Culture and Wellbeing

Updated May 2008

Culture and wellbeing is one of our most important priorities. We understand the benefits and value that people feel from taking part in cultural activities and we are making great progress in tackling the barriers to wellbeing that some people in our communities face.

Vision

We want to make the most of our world-class heritage, breathtaking natural assets, events and festivals.

More opportunities will be created to inspire and engage people in a wide and productive range of cultural activity.

By enhancing our sense of place and strengthening wellbeing, we will enable people to enjoy life to the full and aspire to be the best that they can be.

Policy story

We consider the value of culture in three ways:

  • Sense of place – celebrating our past and present
  • Enjoying activities – simply enjoying taking part in a cultural activity or experience
  • Improving quality of life – helping to deliver our priorities

Our interpretation of wellbeing is the outcome or actual impact of our activities and services – in effect, the thing we strive to achieve through everything we do.

Two main pieces of government legislation guide our work:

Strong and Prosperous Communities (2006) talks about the localism agenda and the place-shaping role of Local Authorities. It re-emphasised the community leadership role of local authorities and the part they should play in bringing local partners and local people together to deliver better outcomes. It places greater emphasis on local government working collaboratively with its partners to provide citizen focussed services as part of a place shaping agenda.

The Local Government Act 2000 introduced wellbeing at a local level. It gave local authorities the power to do anything they considered could promote or improve this. The Act required each authority in England to prepare a Community Strategy to outline how it would use this power to achieve better economic, social and environmental outcomes for wellbeing.

Priority objectives and performance

We have a clear and focused set of objectives that we need to achieve over the long term to deliver our vision.

Whilst we know that culture and wellbeing underpin all of our objectives, we have identified top priorities for our Culture and Wellbeing partnership - our priority objectives.

These are the things on which we believe we can make the biggest and most sustainable impact and these are the things we will focus on improving first.

These are the priority objectives that have been set for 2008-2011 (our top ten outcomes are in bold):

  • Increasing opportunities to participate in positive activities and recognising achievement
  • Improving mental and emotional health
  • Reducing health inequalities
  • Improving the health and wellbeing of older people
  • Building respect in communities and reduce anti social behaviour
  • Reducing the gaps in employment and benefit claimant rates between the worst performing neighbourhoods and national average
  • Promoting culture and wellbeing so that everyone in our communities can be the best that they can be

Key information

With a wealth of quality historic sites, museums, theatre, coastline and inspirational events, we know that the great majority of people living in South Tyneside take part in some form of cultural or wellbeing activity.

The results of this are clear to see in the number of people who are satisfied with South Tyneside as a place to live and who feel that South Tyneside is a place where people get along. Our vibrant community life really contributes to South Tyneside's sense of place. 

Our cultural and wellbeing services are world class: the internationally renowned Great North Run finishes in our borough, our leisure services are amongst the best in the country, and library membership and visits are very high performing.  This has been recognised by external judgement.

Our work in Wellbeing is also making a difference, not only to the people of South Tyneside, but we are actively influencing government policy, putting wellbeing and South Tyneside on the map.

Next update due: April 2009

Links to key plans and strategies

 

Culture and Wellbeing

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