Cultural Playing Field

On Wednesday I was back at the Barbican for ‘Our Creative Talent: building local voluntary and amateur arts participation’ - a joint conference organised by Voluntary Arts England, Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The event was fully booked weeks ago and attracted delegates from voluntary arts umbrella bodies, several government departments, local authorities from across England,  voluntary sector agencies and lots of officers from Arts Council England as well as representatives from Scottish Arts Council and the Arts Council of Wales.

The main focus for the conference was to launch the report ‘Our Creative Talent: the voluntary and amateur arts in England’ - the results of research commissioned by DCMS and ACE and undertaken by the consultants TBR. Culture Minister Margaret Hodge opened the conference by revealing the headline statistics from the report:

• there are 49,140 voluntary arts groups in England
• between them they have a total membership of 5.9 million and an additional 3.5 million people volunteer as extras or helpers - that’s a total of 9.4 million people taking part
• the voluntary arts sector has an income of £543 million a year
• voluntary arts groups attract an annual audience of 159 million attendances
• 564,000 people have management roles in voluntary arts groups

It was very exciting for me to be sharing a platform with Margaret Hodge, Arts Council England Chief Executive Alan Davey and Feargal Sharkey. The Minister started by saying “I hope and believe that this conference marks a significant change in the way we think about the arts and what we call ‘the arts sector’”. She called the research “a significant new landmark in our  understanding of how and why people participate in the arts” and said “we have been paying too little attention to such an important part of the arts ecology”. Margaret Hodge said “I firmly believe that the health of our arts depends on both the professional and the voluntary sector - the two are closely and directly dependent on one another”.

In my speech I stressed the importance of moving beyond marvelling at the statistics and starting to work out how to unlock the enormous potential of the voluntary arts. I explained that what voluntary arts groups want and need is recognition, involvement, capacity-building and challenge. I finished by suggesting that this conference was possibly the most important moment for the voluntary arts in the 60 years since the establishment of the Arts Council - but added that it would mean nothing unless it was the start of an ongoing dialogue to realise the potential of the voluntary arts.

Alan Davey said “from an Arts Council perspective the voluntary arts isn’t a  footnote or appendix to the arts in England today: it is part of the core script”. He announced that in the coming months Arts Council England “will be working with Voluntary Arts Network to agree a plan of how we play a role in building on the strengths and successes of the sector by working with local government and other key partners”.

Feargal Sharkey speaking at the Our Creative Talent conference

The conference also included detailed sessions on the ‘Our Creative Talent’ research, Arts Council England’s segmentation model of arts engagement, the development of a Participation Manifesto, the VAE/Media Trust ‘Up for Arts’ campaign, local authorities and the NI11 arts engagement indicator and the 2012  Cultural Olympiad. There was a real buzz throughout the day and the feedback has been incredibly positive. It really felt like a significant turning point and it will be vital that we quickly build on the enthusiasm generated.

Copies of presentations, video, audio and much more will soon be available at www.vaengland.org.uk/events and you can see photos from the conference at www.flickr.com/photos/ourcreativetalent. The research report is available at www.voluntaryarts.org/uploaded/map7402.pdf
Congratulations and many many thanks to everyone involved in a wonderful day for the voluntary arts.

On Monday I was in London to chair a meeting of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (acevo) Arts, Culture & Heritage Special Interest Group. Gail Robinson from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport joined us to discuss the department’s Third Sector Strategy. The new version of the strategy is going to focus on six themes: recognition, voice, the compact, accessing support, social enterprise and local authorities. We agreed that voluntary and community sector organisations in the arts, culture and heritage are often not perceived as part of the third sector but also tend not to see themselves as part of the third sector, thereby missing out on substantial available support. We also discussed mechanisms for DCMS to engage with the acevo Special Interest Group on a regular basis and talked again about the Charity Commission consultation on fee charging. Finally I reported back to the group about the DCMS/Arts Council England seminar on Excellence and the Voluntary Arts on 4 June, which had arisen as a result of the Special Interest Group’s meeting with Culture Minister Margaret Hodge in January.

On Thursday Reemer and I were at Arts Council England national office in London to meet ACE Chief Executive, Alan Davey. We talked about last week’s seminar on ‘Excellence and the Voluntary Arts’ and the forthcoming VAE/ACE/DCMS joint conference on 2 July. We discussed how we might work better together to secure additional support for the voluntary arts from a range of Government departments. We also looked at the idea of a national campaign to increase participation, building on the experience of the VAE/Media Trust ‘Up for Arts’ campaign last summer. Finally we discussed how to address the need for capacity-building support for the voluntary arts in England. It increasingly feels like we are now past the stage of arguing about the importance of the voluntary arts and beginning to move into the details of how best to support the sector. Roll on 2 July …

On Wednesday afternoon Reemer and I met the Culture Minister, Margaret Hodge, in her office in the House of Commons. With the debate on 42-day detention going on in the background, we discussed last week’s seminar on ‘Excellence and the Voluntary Arts’ and the forthcoming joint VAE/ACE/DCMS conference, ‘Our Creative Talent’ on 2 July. We focused, in particular, on the need for more explicit recognition by the Government of the voluntary arts sector as an essential part of the wider arts continuum. Margaret Hodge was very keen to ensure that the sector realises it is now highly valued and appreciated by the Government and we agreed a number of ways to get this message across - both on 2 July and beyond. Exciting times ahead - please Gordon, no reshuffles in the next three weeks!!

On Wednesday afternoon I met Leonie Sakey at Arts Council England for a catch-up on the Cultural Olympiad. Following the 11 March launch of the application process for groups wishing to have their projects included in the Olympiad, there has been a slow start with plenty of enquiries but few actual submissions. LOCOG is looking again at its communications and thinking about engaging an agency to help get its messages out. Meanwhile I told Leonie that Ginny has been working on the second VAN ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Briefing which will spell out exactly how voluntary arts groups can get involved in the Cultural Olympiad. This should be available by the end of April. Leonie commented on how helpful our first Briefing had been in simplifying and clarifying the mysteries of the Olympiad and said she had used it herself on many occasions. She emphasised that very few organisations were being endorsed by LOCOG to issue information about the Olympiad and, although LOCOG was not able formally to make VAN an official Olympic partner, we were as close as anyone to such a position. I raised again the idea of a small grants fund to encourage voluntary arts groups to develop projects for the Olympiad and Leonie agreed there was a need for this but could not see where the funding might come from.

Today I have been in London at DCMS for a meeting of the voluntary arts research steering group. The researchers, TBR, presented the initial results of the online quantitative survey of voluntary arts groups in England and the qualitative interviews they have conducted. We’re not allowed to make any of the findings public yet – the final report will be launched at the VAE/ACE/DCMS conference which is now going to take place on 2 July – but I was reassured that the initial results seem to reinforce some of our key messages.