2022 Review: Culture Team

The year in review – highlights of 2022!

Despite many challenges for our sector and London as a whole, 2022 has been a year where the Culture and Creative Industries and 24 Hour London teams have done so much to help London get back on its feet.

• We are helping venues across London to become more accessible to people with dementia with our Dementia Friendly Venues Charter, now with 129 organisations pledging to make changes.
• From January, London Borough of Culture launched in Lewisham. Highlighting the Climate Emergency, Lewisham’s musical history and status as a borough of Sanctuary. Lewisham’s year as London Borough of Culture has been a huge success with more than 300 events and 162,000 people taking part. Their outstanding programme of events has showcased the borough’s grassroots creativity, musical heritage and diverse communities. It was created with 200 partner organisations, 710 volunteers and supported 1,800 young people to help enter the creative industries. It has truly shown the power of the arts to inspire all ages and has been a fantastic spotlight on the innovation and artistry that can be found across our capital.
• In March we wrapped up a 10 month long events programme as part of the Mayor’s ‘Let’s Do London’ tourism campaign. Working with over 730 partners across London’s culture, hospitality and retail sectors to deliver over 500 events – including free film screenings on Trafalgar Square, light spectaculars in the City of London and pop up performances across central London – delivering over £80 million to London’s economy and attracting over 300,000 visitors. 
• ‘We Design for the Community’ was a pilot scheme we launched in April, pairing students with cultural and creative organisations to provide marketing resource and allow students to work on a design brief and earn London Living Wage. It provided real-life experience for the students, improving their skills and affordable marketing plans for the organisations.
• In May, as ABBA Voyage opened their doors, 2.8 Million Minds launched. We worked in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, Bernie Arts Centre and Madlove putting children and young people at the heart of the conversation. Three groups of young people worked together to design a manifesto about mental health and how culture can support them – and presented it to a full audience in a chamber at the Houses of Parliament. Just last week, this important work was highly commended in the Creative Health and Wellbeing Alliance Awards in the Collective Power Awards section.
• In June the Mayor announced the expansion of the Creative Enterprise Zones with an investment of £800,000 to support thousands of jobs and create affordable studio space across the capital. Hammersmith & Fulham and Ealing also became the Mayor’s latest Creative Enterprise Zones, joining Croydon, Haringey, Hounslow, Lambeth, Lewisham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest. All the zones received a share of £800,000 which will help support 5,000 young Londoners to enter the creative sector and create more than 25,000 sqm of new, permanent, affordable workspace for the sector by 2025.
• Debbie Weekes-Bernard, Deputy Mayor for Communities unveiled the final installation of LDN WMN at West Hampstead Primary school. Celebrating Doctor Beryl Gilroy, the first black headteacher in Camden and created by artist Fipsi Seilern. We’ve just launched a short video of the day. LDNWMN is a series of free artworks across London, mainly produced by women and non-binary artists.
• In July the Mayor officially opened Talent House, funded through his Good Growth Fund, delivered by the Regeneration team and supported by the Culture team. This revamped building brings together UD Music and East London Dance under one roof providing a pioneering music and dance hub for the young people of East London.
• Part of London Borough of Culture, Liberty Festival at The Albany showcased 70 D/deaf and disabled artists’ work. Also in the borough, 20,000 people descended on Mountsfield Park for the return of the iconic People’s Day.
• The 10^th anniversary of the London Olympic and Paralympic games was marked in style with the Great Get Together (a family festival at the park) and a summer season of art and events led by LLDC and  our East Bank partners. East Bank is a new cultural quarter supported by the Mayor, creating opportunities for the local community and everyone who visits, lives and works in east London. Our partners are BBC, Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion, University College London and the V&A. It’s beginning to open, University College London welcomed their first students this year.
• In its first phase of its Cultural Impact Award, Hammersmith & Fulham carved pathways for young people to make music, through over 120 music workshops for young people across the borough. This summer, The Big Gig at Westfield London showcased the work of 26 budding musicians.
• The safety of women and girls around the clock remains a priority for the Mayor. Earlier this year, Sadiq invested £108,000 from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to boost his Women’s Night Safety Charter, providing support and resources to help signatories. In September, we passed the 1,000 mark in terms of venues and organisations that have signed up to the Charter, showing their commitment in helping to keep London a safe city.
• Antelope by Samson Kambalu was unveiled as the latest sculpture on the Fourth Plinth. Antelope is a restaging of a photograph from 1914 of Malawian Baptist Preacher and Pan-Africanist, John Chilembwe and European missionary, John Chorley. Chilembwe keeps his hat on in defiance of the colonial rule that forbade Africans from wearing hats before white people.
• In October, the World Cities Culture Forum celebrated 10 years with the Helsinki Summit bringing together cultural leaders from over 40 global cities to share best practice in policymaking to address local and global challenges within the culture sector. The city of Helsinki provided a much-admired example of how they responded to the pandemic.  At a time when travel was severely restricted, Helsinki helped people experience culture at the hyper local level. Through the city’s Gift of Art project, the public could ‘gift’ an outdoor performance via a digital app to friends and family on their doorstep. At the summit the 2022 report was launched exploring how creativity drives recovery.
• November saw the last events of London Unseen - a season of trails, tours and events about the many incredible histories of the city, told by communities, practitioners, artists and activists. Curated on behalf of the Mayor’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. The season provided over 40 free public events. Telling many rich, exciting and moving histories: from the invisible tales of Indian seafarers in WWI, to Black History in Elephant & Castle, from LGBTQI+ stories in North London to legends of nature in the woodlands of Barham Park.
• Our Culture and Community Spaces at Risk team hosted a Skills Forum at City Hall - a day of peer to peer learning for culture and community spaces across London. Topics included strategies for successfully engaging local authorities, navigating and utilizing the planning system, documenting the social value of work through film, exploring alternative business models and re-imagining governance for grassroots organisations.   

We hope that you have had the opportunity to enjoy some of the many incredible arts and culture events, venues and great people that London has to offer. It is so exciting to look at everything our Culture and Creative Industries and 24 Hour London teams have achieved this year and look forward to even more in 2023.