Neighbourhood arts spaces in place: cultural infrastructure and participation on the outskirts of the creative city

Set in the context of tensions between ‘community development’ and ‘creative cities’ policy agendas, which often implicitly privilege large-scale city-centre cultural assets, this paper discusses cultural policy and arts provision in three neighbourhoods in the city of Leeds, UK. It uses findings from a pilot research project centred on three small cultural organisations based in neighbourhoods in Leeds’ ‘outer inner city’. Each venue works in and with its neighbourhood in distinct ways and has a different vision of the contribution that they can and should make to their locales and to the city as a whole. The paper works with research on these organisations to explore the tensions around the ambition and reach of small venues in the light of this policy context, and the scale of the neighbourhood in cultural policy. We argue that city-scale policy-making risks missing local particularities and erasing the role and contribution of small and geographically peripheral initiatives.