Future Arts Centres and Arup have joined forces to highlight the critical need to restore ageing cultural infrastructure and support creative communities across the UK.

Diversifying our staff teams is a key agenda for most arts centres. Many of us have reviewed our recruitment policies and practices with varying degrees of success. There is a growing body of expertise in this area but time, resources and finding appropriate advice are all barriers to making effective changes.

The Inclusive Recruitment Action Research Group (October 2023 – March 2024) explored these issues and this document shares headline learning and ‘top tips’.

The Collaborative Commissioning Action Research Group (September 2023 – March 2024) was set up to build on the success of commissioning models developed in arts centres. This report shares an overview of the activity and learning from the group.

In 2023-2024, a Future Arts Centres action research group learned about the Most Significant Change evaluation methodology and tested how it can be used in a UK arts centres setting.

This report explains the Most Significant Change evaluation approach, the benefits and impact of the action research and what we learnt about the value of arts centres.