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Culture Start Year 2 Review
2025-26
Welcome from Nick Maylan
(Chief Executive of Sunderland Culture)
Nick Malyan, Sunderland Culture CEO
We are please to share the Year 2 Impact Report for Culture Start.
Culture Start was established to address a clear issue: too many children and young people in Sunderland face barriers that prevent them from accessing arts and culture.
Since 2024, Sunderland Culture has led a citywide programme that brings together a range of cross-sector partners to create a cultural eco-system designed to benefit children and young people experiencing financial disadvantage, or facing other barriers that prevent them from taking part. We remain grateful to our funders and partners for their continued commitment.
Culture Start’s second year has focussed on targeted delivery of creative activities across the city, deepening engagement with children, young people and families, and strengthening our partnership to enable the step change we are committed to delivering.
The evaluation emerging from Culture Start shows clear impact – for children and young people, as well as for the organisations working together to deliver the programme.
Our next steps are clear – we need continued investment and support to embed and expand this model across the city and ensure that children and young people have the opportunity to engage with arts and culture, develop their creativity and see a place for themselves in the city’s cultural future.
The Local Context
Sunderland and the wider North East have some of the highest levels of child poverty in the UK, with all local authorities in the region above the national average. In Sunderland, around a third of children grow up in low-income households.
Poverty has wide-ranging impacts, influencing educational attainment, health, wellbeing, future aspirations and access to opportunities. Disadvantage is often cumulative, with limited access to enrichment opportunities reinforcing wider inequalities.
Creative and cultural experiences are no exception. Opportunities are unequally distributed across the city, with children growing up in poverty significantly less likely to access sustained arts and cultural provision inside or outside school.
The role of culture
Research shows that high-quality arts and cultural experiences can support confidence, wellbeing, creativity and a sense of belonging (WHO, 2019; APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, 2017). These experiences help young people develop skills, relationships and aspirations that support them through education and into adulthood.
Local strategies across Sunderland increasingly recognise culture as part of a broader social justice agenda, linking creative participation to education, health, skills and place-based regeneration.
Culture Start’s response
The programme is a cross-sector partnership that focuses specifically on children and young people experiencing poverty or social exclusion. Through strong partnership working and the development of a ‘cultural eco-system’, Culture Start removes financial barriers to participation and places activity in trusted neighbourhood settings so that creative opportunities are accessible to all.
In doing so, Culture Start is helping make high-quality cultural experiences a routine part of growing up in Sunderland rather than an exceptional opportunity.
Our Response
In Sunderland, Culture Start aims to
Empower schools and community organisations
Spark creativity in children
Ignite creative futures for young people
Create a more accessible creative sector
Stats & Highlights
Since 2024
Programme Spotlight
Creative Sparks
Creative Sparks delivers free creative opportunities for children across Sunderland through after-school clubs and holiday programmes.
Ignite Bursary
The Ignite Bursary supports young people aged 12-18 (up to 25 with SEND) to access creative opportunities they might not otherwise afford.
Future Creatives
Future Creatives is a community for young people aged 13+ who are passionate about creativity.
Poverty Proofing
A key part of Culture Start’s legacy is the delivery of Poverty Proofing®, a programme developed by Children North East to help cultural organisations identify and remove barriers that children and young people experiencing financial disadvantage may face when accessing arts and culture.
In Focus
Impact and evaluation
Culture Start evaluation is undertaken by the Institute of Economic and Social Inclusion. You can read about the methodology applied and the impact of the project so far here.
Partnerships & system change
Culture Start and its partners have not only delivered activity for young people, it has also strengthened the city’s cultural infrastructure.
The Case for Continued Investment
Programme strengths
Culture Start has intentionally adapted its delivery model to meet children and young people where they are, delivering activity in trusted community spaces rather than expecting participants to travel to city-centre venues. This hyperlocal approach helps reach those facing the greatest barriers to participation.
Sustained engagement is central to the programme’s impact. Regular creative activity builds confidence, reduces social isolation and allows relationships with artists, youth workers and peers to develop over time. For many vulnerable young people, this consistent presence creates the trust needed for meaningful and lasting change.
The programme has also demonstrated the value of strong coordination. The Culture Start team has played a key role in bringing partners together, strengthening collaboration and building a more connected cultural ecosystem across Sunderland.
Learning
Two years of delivery have generated important insights. Sustained engagement is more effective than one-off activity in building confidence, relationships and creative development. Working locally in trusted community settings is essential for reaching children and young people who
might otherwise be excluded.
The programme has also highlighted the importance of flexibility and learning through delivery. The model has evolved over time – including the development of the Future Creatives network to engage young people – ensuring activities remain relevant and accessible.
Evaluation also highlights opportunities to strengthen progression routes for young people, including pathways for emerging creative practitioners and stronger links with the wider skills, education and employment ecosystem.
Looking ahead
Many vulnerable children and young people have experienced instability or disengagement from services, and the trust built through Culture Start should be sustained and developed.
Culture Start is widely recognised by partners as a key convenor and capacity builder within Sunderland’s cultural ecosystem, connecting organisations across culture, education, health and community sectors to expand opportunities for young people.
Looking ahead, there is potential to extend the model further by strengthening pathways into further education, training and creative careers, and by exploring how the partnership approach developed in Sunderland could be adapted for other places facing similar challenges.
Thank you
We are hugely grateful to our partners, funders and everyone who has supported Culture Start and enabled us to offer a remarkable range of free, high quality creative activities for children and young people who may not otherwise be able to participate.
Culture Start is supported by a £1.2m Place Partnership award from Arts Council England through the National Lottery, and generously funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Sir James Knott Trust, Sir Tom Cowie Fund at the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland and the Gillian Dickinson Trust.
