City of London adopts new cultural strategy to boost global reputation
The City of London has officially adopted a new cultural strategy aimed at enhancing its global reputation as a vibrant cultural hub alongside its financial prowess.
The strategy, approved by the Court of Common Council, outlines a vision to position the City not just as a financial centre, but as a culturally vibrant, proudly cosmopolitan and historically significant business district.
It is built on three key priorities: Championing the City's Character, Balancing the Cultural Mix, and Accessing Culture with Ease.
Championing the City's Character
This priority focuses on celebrating the unique stories, traditions, and physical attributes of the City to bolster its global identity and competitiveness. A key action involves bringing the City's hidden gems
into public view through routes, trails, and events. Specifically, the strategy aims to identify under-recognised architectural assets, heritage sites, events, collections and ceremonial traditions across the Square Mile that express what makes the City distinctive.
The plan includes developing routes and trails connecting culture, history, architecture, and contemporary life, and delivering a quarterly programme of 'Secret City' events aligned with major citywide programmes like Open House, London Festival of Architecture, and London Fashion Week. These events will be offered in guided, self-guided, and digital formats. The long-term goal is to broker partnerships to open up distinctive spaces for culture on a regular basis, including one-off and limited-run experiences that pair unusual locations with new audiences.
The strategy also aims to share a wider range of histories and perspectives, making the City's heritage more inclusive and relevant. To achieve this, the City will work with communities to identify where the experiences and contributions of people from different ethnic backgrounds, faiths, genders, generations, disabilities, sexual orientations and socioeconomic backgrounds are missing, overlooked or underrepresented.
Concrete steps include reviewing how the City's stories are represented across cultural activity, heritage sites, archives, public spaces, and storytelling platforms. In the medium term, the plan is to work with artists, communities, archives and cultural organisations to co-create new approaches to storytelling, interpretation and cultural programming.
Inclusivity is defined by ensuring that a wider range of histories, perspectives and lived experiences are reflected across cultural activity, public spaces and heritage programmes.
Balancing the Cultural Mix
The strategy seeks to create space for new cultural ideas and support a diverse range of cultural activities. This includes making cultural spaces more accessible and sustainable, fostering early connections with young people through cultural education, and developing pathways into creative careers by combining practical experience with skills development.
Specifically, the strategy aims to foster new cultural ideas by creating space for culture to thrive at every scale, supporting a more varied, experimental, and resilient cultural ecosystem. Activities envisioned include making cultural space easier to access, use, and sustain, supporting new ideas while strengthening the City's cultural infrastructure. A clear, city-wide approach to cultural space
will be established, producing practical guidance on accessing spaces, understanding permissions, and bringing new ideas to life. A database of vacant, underused, and community spaces will be maintained, with partnerships brokered between landowners, developers, and cultural organisations. Experimentation will be supported through flexible approaches to permissions, licensing, and meanwhile use, with clearer pathways created for successful projects or organisations to grow or transition into longer-term cultural homes. Experimentation will be embedded as a recognised part of the City's cultural infrastructure.
The strategy proposes to create new routes into creative work by combining hands-on cultural experience with skills development supported by City employers and institutions.
This involves positioning the City as a clear starting point for creative careers by coordinating opportunities, promoting them, and making routes into creative careers and training easier to find and access, particularly for young people and career-changers without existing networks. Employers, cultural organisations, education providers, and funders will be convened to co-design post-16 pathways combining paid experience, skills development, and accreditation. The strategy will test how placements, apprenticeships, training, and qualifications can align across organisations to reduce reliance on informal networks and one-off opportunities. A flagship, City-wide entry programme into creative careers will be launched, bringing together the City's cultural institutions and business community to offer paid experience, accredited learning, and progression opportunities.
Accessing Culture with Ease
This priority aims to make culture more discoverable and accessible for everyone. Actions include coordinating communications and wayfinding, improving essential amenities like seating and toilets, and extending cultural activity into public spaces to make it a more visible part of daily life.
The strategy is supported by a Delivery Toolkit and an Audience Playbook, which provide practical guidance for implementation and understanding the City's diverse cultural audiences. The strategy aims to enhance the City's global reputation by positioning culture as a defining strength that sets it apart from other global business districts. Success will be measured by the City becoming known for culture as well as commerce; cultural organisations attracting new audiences, partners, and investment; the City's cultural strengths contributing to its reputation and appeal; more people recognising culture as a defining characteristic of the City of London; the City's cultural offer attracting new audiences, partnerships, and investment; and international partnerships and engagement activity strengthening the profile and reach of the City's cultural offer.
Read the full public reports pack here: Public reports pack.
Read the agenda here: Agenda frontsheet.
