Cultural Destinations Evaluation

In 2017 the Arts Council invested £3 million into round two of the Cultural Destinations fund. The Cultural Destinations fund round two (2017-2020), builds on the learnings from round one (2014-2017). Cultural Destinations is an initiative between Arts Council England and Visit England, the national tourist board. The aim of Cultural Destinations is to enable arts and culture organisations working in partnership with destination organisations to increase their reach, engagement and resilience through working with the tourism sector. Closer working between the two sectors will contribute to the economic growth of the cultural and tourism visitor economies.

This programme will support the positioning of culture as a prominent part of the local visitor offer, helping to drive the growth of the visitor economy. Cultural Destinations aims to build partnership capacity in the cultural and visitor economy sectors to achieve the following outcomes: - More and different types of people experiencing the arts and culture in local destinations in a way that contributes to the growth of the local visitor economy - Increased income leading to greater sustainability and resilience for cultural organisations and tourism businesses in local destinations - Repositioning of culture as a prominent part of the visitor offer and local economic growth plans - A commitment from public and private sector partners to continue working in partnership to support the growth of the local visitor economy through cultural tourism beyond the life of this project.

The Arts Council England and Visit England are commissioning an external evaluation of round two of the Cultural Destinations Fund to assess the fund against the above outcomes. Each Cultural Destinations area is required to undertake an individual evaluation of their work towards these outcomes. Our aim for the evaluation is to ensure the area evaluations can be brought together along with some primary research to provide programme-level evidence of Cultural Destinations' contribution overall to its aims. We would also like to highlight key learnings from round 2, and inform future place based strategic funds.