The culture test: what Sussex needs devolution to deliver

The story of Sussex’s creative and cultural industries is one of paradox: globally admired organisations, often sitting in small towns. A lively mix of tech and art, and an army of micro businesses, but also a fragile, patchy infrastructure that can leave artists and audiences short-changed.

As part of the Sussex And The City project, focusing on devolution, local experts Stuart Drew (De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill), Nick Collison (the Old Market, Hove) and Louise Blackwell (Creative Crawley), have been making a clear argument. Devolution is a chance to move culture from being a nice extra to a central engine of jobs, skills and civic life. But only if the new mayor treats it as practical public policy, not ornamentation.

Sussex culture punches above its weight

If we think of the De La Warr Pavilion as ‘a 1935 spaceship’, we get at something important: Sussex hosts venues that are internationally ambitious, and deeply creative, yet rooted in small communities. That history has been a huge asset – think Sussex modernism and the coastal cultural trails – but it hasn’t produced a single, joined-up system. Partners talk and collaborate, but the business of culture remains hyperlocal and often competitive. The risk with larger, pan-Sussex ways of seeing the region is that the granularity that makes places like Bexhill, Hastings and Chichester distinctive gets flattened. A mayoral settlement must defend those local voices while making the case for a coherent regional offer.

Skills and jobs — culture is not nice to have, it’s a pipeline

When the De La Warr and partners built the Talent Accelerator programme and a decade of jobs fairs, they were saying something simple: culture creates work, if you design pathways to it. The Old Market has shown how a venue can be a lab: #TomTech and successful immersive projects that bring video games, audiovisual design and performance together show audiences want new rules as much as new shows. A useful mayoral priority would be to fund a creative apprenticeships programme and a small innovation fund that scales proven local practice into county-wide opportunities.

An ecosystem, not a collection of buildings

Across Sussex the cultural ecology is dense with microbusinesses – in East Sussex it is an almost entirely micro-business economy. That fragmentation means organisations need clarity about their roles. Sussex cultural strengths are often at the “messy edges”, with value of specialist venues that don’t try to be everything to everyone. Rather than duplicated festivals and blanket marketing, the region needs a healthy division of labour: specialist venues, touring circuits, shared studio infrastructure and clearer routes between freelancers, indie studios and larger organisations. The incredible work of Creative Crawley (just awarded a further £1m investment from Arts Council England) shows that cultural places can be rooms where artists, policy makers and communities speak the same language; a reminder that buildings are part of civic infrastructure, not just assets to manage.

The night-time economy, transport and assets: infrastructure matters

If culture looks like joy and spectacle it’s tempting to forget the everyday mechanics that make it possible: safe streets, noise planning that works, trains that actually connect Bognor to Brighton in the evening, and banks or post offices that haven’t vanished from seaside towns. Our expert contributors have flagged the need for a night-time or cultural tsar — someone who can hold the cross-departmental conversations about safety, planning and licensing. Equally urgent is clarity about asset transfer as councils reorganise: too many venues risk losing local advocacy if district voices are swallowed by unitary structures.

What does this mean for devolution?

Devolution should treat culture as a serious lever for growth and inclusion. Practical first moves: appoint a cultural or night-time economy lead in year one; create a ring-fenced transition fund to support community venues through local government change; establish a creative apprenticeships pot and an innovation fund to scale pilots such as talent accelerator; and invest in transport fixes that actually let people travel to jobs and cultural events. The West Midlands’ tech commissioner model is a helpful precedent: Sussex needs someone who can thread culture, tech and industry together at scale.

The wider question

Sussex will keep losing talent unless culture equals jobs and participation, not just prestige buildings and visiting figures. The county’s creative strength is real, from immersive performance to games and music hubs, but it will be wasted unless leaders give it a stable platform: funding that thinks long term, infrastructure that connects places and people, and a mayoral team that understands culture’s material value to skills, health and the visitor economy.

If the next mayor wants quick wins, make them practical; invest in apprenticeships, fix the night-time plumbing, protect local assets and back the porous, experimental venues that turn ideas into livelihoods. Sussex’s creative scene is ready to deliver. It just needs the right levers.

To listen to expert opinion and insight, and to catch up on everything you need to know about devolution in Sussex and Brighton, visit sussexandthecity.info