Aligning Practice with Purpose, Culture and the SDG’s

A foreword by Charlotte Pyatt to support the first VLR to be initiated through the lens of Culture presented at the High Level Political Forum of the United Nations 15th July 2025

The Voluntary Local Review (VLR) is a process enabling local and regional governments (LRGs) to assess their progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through VLRs, cities and towns articulate SDG-aligned strategies, track policy progress, and share insights on challenges, successes, and lessons learned. This process directly engages citizens, fostering accountability, inclusive governance, and partnerships that bridge the implementation gap for local goals. The resulting VLR report informs national and international stakeholders about the local actions driving global change. A key priority is ensuring this information is accessible to citizens and visitors alike.

As a practitioner of public art projects the past decade, I’ve observed the critical role artists have played in democratising access to information and amplifying priorities. For the past five years, I have been exploring the integration of arts and culture into VLRs, considering how artistic collaboration can be more meaningful in public spaces and how communities can better engage with this process while respecting their autonomy.

A vital risk assessment for these projects is in ensuring opportunities for meaningful engagement with the respective heritage or context. One solution is to invite artists to respond creatively to the challenges and aspirations of the communities they are welcomed into, aligning their work with social, environmental, and cultural values. This requires access to and visibility of data, which can often be difficult to obtain, a consolidating feature of a VLR. This dialogue and its outcomes place culture at the forefront of SDG implementation, offering a vital addition to the 2030 Agenda, which has traditionally struggled to fully acknowledge the role of culture.

The focus of the Basildon VLR deepens the connection between data and lived experience, demonstrating how the values of the SDGs can resonate with local communities through authentic artistic engagement. Through this research, Basildon joins the global network of VLRs, becoming not only the third UK city or township to feature a VLR but the first to adopt a cultural framework in its preparation. This concept formed the scaffolding for the Our Towns project, a public art initiative developed by Reframed Productions—a creative partnership between myself and Doug Gillen—together with Creative People and Places (CPP) and Things Made Public, founded by Sarah Walters and Lauren Martin.

Eight artists were invited to the town (Aches, Erin Holly, Franco Fasoli, Gabriel Pitcher, Helen Bur, Marina Capdevilla, Michelle Curtis and INSA), and in the months leading up to the project, they engaged with local organisations and aligned with their personal values to develop their concepts. Themes included representation of travelling communities, LGBTQIA+, marginalised communities, the elderly, masculinity, and mental health.

A key commission of the Our Towns project, supported by the Creative Estuary Fund, featured artist INSA, who created a gif-iti public artwork (a bespoke digital animation platform) inspired by a rare wildflower found only in Basildon’s meadows. The mural depicted the flower in various stages of bloom, and when viewed through a camera lens, the artwork became animated. This work highlighted the town's ecological heritage, bringing an environmental dimension to the cultural project while localising a global concern about dwindling biodiversity.

Additionally, the initiative facilitated valuable knowledge exchange with the City of Bristol, particularly through collaboration with Allan McLeod, who played a key role in the development of Bristol’s VLRs in 2019 and 2022. The combined efforts of Basildon and Bristol underscore the role of culture as a catalyst for change, reaffirming that collaboration is essential to achieving meaningful impact at both local and global levels.

This VLR for Basildon marks a significant step forward as the first to be initiated through the lens of culture. There is still much to be done to fully integrate the value of artists as both data generators and data translators, moving beyond the organisation of information toward relatable and engaged activity. Beyond policy, VLR’s can serve as an activation tool to foster a more connected future, deepening our understanding of the town’s challenges and aspirations through culture and the SDGs.

July 2025, The full report is available via UCLG after 15th July 2025