Why Hounslow’s first Culture Strategy matters for Chiswick

Chiswick House

Hounslow’s first-ever Culture Strategy aims to ensure that creative heritage isn’t just celebrated but actively supported

The London Borough of Hounslow has launched a culture strategy for the first time and has set its sights on becoming the London Borough of Culture. The aim is to place Hounslow on the map ‘as a destination borough and place culture at its heart’, but it isn’t just a romantic notion, it is designed to attract hard cash to boost growth in the creative industries and help young people find jobs in that sphere.

Trevor MacFarlane, who lives in Chiswick and is standing as a candidate in the local elections, helped shape the plan, and has written a guest blog for The Chiswick Calendar to explain why it matters for our neighbourhood.

Trevor MacFarlane

Guest blog by Trevor MacFarlane

For centuries, Chiswick has attracted people who see the world a little differently: artists, writers, makers, broadcasters, musicians, designers and dramatists. People come here not only to settle in a beautiful part of London, but to wrestle with ideas, shape them into words, images and sounds, and set them loose.

From painters and poets to journalists and performers, Chiswick has long been a place where ideas move in and out – as steadily and surely as the Thames that cradles us.

That inheritance is not something we simply look back on though; the current still runs strongly through the people who live, work and play here today. It is precisely why Hounslow’s first-ever Culture Strategy matters – and why I was pleased to play a part in shaping it.

Working alongside council officers, cultural leaders and Councillor Salman Shaheen, my focus was straightforward: to ensure Chiswick’s distinctive character, heritage and creative energy were fully reflected in this borough-wide plan, so that we are well placed to benefit from what comes next.

At its heart, the Strategy rests on a simple but powerful idea: that culture is not an optional extra, but an essential part of a happy, healthy and meaningful life – something everyone in Hounslow should be able to access.

It recognises that each neighbourhood has its own stories and creative wellspring to draw from, connecting the source of local strengths up to flourish as part of a borough-wide whole.

A 2025 production of The Railway Children at the Tabard Theatre; Photograph Matt Hunter

Chiswick as a cultural centre

In Chiswick, those cultural sources run particularly deep.

We already have a remarkable concentration of cultural and heritage venues on our doorstep – just one of the many reasons I put down my own roots here.

From the elegance and tranquillity of Chiswick House and Gardens to the Tabard Theatre – freshly crowned London’s best pub theatre – and Chiswick Cinema, a jewel of a venue that opens portals to other worlds.

That richness spills out beyond our buildings too, rippling through the streets and pooling in our parks and shared spaces. Abundance London splashes colour into our verges and flowerbeds, turning familiar routes into open-air galleries.

The annual Chiswick Book Festival gathers readers, thinkers and writers into rooms alive with buzz of a Vienna coffee house. And pubs like the George IV host open-mic and jazz nights that give our neighbourhood its evening soundtrack.

Kathy Lette and Ronni Ancona at the 2025 Chiswick Book Festival; Photograph Roger Green

Across the generations

The current moves between the generations too. Chiswick Theatre Arts helps children discover confidence, discipline and joy through the expressive arts. ArtsEd trains the next generation of performers and emotionally literate youngsters who will carry those skills into all kinds of careers.

Silver Swans and Ballet4Life keep older residents active and connected through dance, tackling loneliness through movement and music.

Further along the flow, the Chiswick Chamber Orchestra and the Hogarth Singers bring people together week after week to practise and share music for the sheer thrill of it.

The Bedford Park society organised Big Sing 2025

Maintained by people who care

Like tributaries feeding a wider estuary, the West London Sinfonia and West London Chorus connect our local talent into a broader cultural waterway across West London – ensuring that what begins here resonates far beyond.

In quieter eddies, the Chiswick Writing Group meets to shape stories and sharpen sentences, while the Arts Society Chiswick helps us commune with the artists who walked these streets before us, through talks, tours and gatherings.

Together they remind us that creativity is not a single moment in time, but an ongoing conversation between different eras.

And Chiswick is sustained not only by fresh ideas, but by steady hands. The Bedford Park Society cares for London’s first garden suburb – first conceived by artists and reformers who believed beauty is a public good and should be part of everyday life.

By the Thames, the Chiswick Pier Trust stewards a working stretch of river and a defining piece of our local identity. Heritage is not ornamental here; it is tended, inhabited and passed forward.

Party on the Pier 2025 organised by The Chiswick Pier Trust

Putting the various cultural centres in the borough in touch with each other

It is from this reservoir that Hounslow’s Culture Strategy takes on real significance for Chiswick.

The Strategy sets out to weave together institutions, grassroots groups, schools, public spaces and programming into a more coherent cultural ecosystem – one that is visible, accessible and resilient.

It is about joining up what we already have, making pathways clearer, lowering barriers to entry and ensuring that local talent can move from first spark to full flame without having to leave the borough to do so.

At the same time, by linking Chiswick’s creative life with borough-wide initiatives, the Strategy opens the door to new audiences, stronger partnerships and bigger opportunities.

Done well, it means more people discovering what is here, more young people seeing viable futures in the creative and cultural sectors, and a stronger case for Hounslow as a confident cultural destination in West London.

Importantly, this was not written behind closed doors. More than 600 residents, creative practitioners, businesses and community groups contributed through surveys, workshops and conversations.

The result feels less like a top-down policy intervention and more like a rising tide – aligning effort, connecting energy and, if we get it right, lifting all boats.

Sonic the Hedgehog celebrating Sega’s move to Chiswick Business Park in 2024

Economic significance

So why are Hounslow Council doing this work now?

Because culture is not only socially vital; it is economically significant. The UK’s creative industries employ more than two million people and generate more value than the life sciences, aerospace and automotive sectors combined.

For West London, that is not an abstract statistic but a significant opportunity.

Hounslow’s plans to rejuvenate the Golden Mile demonstrates what that looks like in practice. Iconic buildings rejuvenated, new homes delivered and public spaces improved, all anchored in creative enterprise.

With firms such as Paramount Pictures, SEGA and IMG already based at Chiswick Business Park, Sky and major employers a few minutes up the road, and the Creative Improvement District incubating new creative businesses nearby, there is genuine momentum radiating outward from Chiswick towards Heathrow and beyond.

But growth of that kind only endures when it is rooted in a well-irrigated cultural and heritage ecosystem. The creative industries may grow our GDP, but it is culture and heritage that helps us grow as people.

They cultivate confidence and imagination, widen participation, carry our shared memory and create space for difference.

Without that living connective tissue, successes in the creative industries can loses their moorings – and the benefits of growth drift away from the communities that made it possible in the first place.

Taken together, the Strategy offers not a finished blueprint, but a shared bearing.

Think of it less as a map with every detail fixed, and more as a North Star: a set of guiding principles to help us navigate the waters ahead.

The real work now lies in steering by that light – turning ambition into action through partnership, practical steps and the everyday decisions that shape how culture is supported and shared locally.

For Chiswick, this is an open invitation: to jump onboard and help chart the course from here. It is about strengthening the connection between people and the cultural life that already surrounds us, while continuing to welcome those who arrive, collaborate or pass through.

If we hold to that direction – balancing growth with rootedness and maximising what we already have – this corner of West London can remain what it has long been: a place where ideas gather, take form and move outward, carried forward like the river itself, sustained by the people who call it home.

Trevor MacFarlane FRSA lives in Chiswick and is standing as a Labour Party candidate for Chiswick Riverside in the local elections in May 2026. He is Chief Executive of a not-for-profit organisation that he founded, an advisor to senior politicians and civic leaders, and has chaired several charities. He works across local and national governments championing the creative, cultural and heritage sectors.

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar