West of England

About the Chapter
What Next? West was formed in 2016. Our focus in the West chapter is Bath and the surrounding region. We want to create space for cultural leaders in the West to come together, set, and take forward our own shared agenda. Please spread the word!

Our goal is a more connected cultural sector in the region, able to inform and respond to wider challenges and opportunities by raising a collective voice and offering mutual support; and in a position to co-create initiatives as a group and with others. We host an open and equitable platform to connect and share ideas, and to build a sense of ambition, possibility and shared endeavour. We are future-looking, vocal and strategic, radical and participatory.

We want to include a varied mix of people with an expansive definition of culture: arts, heritage and creative industries; practitioners and those who support them; those with authority and power, and those who aren’t the ‘usual suspects’; commercial as well as publicly-funded; voluntary and amateur as well as professional; music, film and literature sectors as well as visual arts and theatre; people whose experience comes from a range of social, cultural and economic backgrounds; institutional leaders and freelancers.