Abstract

This article will critically analyze the formation and impact of a network of local artists, heritage workers, and creative practitioners from Muslim backgrounds in Waltham Forest that was convened after the borough was set to win the first London Borough of Culture. With a winning bid that aimed to create belonging through cultural identity for its local residents to be shared across London), the Borough of Culture outcomes and aims is the latest initiative that comes under culture-led regeneration. A growing policy initiative, which is influenced and underpinned by discourses that emerged in the 1990’s and 2000’s on the roles of participatory arts approaches in community cohesion, multiculturalism and economic growth. The convening of the Waltham Forest Muslim Culture Forum was a response to a critique within this landscape, one where representation and marginalization of communities are reinforced by approaches to cultural programming, definitions of culture and the hierarchies it reflects. Reflecting on these foundations that inform a policy initiative such as the Borough of Culture, the article will also examine the potential of creating collective voice through shared identities of faith and religion, to either challenge, influence, or participate with the local authority around approaches to culture-led regeneration. This paper will evaluate whether the forum was most effective as participants of the Borough of Culture, activists against the Borough of Culture or Influencers with the Borough of Culture, all within tensions of participatory arts in a multicultural society and differing levels of community participation in a culture-led local authority regeneration program.