This blog post was initially published by Prof Katy Shaw, 20 January 2026.
This week we announce the AHRC Creative Communities Co-Lab Policy Network Awards, an ambitious intervention to reorientate place-based cultural policy making in a new context of UK devolution. The awards mark a pivotal opportunity to lean into devolution and community-led innovation not just as buzzwords, but as practical tools for better place-based policymaking. Together, the four awards mark a timely shift in how we understand innovation, community, and collaboration across the UK.
Devolution as a Living Lab
We often talk about devolution like it’s a fixed destination but in practice it’s a set of policy experiments: a chance to test, learn, and iterate in ways that would be impossible under a centralised model. Yet devolution is often treated like a scoreboard, a policy league table that pits one region or country against another. In reality, the most impactful innovation comes from cooperation, not comparison.
Some of the UK’s most original policy innovations have emerged from devolved governments. From Scotland’s minimum unit pricing on alcohol and its benefits on health and the NHS to the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Wales: a world-first framework that fundamentally changes how public decisions are made with impact on future communities in mind. These policies were not born from Westminster, but from the devolutionary freedom to try, the space to learn and the chance to co-create policies specific to their devolved context.
But the path to devolved policymaking isn’t smooth. Post-Brexit barriers like the Internal Market Act and Section 35 of the Scotland Act now allow Westminster to override devolved legislation, undermining the spirit — and function — of devolution itself. Also, despite the powers to make policy, devolved governments often lack the fiscal levers to fund it. The result is an increasingly frustrating mismatch between ambition and means when it comes to driving policy change from the regions and nations. Rather than clinging to jurisdictional boundaries, we need to adopt a collaborative mindset that sees policy as a shared mission, not a turf war.
Driving Devolved Delivery
Our new awards are helping cross-sector communities move to a new system where devolution is not just accommodated but catalysed as a core context for innovation. The new networks supported by Creative Communities do more than teach people about policy: they change the way people talk about policy. These are spaces where people can explore divisive topics in safe, moderated environments and where compromise, listening, and creative approaches are made possible.
This flip in thinking from policy as something done to us, to something we can and should shape together, is critical for tackling the complex, mission-oriented challenges facing whole UK. To achieve this we need to promote, support, and incentivise policy dialogue across sectors. Innovation doesn’t grow in a vacuum: it’s created when we invest time, money, and care into creating spaces and processes that allow people to connect meaningfully around shared place-based challenges and opportunities.
“Pro-Growth” Must Mean “Inclusive Growth”
There is no shortage of declarations about being “pro-growth” in policy circles, but who, realistically, is anti-growth? The question isn’t whether we grow, but how and for whom. The answer begins with cross-sector and community engagement from inception, not just as an afterthought. This is why the Creative Communities approach is so powerful: our new Co-Lab Policy Network Awards reposition people in devolved places as co-designers of policy, not just passive recipients of ideas sent back from Westminster.
In England, an award led by a unique partnership with the Mayoral Authorities Creative Health Network (which includes lead partners from across eleven Mayoral Combined Authorities) and led by Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Greater London Authority will establish a new shared framework to embed creative health in devolved policy making in England.
An award in Warwick will reposition culture and legacies of city of culture as part of the foundational economy in the West Midlands, led by West Midlands Combined Authority, Coventry City Council and key partner, Talking Birds.
In Wales, Public Health Wales NHS Trust will work with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, the Wales Arts, Health and Well-being Network, Arts Council Wales and Senedd Cymru to lead a new policy network tackling health inequality across the nation.
In Northern Ireland a new network to tackle inequalities in creative health will be led by the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, NI Creative Health Network (NICHN), Derry and Strabane Creative Health Taskforce, Developing Healthy Communities, and ArtsCare. .
The Co-Lab Policy Network Awards will create new spaces for deliberation on complex cultural challenges and opportunities—from culture-led regeneration to creative health—building devolved policy infrastructure that will enable better outcomes. The networks will work across sectors to ensure that people in devolved settings become not just participants in policy but the co-creators of it.
Scaling Creative Communities
The Co-Lab Policy Network Awards 2026 offer a roadmap for the future of cultural policymaking in the UK. Together, they will catalyse co-created policy that is deliberative and drives new devolved delivery. Most importantly, the awards demonstrate a profound respect for the power of culture in devolution not just as a political reality, but as a policy asset.
It’s time to shift our policymaking mindset from managing difference to maximising shared opportunity, from policy as silo, to policy as conversation and from competitive models to collaborative ecosystems. We know that Creative Communities build social capital, strengthen trust, and drive inclusive growth. The question isn’t whether we invest in them, it’s whether we can afford not to.
Brought to you by
