Living Places
Living Places is the name for a programme of work by the Government's cultural agencies, including MLA, to ensure that communities are provided with appropriate levels of cultural facilities and services. Launched at the Thames Gateway Forum on 28 November 2007, Living Places has a website at www.living-places.org.uk which includes an online planning ‘toolkit’ intended for anyone involved in planning cultural provision. The Living Places prospectus can be downloaded from the site and sets out the aims which are to create
In addition to MLA, the organisations which make up the Living Places partnership are the two government departments (Communities and Local Government, and Culture, Media and Sport), the Arts Council of England (ACE), English Heritage (EH), the Academy of Sustainable Communities (ASC), the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), Sport England and the three Regional Cultural Consortia, including Living East. Living Places has agreed to work together immediately in five ‘priority places’, of which the Thames Gateway is the biggest. Both the East and Southeast regions have Living Places partnerships, and plans are in place to create a ‘pan-Gateway’ partnership. MLA East of England is actively promoting the contribution which museums, libraries and archives can make to the Living Places objectives. We believe that libraries provide a crucial service, where people can get information and advice, as well as borrow books or DVDs, or access the internet. Likewise museums and archives are a must for providing the ‘collective memory’ of places, and for forming the ‘glue’ that holds communities together.….communities which are rich in character and culture; where people feel they belong because they are alive with opportunity and activity…communities which stand the test of time because everyone feels they have a place and that there is something for them
