Lifelong Learning on the High Street: Culture for Capabilities
With the UK Government expected to publish a new High Streets Strategy later this year, the Institute of Place Management (IPM) is convening sector roundtables and evidence-gathering initiatives to help inform the national conversation on the future of town centres.
Across these discussions there has been growing recognition that high streets should not be understood solely as retail locations. Increasingly they are seen as economic, social and civic spaces, supporting a wide range of activities including enterprise, culture, community life and learning.
One area of emerging interest is the role that cultural organisations and creative communities can play within high street ecosystems. Cultural spaces are often places where people develop skills, confidence, wellbeing and social connections, raising important questions about how high streets can support lifelong learning and creative participation as part of long-term regeneration.
In this guest blog, Rowan Bailey, Professor of Culture, People and Place and Director of the Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield, explores how cultural organisations can contribute to high street renewal by acting as spaces of learning, creativity and community capability.
Drawing on research and place-based cultural development work in Kirklees, Rowan examines how cultural ecosystems can transform town centre spaces into environments where people learn, create and connect across the life course - and what policy changes might be needed to support this shift.
Defining Lifelong Learning on the High Street
As part of a place-based cultural development project in the Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture, we conducted a series of co-design workshops exploring culture and place in Kirklees, with a specific focus on lifelong learning on the high street. Collaborators defined lifelong learning broadly. Rather than focusing solely on formal education, they described lifelong learning as engagement with learning across all ages and life stages, taking place in both formal and informal contexts.
Motivations for learning varied widely. For some, learning supports career development or business growth. For others, it is about creativity, social connection, wellbeing, or simply the joy of exploring new ideas.
Participants also highlighted that learning within cultural spaces often happens “by stealth.” Skill-based activities such as sewing groups or community repair workshops can introduce participants to new cultural experiences and creative practices while also supporting wellbeing and social connection.
High street locations were seen as particularly valuable for this kind of learning. Unlike institutional environments, they can feel open, welcoming, and non-hierarchical, providing spaces where people can experiment, collaborate, and learn together.
See: Place-Based Cultural Development in Kirklees - University of Huddersfield
High Streets as Civic Learning Environments
Recent work from the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design highlights the important role cultural organisations play in supporting place-based learning and civic engagement. Cultural organisations, creative practitioners, and cultural spaces can function as “pillars” of lifelong learning, facilitating knowledge exchange, creative experimentation and community participation.
See: Civic and Place: framing the role of cultural development in Art and Design Working Paper
Unlike traditional educational institutions, cultural spaces often operate through informal, collaborative models of learning. Workshops, community arts activities, maker spaces, and creative studios create environments where people learn through doing, making and sharing knowledge with others.
These environments are particularly powerful when they are embedded within the everyday spaces of the high street. Because they sit within familiar and accessible environments, they can lower barriers to participation and attract people who might feel excluded from more formal educational settings.
High streets therefore offer an important opportunity to connect culture, learning and place.
The Challenge of Meanwhile Space
Many of the most visible cultural initiatives emerging on UK high streets are enabled through meanwhile spaces—temporary access to vacant retail units while landlords wait for commercial tenants.
Temporary Contemporary is a place-based cultural initiative launched in 2018 through a partnership between the University of Huddersfield and Kirklees Council. The project used vacant or underused town-centre spaces, initially in Queensgate Market and later in empty units within The Piazza Shopping Centre in Huddersfield, as platforms for exhibitions, workshops, performances and collaborative research activities.
See: Temporary Contemporary - University of Huddersfield.
See also: REF2021 Impact Case Study: Strengthening and sustaining a vibrant offer in a UK town: embedding a mixed ecology of culture and creativity into the high street: Impact case study : Results and submissions : REF 2021
One outcome of this initiative is the Creative Piazza, a cluster of cultural organisations occupying former retail units in the Piazza. Developed through the Temporary Contemporary programme, the Creative Piazza provided a public-facing platform for creative practice, workshops and informal learning, demonstrating how cultural organisations can transform vacant high street spaces into hubs of collaboration, community activity and place-based learning.
The Creative Piazza in Huddersfield provides a compelling example of what can happen when cultural organisations are able to occupy high street spaces. Organisations and groups including MakerWorld, The Children’s Art School, West Yorkshire Print Workshop, Thread Republic, and Collaborati have transformed former retail units into places of creativity, community engagement and learning.
These creative communities and organisations demonstrate how culture can bring creative practice, workshops, mentoring and community participation into the everyday environment of the high street.
However, meanwhile space also presents a structural challenge.
Short leases and uncertain tenure mean that organisations often operate without long-term security. Cultural initiatives that have the potential to become anchors for community learning and participation instead remain temporary occupants, facing the constant possibility of displacement.
For organisations delivering workshops, mentoring programmes, and creative learning activities, this uncertainty makes it difficult to invest in equipment, develop long-term programming, or build sustained relationships with participants and communities.
If high streets are to become meaningful sites of lifelong learning through culture, this raises an important question:
Where is the long-term space for culture on the high street?
Meanwhile space can catalyse creative activity, but it cannot on its own provide the stable foundations needed for sustained place-based cultural development. They rarely provide the long-term stability needed for sustained learning programmes and community engagement. More permanent models, such as dedicated cultural hubs, affordable long-term leases, or civic cultural infrastructure embedded within regeneration schemes, could provide the security creative communities need to collaborate and grow. In Huddersfield, the proposed Cultural Heart offers one potential example of how this might evolve, creating a shared civic space where local creative and cultural organisations can work together to strengthen the high street’s lifelong learning offer and support a more stable cultural ecology.
Networks and Collaboration: Shaping a Cultural Ecology
While physical space is essential, the success of cultural activity on the high street also depends on networks and collaborations.
In Kirklees, initiatives such as the Culture Collective and the Cultures of programme have demonstrated the importance of bringing together cultural organisations, community groups, researchers and local stakeholders to explore how culture contributes to place-making and community development.
These initiatives create opportunities for co-creation, dialogue and shared learning, enabling organisations to collaborate rather than operate in isolation.
This highlights the strength of Kirklees’ grassroots cultural networks. Across the district there are festivals, arts organisations, creative studios, community groups and informal learning initiatives that contribute to an interconnected cultural landscape.
These networks are essential in shaping a cultural ecology that can support learning, creativity and participation across the life course.
See: Cultures Of_ - University of Huddersfield and CULTURE COLLECTIVE | Pace Project
Culture for Capabilities
Understanding culture as an ecology for capabilities shifts how we think about its role within high streets.
Rather than being seen solely as entertainment or programming, culture can be understood as infrastructure that enables people to develop the capabilities they need to live fulfilling lives.
Cultural participation supports a wide range of capabilities, including:
- confidence and self-expression
- skills development and employability
- social connection and civic participation
- wellbeing and resilience
This idea of Culture for Capabilities recognises that creative activity enables individuals and communities to expand their opportunities and agency.
High streets provide an ideal environment for this approach. Creative workshops, maker spaces, rehearsal rooms, and community arts projects allow people to experiment, collaborate and develop new skills in ways that are flexible and inclusive.
This is particularly important for the creative economy, where freelancers, micro-businesses and creative entrepreneurs often rely on peer learning networks and collaborative spaces rather than formal training pathways.
Developing culture on the high street therefore supports both individual development and local economic vitality.
See: Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture - University of Huddersfield
Making Space for Culture
If high streets are to support culture for capabilities, they need to do more than provide temporary opportunities for cultural activity.
They need to make space for culture as a long-term civic function.
Meanwhile space initiatives have demonstrated the potential of cultural organisations to activate empty buildings, engage communities and support learning. But for these benefits to be sustained, cultural activity must be embedded more securely within high street strategies.
This means recognising cultural organisations not simply as temporary occupants of vacant units, but as anchors of community learning and participation.
Conclusions and practical next steps
High streets have always been places of exchange - of goods, ideas and social interaction. With the right support, they can also become places where people learn, create and build the capabilities needed to shape their lives and communities.
From a structural perspective, integrating culture more fully into high street regeneration could support several practical policy shifts:
- Recognise cultural space as civic infrastructure by supporting affordable, longer-term leases for cultural organisations and creative communities, enabling them to move beyond temporary occupation and contribute to sustained community learning, participation and wellbeing.
- Embed culture within local regeneration strategies, aligning cultural development with wider town centre and place-based policy priorities.
- Strengthen partnerships and networks by supporting collaboration between cultural organisations, universities, local authorities and community groups, enabling knowledge exchange and shared delivery of place-based cultural initiatives.
- Develop new indicators of cultural impact that assess not only infrastructure or footfall, but how places support people’s capabilities to create, connect, learn and participate in civic life.
Collectively, these measures can transform high streets into dynamic cultural spaces where lifelong learning, creative engagement, and community participation strengthen and support the sustainable vitality of town and city centres.
About the author
Rowan Bailey
Professor of Culture, People and Place, Director of the Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield. Link: Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture - University of Huddersfield
Contact: culturesof@hud.ac.uk or r.bailey@hud.ac.uk
LinkedIn: (2) Cultures Of_: Overview | LinkedIn