The Essential Guide to Developing a Creative Community Alliance

In the context of the Creative Communities Igniting Change (CCIC) project, this guide serves as a toolkit on how to develop a Regional Creative Communities Alliance. Our CCIC project has used this approach to create new and invaluable regional platforms to explore and effect change in the creative industries sector in five different regions in Ireland, UK/Northern Ireland, Poland and Sweden.  We now wish to share this learning with other regions who may wish to replicate and benefit from our approach.  To be very clear and to avoid confusion, this guide facilitates and supports the establishment and running of a Regional Alliance and not a creative enterprise itself. That will be the focus of our Ignite Creative Entrepreneurs online training course which will be launched in autumn 2016.

TOOLKIT STRUCTURE

Our toolkit resource is modular in design allowing for complete flexibility in the way that you use it. A set of document templates are provided and can be used as helpful resources while establishing and maintaining the partnerships. You can use the resource in various ways, for example:

• as a training resource, it will provide practical learning and resources on how to develop partnership
• as a planning and implementation tool, it provides a framework and templates for local adaptation of the Creative Communities Regional Alliance model
• as a quick reference tool for specific issues relating to stakeholder partnerships and collaborations

THE TOOLKIT PROVIDES:

• general information and examples
• ‘steps to…’, covering key organisational activities to set up an Alliance
• templates that can be adapted by other partnerships for local use