After a four year wait, the Welsh Government has published its Priorities for Culture, which are intended to “place culture where it belongs: at the heart of Welsh life”. Although backed by a “£15 million investment package”, these priorities do not contain any measurable commitments for the Welsh Government or its funded bodies. How will this document help a sector “in crisis”?
“Our initial projection of this taking about six months was wildly optimistic”
The story of the Culture Priorities begins prior to May 2021, when, according to former Culture Minister Dawn Bowden MS, “the last Government had already started work on a cultural strategy”. Following the May 2021 election, the Welsh Government published its Programme for Government, which said it would “Engage with the arts, culture and heritage sectors to develop a new culture strategy”.
In September 2021, the then Deputy Minister for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Dawn Bowden MS, told the Culture Committee that she was “absolutely committed to creating a cultural strategy”, alongside “complementary strategies for the creative industries, the historic environment and Visit Wales”.
But in January 2024 she revealed that she had outsourced stakeholder consultation around the new strategy to a consultancy, and that “our initial projection of this taking about six months was wildly optimistic”. In May 2024 the Welsh Government consulted on a draft set of "priorities for culture", the result of 100 "engagement conversations" and 17 workshops.
The final Priorities for Culture were published in May 2025. The Welsh Government spent about £200,000 developing the Priorities for Culture, including £147,000 on consultants.
When is a strategy not a strategy?
At some point, what the Welsh Government had once referred to as a “cultural strategy” became a set of “priorities for culture”. There are 3 priorities, supported by 16 ambitions, which set out long-term aims for culture. The Welsh Government says that “the word culture” is “short-hand for the activity of the arts, museums, archives, libraries and historic environment sectors in Wales”.
The three priorities are “Culture brings people together”, “Celebrating Wales as a nation of culture” and “Culture is resilient and sustainable”. The ambitions are broad statements of intent (e.g. “Culture is inclusive, accessible and diverse”) rather than tangible commitments of what the Welsh Government will do. When Lesley Griffiths MS was briefly Cabinet Secretary for Culture and Social Justice in 2024 she mentioned an “implementation plan” with reference to the culture strategy, but this did not materialise in the eventual Culture Priorities.
What isn’t in the Priorities?
In its previous culture strategy, Light springs through the dark (2016), the Welsh Government included a series of clear commitments. These ranged from setting up Creative Wales – the Welsh Government’s creative industries division – to “introducing a new Wales Well-being Bond aimed at improving mental and physical health”.
The 2016 Strategy also said it was “important to monitor and evaluate the progress being made in implementing the goals set out in this Statement”. It committed the Welsh Government to “monitor and report on progress” and to “Develop a coordinated Research, Evidence and Evaluation Plan for Culture in Wales […] to inform cultural policy making.”
In contrast, when the Welsh Government consulted on its draft Priorities for Culture in 2024, this document included no commitments, nor mention of how progress would be monitored. The Senedd’s Culture Committee said it was “concerned about the lack of detail”, and that “it is unclear how [the priorities] will be delivered, or by whom”. The final version does not contain the details the committee called for.
During Plenary on 20 May, Culture Committee Chair Delyth Jewell MS asked the Minister for Culture and Social Partnership, Jack Sargeant MS, whether he would be publishing an implementation plan. He wouldn’t, he said, as this would “cause further delay to addressing the problems”.
Since the Welsh Government published its previous culture strategy in 2016, the culture sector has felt the shocks of the UK leaving the European Union, cost-of-living increases and a pandemic from which audiences have been slow to recover. None of these issues are mentioned in the Welsh Government’s Culture Priorities.
“Poor progress” in other Welsh Government culture commitments
The Culture Committee’s concerns were heightened by, what it felt was, “poor progress” in other Welsh Government Programme for Government culture commitments.
A proposed “Museum of the North” was axed after being allocated £500,000 for a feasibility study.
There has been “slow progress” with the National Contemporary Art Gallery project, which the Committee thought “is now a shadow of what was initially proposed”. The network of upgraded galleries has lost its planned “anchor gallery”. Annual running costs are estimated to be £400,000, compared to an initial projection of £2.7 million, and capital costs are “about a quarter” of the projected £35 million, reflecting what the Welsh Government calls a “lean operating model”.
Public funding of culture in Wales is lower than most European nations
There’s no shortage of policy advocating for the importance of culture in Wales. The Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) established in 2015 that “A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language” was a “well-being goal” that public bodies must work to achieve.
“We see culture as a priority”, the Welsh Government’s 2016 Strategy said. “It would be easy to say that we cannot afford to invest in culture, that it is some kind of ‘luxury spending’ that can no longer be justified”, it argued: “to adopt that approach would be a serious mistake.”
But in 2022, following a decade of funding reductions from the Welsh Government and local authorities, public funding of culture in Wales is lower, per head, than most European nations. According to the Welsh Government’s own figures, revenue funding for culture and sport has reduced in real-terms over a decade by 17 per cent. In the words of the Future Generations Commissioner, “Culture is in crisis”.
Source: Senedd Research analysis of Welsh Government, StatsWales and OECD data
The average spend on cultural services in these 25 European [nations] is £215.02 per person. In Wales the figure is £69.68 per person, or 32% of the average of these countries. This placed Wales second from bottom of the 25 nations.
The Welsh Government has increased funding for culture in the 2025-26 Budget, though broadly this was just a reversal of reductions imposed in the 2024-25 Budget. Overall, culture and sport saw an increase in Welsh Government funding between 2023-24 and 2025-26 of about 1%, once adjusted for inflation.
Answering questions about his aspirations for culture funding, the Minister said in May 2025, “I'm not in a position to announce future budgets”. The Scottish Government has taken a different approach, outlining a path in 2024 to investing “at least £100 million more annually” in culture by 2028-29.
Mind the gap
The Priorities for Culture add further warm sentiments to previous policy commitments to culture in Wales. These Priorities, the document says, “place culture where it belongs: at the heart of Welsh life”. Yet it provides no description of the route culture will take to reach this destination, or what milestones it will pass on the way. The challenge for the Welsh Government will be to navigate the longstanding gap between culture policy and practice without a map.
Article by Robin Wilkinson, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament.
