Arts Council England Scraps “Let’s Create” for a Leaner Strategic Framework

Eva Parker | Sep 3

Event: Strategic Framework 2026

Venue: Arts Council England

Location: London, UK

Dates: Published May 2026 (interim framework, ongoing)

Arts Council England has published a new Strategic Framework for 2026, replacing Let’s Create, the ten-year strategy that had governed its funding decisions since 2020. The change follows an independent review of the organisation led by the Labour peer Margaret Hodge earlier this year, which found that the previous strategy’s reporting requirements had become burdensome for the arts organisations, museums and libraries it was meant to support.

Three Principles Instead of Seven

Where Let’s Create was structured around seven outcomes and four investment principles, the new framework is deliberately pared back to three: support excellence, deliver for everybody, and reach everywhere. According to the Arts Council, the simplification is intended as “a practical, interim guide” rather than a finished long-term strategy, with a fuller replacement strategy due to be developed through consultation later in the year.

Flexibility by Design

The framework is explicit that it does not expect every organisation it funds to meet all three principles simultaneously — a small experimental theatre need not “reach everywhere,” and a large national touring company need not claim to deliver “for everybody” in every engagement. That flexibility marks a deliberate departure from Let’s Create’s more prescriptive metrics around audience diversity and community reach, criticised in Hodge’s review as adding administrative pressure without necessarily improving outcomes.

A New Chair, A Period of Change

The framework’s publication was closely followed by the announcement of a new chair for the organisation: Dawn Airey, formerly of Channel 4 and with three decades in broadcasting and media leadership, succeeds Sir Nicholas Serota after his decade in the role. Her appointment, alongside the new framework, signals what several sector commentators have already characterised as a period of substantial change at the Arts Council, coming as it continues to administer roughly £467 million in government and National Lottery funding annually through 2026.

A Cautious Welcome, and Questions Ahead

Reaction from within the museums and galleries sector has been cautiously positive. Writing in the Museums Association’s journal, one commentator argued that the renewed emphasis on excellence “will play to the strengths of museums” specifically, since institutions built around curatorial expertise and collections care are, in principle, well placed to demonstrate excellence in the terms the new framework proposes — a more straightforward test, some would argue, than the outcome-based metrics it replaces.

Whether a three-word framework can do the work that a detailed ten-year strategy previously attempted is, inevitably, an open question, and one the Arts Council itself acknowledges by describing the document as a “stepping stone” rather than a destination. For now, arts organisations navigating applications through the remainder of 2026 face a genuinely lighter-touch process — though what replaces this interim framework, and how “excellence” comes to be defined and assessed in practice, is likely to shape funding decisions across the sector for years to come.

Website Arts Council England