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What is "cultural planning"?

Excerpts from Community Cultural Planning Handbook: A guide for community leaders

by Craig Dreeszen, Ph.D.

Community cultural planning is a structured, community-wide fact-finding and consensus building process to identify cultural resources, community needs, and opportunities; and to plan actions and secure resources to respond.

Cultural planning is a public process in which representatives of a community undertake a comprehensive community assessment and planning process that focuses on arts and cultural resources, needs, and opportunities. Sometimes the planning is narrowly focused on the needs of artists, arts organizations, and audiences. Increasingly, cultural planning considers the role of culture in resolving broader community needs.

In spite of a diversity of approaches to cultural planning, most plans commence with assessment and conclude with planning. The most effective plans employ a five-step process as outlined below.

Typical Sequence of Cultural Planning Steps.

1. Pre-planning

Assess need and readiness for planning:
Gather cultural and civic leaders to discuss the cultural planning concept, methods, costs, benefits, and feasibility.
Clarify reasons for planning.
Identify the lead administrative agency that will manage the planning.
Evaluate potential for funding the planning and the administrative capacity of the agency (usually the local arts agency) responsible to manage the planning.
Contact municipal or county planning agency and other public or private entities doing community assessment or planning.
Get organized:
Identify and recruit community leaders to serve on steering committee.
Secure authorization from elected officials for planning.
Mayor (or equivalent) appoints planning steering committee.
Raise planning funds (may be done earlier in the process).
If needed, issue request for proposals (RFP) for consultants, contract with consultant.
Develop detailed work plan.

2. Assessment

Consultants and/or volunteers identify information needs and sources, collect existing information (census reports, school data, recreation or historic preservation studies, economic development reports, social service studies, other plans, etc.)... Collect new information with interviews, focus groups, public meetings, surveys (mail or phone to targeted constituents, e.g., artists or arts leaders, and/or representative-sample polling of population, and, if needed, specialized studies, e.g., economic impact, market research, folklife study, assessment of cultural organizations, comparable cities studies, etc.).

Analyze information with qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Quantitative: Analyze numeric data (survey results) with counts, averages, identification of patterns and clusters of data; note most frequent responses; cross tabulate (e.g., compare non-attenders' media habits with arts-attenders); do tests to determine statistical significance of results (some apparent survey results are merely the workings of chance).
Qualitative: Identify patterns and themes in transcripts of interviews, focus groups, and public meetings and in narrative responses to open-ended survey questions. Similar statements can be coded and then counted (e.g., "80% of those interviewed mentioned the library as a key cultural resource.").
Identify a few key issues for planning in an interim assessment report.

3. Goal setting and plan writing

Organize a task force for each key issue to generate and evaluate alternative solutions, then express intentions as goals and objectives and action steps.
Alternatively, the steering committee or consultants make recommendations.
Convene public hearings to review draft plan.
Circulate draft plan to opinion leaders and assessment interviewees.
Steering committee negotiates and refines final goals.
Identify key responsibilities, time lines, and funding or leave implementation up to individual initiative.
Write final plan (often a summary version for wide distribution and a more detailed plan for policymakers and cultural leaders).
Steering committee formally votes to approve the plan and then disbands.
Design, publish, and distribute the plan.

4. Implementation

Issue press release, convene press conference, and celebrate the plan's publication.
Present the cultural plan for adoption by municipal or county government, school board, planning commission, affected cultural institutions.
Raise funds to implement plan (may be done concurrently with planning).
Present the plan to civic and cultural organizations affected by the plan and encourage each agency to make their own plans to participate in implementation.

5. Monitoring and evaluation

Plan to monitor progress to encourage the plan's implementation.
Often the local arts agency is charged to oversee implementation and monitor progress (plans with specific short-term outcomes and time tables are more readily evaluated than those with only general goals).
The steering committee may be reconvened annually to evaluate progress and suggest "course corrections."
The same methods used in the community assessment can be applied on a smaller scale to evaluate results. Interviews, focus groups, and public meetings can help determine what actions have been taken. Such enquiries will also encourage community leaders to renew their commitment to implement the plan.
Periodic monitoring and updating can make an "evergreen plan" that adapts to remain current over years.
Consider asking an evaluation consultant to formally assess the plan's implementation.
Some communities later conduct specific-issue plans (e.g., cultural facilities, cultural tourism, or cultural equity).