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‘Confessions of a Cultural Entrepreneur’ - Will Coleman, artistic director of Golden Tree Productions

It was Kim Conchie who first introduced me as a ‘cultural entrepreneur’. However, I had better ‘fess up straight away that I really don’t know how to make money. What’s more I don’t really understand how other people make money either. What I do know is that ‘culture’ does create significant economic impacts and that, as a company and as a sector, we have made enormous progress in helping people understand this.

Apparently, the UK’s Creative Industries contribute something like £115 billion to the economy annually, that’s over £300 million every day. Pre-Covid the sector was powering the UK’s workforce growth – adding new jobs at twice the rate of the rest of the economy. Here in Cornwall, we’ve always had a bubbling set of innovative creative industries and there’s now a growing realisation of the economic value of theatre, film, visual arts etc. However, I have to tell you that I do not get out of bed in the morning to ‘do culture’ because it helps with the economy, that’s not what motivates me and it’s not what motivates most people across the creative sector.

We do stuff because it’s good for people, and it’s good for life. It enriches life in a way that can’t be measured in pounds and pence. Whilst it’s great that culture contributes to the economy, if that lesson has now been learnt, how about we now learn the next lesson, which is that ‘culture’ is the stuff that makes life worth living...

As a company we’ve been fortunate enough to form relationships with so many businesses that just ‘get it’. The rewards of cross-sector cross-pollination have been apparent in many of our projects, including The Man Engine.

The first tour in 2016 was witnessed by an audience of 149,400 in person, with an international reach of 112 million. Based on the audience figures, the economic impact of the Man Engine tour was calculated at around £2.9 million just in the first ten days! We managed to secure the support of First Kernow buses, Maen Karne, CORMAC, Imerys, Mining Searches UK and Volvo Construction Equipment GB.

We are also seeing these cross-sector collaborations flourish at Kerdroya, the Cornish Landscape Labyrinth which we’re constructing at Colliford Lake on Bodmin Moor. As a commission for the Cornwall AONB Diamond Jubilee in 2019, the 56m diameter labyrinth project has grown into a multi-faceted Cornish heritage project - training young people, volunteers and nurturing school pupils. This project growth has meant we’ve had to reach out to those outside of the sector for support – whether that’s investment from South West Water, sponsorship from Rodda’s, Financial Concepts Planning and First Kernow or networking and connection sharing from those who can help us shift stones across Cornwall!

Recently, we’ve been working away on grand plans for a few projects (that may never be realised to their full potential, depending on the outcome of various funding bids – dreckly does it) and have been gratified by the overwhelming response from those, outside of our sector, who’ve seen the value – with little convincing – and jumped right on board.

We’re repeatedly being told how fortunate we are to live in Cornwall, with its beautiful landscape and its wonderful people. Well,

IMAGE BY: STEVE TANNER

purely seeing that in terms of economic benefit is to diminish the experience of real life. Real people’s lives are lived in real places, in real communities. Finally, we are now inching closer to that parallel universe where there are multiple and diverse Cornish voices telling our own story (see the recent Cornish language additions to BBC iPlayer) together with a renewed engagement with and celebration of our distinctive identity and indigenous language. If we are all going to co-exist here in this wonderful patch of the planet, it’s our communal cultural life that will glue us together in all our diversity as we tackle the ecological and existential crises ahead - and that will help make tomorrow a day that is worth getting out of bed for.

An termyn a dheu yw splann, an termyn a dheu yw Kernewek!

The future is bright, the future is Cornish!

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