Interview: Cllr Matthew Vallender, Swindon Borough Council's Cabinet Member for Culture, Planning and Regeneration

Swindon will soon make its full bid submission to become UK City of Culture 2029.
Being longlisted among a final nine in March meant the borough received a development grant worth £60,000 to help it prepare that submission, but the ultimate stakes are far, far higher.
The national competition invites locations throughout the UK to set out a vision for culture-led transformation, and whichever town or city wins will be in line for up to £10m to support a year-long programme of cultural, heritage and community activity in 2029.
Swindon’s bid is led by the borough council and Swindon Culture Collective.
The councillor in overall charge of the local authority’s arts and culture promotion and other activities is Matthew Vallender, who represents the Stratton St Margaret and South Marston Ward and was appointed Cabinet Member for Culture, Planning and Regeneration in the wake of the local elections which saw a switch from a Labour to a Conservative-led administration.
He describes the longlisting as fantastic. “It’s incredibly rare, almost unprecedented, to be longlisted in your first-ever application.
“That’s already happened, so that’s huge, huge news.
"We’re now working through the next steps of that. We’re looking to get shortlisted.
"That’s got to be submitted in August, and we’ll find out if we’ve been shortlisted, which is the final four, in October, and then there’s another bit of work for those four to get through to the final bit of the process, and there’s an announcement probably in January of next year as to who wins.
“I think it’s a fantastic thing to go for, but it is difficult. We’re up against a lot of towns and cities who have done this more than once, so they know how this process works.
“There are some that sink huge sums of money into consultants and bid packs and reuse what they’ve done previously.
"This is our first time, and it’s a really, really valuable lesson-learning exercise.”
The bid was set in train by the previous administration, and Cllr Vallender is happy that, whatever other issues might cause cross-party discord, there is backing from all political sides for the bid.
“That’s the key thing - once you have cross-party support you don’t need to spend your time reviewing it, revisiting it and adding delays.
"We’re up against the clock already to get the long list in [the next stage of the application process] and the key thing is making that bid as strong as possible and actually keeping everybody engaged together on it.”
Cllr Vallender is convinced that even being longlisted has positive implications for the Swindon arts and culture scene which go beyond the competition itself.
“It’s a national competition; it’s not just about arts and culture, although it’s the City of Culture. There’s a huge opportunity here to attract investment, raise Swindon’s profile, support businesses, create opportunities.”
By way of illustration, he highlights previous winners such as Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland, Hull, Coventry and Bradford.
“They’ve all managed to turn that initial spark from winning into a massive, massive investment piece and a massive boost to the town.
“It’s not just about winning and having the title, it’s actually about this huge opportunity afterwards to really, really reinvent yourself as a place and make the most of that opportunity.”
Originally from Covingham and with a professional background in planning consultancy, Cllr Vallender readily admits that he has been enthusiastically bringing himself up to speed about the arts and culture scene.
“There's a huge, huge amount of culture and art, almost behind the scenes, sometimes, in Swindon. You’ve got things like Create Studios, you’ve got Prime Theatre, you’ve got Swindon Dance, you’ve got the Swindon Culture Collective which in part, I think, was. launched to help with the theatres.
“There’s so much going on behind the scenes."
A major priority in his Cabinet role is the success of the ongoing project to bring a new entertainment venue to the town centre as the Wyvern Theatre, which opened in 1971, moves toward the end of its useful life. 
Not long before the change of borough councils in May, that project was awarded some £20m in Government funding.
“We know the Wyvern is reaching end-of-life. It’s a 55-year-old building, and we’ve got a real opportunity with the £20m Government grant. We’re working on the business case at the moment.
"We’re hoping that will be in a place to go by the late autumn, early winter, and we will see how those numbers stack up as we try to find the rest of the money to deliver the entertainment venue.
“There’s going to be a huge piece of work over the next six months, trying to find a way of making that business case stack up.”
Cllr Vallender highlighted other projects such as the Kimmerfields development and the recently-announced town centre clean-up project, as tying in with the ethos.
“It all ties into that theme of making Swindon somewhere that you’re proud to live. It takes time, nothing can happen overnight.
"Nothing ever happens overnight. Some things we’ve inherited, some things we’ve started, like the Town Centre Clean-Up.
“We’re doing everything we can to keep the wheels moving in the right direction.
“The City of Culture Bid is really important for us, because even if we don’t win there’s a huge piece of work by Kate [Wyatt, Head of Culture, Heritage, Arts and Special Events] and the team behind the scenes to start bringing the stakeholders together and make connections that we wouldn’t even necessarily have made.”
 

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