Kensington and Chelsea development must be "cultured and creative"

The proposal document places culture and the creative industries at the heart of future development through the use of planning. It is the first local authority in the UK to take this approach, the Council said.

The Council’s cultural 'placemaking' proposals call on developers seeking to work in the Royal Borough to embed culture and the creative industries into their thinking right from the start of the development process.

The proposals aim to encourage imaginative and bold thinking, in particular masterplanning design, the animation of new places and creative and commercial ideas for the public realm, the Council said.

It is hoped that long-term partnerships will be created with cultural providers to influence the style and content of cultural amenities, not merely their existence.

The Council’s new cultural placemaking proposals, developed in partnership with Futurecity and BOP Consulting, aim to build on the Royal Borough’s Arts and Culture Policy.  This Policy sets out to create a stronger, more sustainable creative economy, placing the borough at the forefront of contemporary creativity, and enabling residents to access internationally excellent culture and using culture to attract inward investment.

"The borough’s economic future and the vibrancy of our neighbourhoods are closely linked to the success of our creative industries, tourism and the cultural sector," said Councillor Nicholas Paget-Brown, deputy leader of the Council.

"We believe that adopting a cultural placemaking approach to planning and development across the entire borough has the potential to create places to benefit present and future residents and businesses, stimulate home-grown cultural talent and make the Royal Borough the choice for international creative companies seeking to locate in London," Paget-Brown said.

It is hoped that developers will take inspiration from the cultural placemaking approach and come up with bold ideas for their sites.  We particularly feel our major strategic development sites are ripe for this form of approach and have already started to explore the options in our proposals, the Council said.