Co-governance of the ‘creative city’: Bringing lived experience to the governance of culture in Sheffield

Abstract

Different understandings of what culture offers cities are reflected in its governance. Focusing on Sheffield, we apply a conceptual framework to reveal how the varied claims made for culture and associated forms of governance intersect and diverge. The governance gaps revealed generate lessons about how to link hierarchical culture governance with the lived experience of a city’s cultural and creative workers, vital cultural producers who engage in self-governance, whilst asserting city government’s stewardship of these processes in its role of caring for place. By linking culture governance to the everyday, the research refines oppositions – between formal and informal, production and consumption and co-option and contestation – to highlight the need for an active, inclusive form of co-governance that better supports cultural producers, in place.