry. It is a civic utility: a means by which people maintain shared understanding, express identity, organise locally, and make sense of the world together. It is part of the democratic ecosystem. If we wish to restore trust in public life, community media must be treated as an essential element in that system—not a competitor in a failing market.
The report also makes a compelling point about power. Infrastructure must be evaluated not just by its form, but by its function and control. And this is where both commercial monopolies and centrally-managed state monopolies fall short. When media is controlled by a handful of conglomerates, or when it is managed from the centre without local accountability, it becomes extractive. It becomes a tool of protectionism—guarding the interests of institutions rather than serving people’s lived needs.
A real economy—and a real democracy—requires a social marketplace: not one governed by capital or bureaucracy, but by place-based participation, civic stewardship, and relational value. This means investing in community radio stations, local storytelling networks, co-operatively run media platforms, and civic digital infrastructure. It means trusting local people to define what matters to them, and to decide what platforms and spaces support their cultural and social flourishing.
If the UK’s media and cultural infrastructure is to play a meaningful role in regeneration and resilience, we must stop looking up to the big players, and start looking out—across the civic horizon where local networks and capacities can be nurtured. This is not about ‘scaling up’. It is about scaling deep—supporting local infrastructures that grow meaning through use, trust, and co-ownership.
At Decentered Media, we welcome this report’s framework and see in it an opportunity to push for a rebalancing of investment and policy. We call for measurement tools that reflect lived experience. We call for funding mechanisms that support local independence, not dependency. And we call for a public infrastructure model that sees community media not as an add-on, but as central to how we build democratic value, cultural meaning, and social resilience from the ground up.
Because the real infrastructure of the future isn’t just about connectivity or bandwidth. It’s about belonging, expression, and participation. And that is what community media—if valued properly—can help us build.