Filed under: meetings | Tags: DCMS, England, funding, heritage, ncvo, olympics, OTS, vcs, volarts
On Thursday I was in London for my regular meeting with Heritage Link and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. We were joined by Chris Atkins, Head of Lottery Distribution and Third Sector Policy at DCMS and had a wide ranging discussion about the voluntary cultural sectors. Among many other topics we discussed the progress of the sector coalition on Gift Aid, the Office of the Third Sector’s withdrawal of its Campaigning Fund and Heritage Link’s Cultural Olympiad project, ‘Discovering Places’, which has been awarded £1M from the Olympic Lottery Distributor.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: volarts, funding, politics, DCMS, England, vcs, ace, arts, heritage
On Monday I was in London for a meeting with Heritage Link and the Central Council for Physical Recreation to discuss the Conservative Party’s proposals to change the distribution of National Lottery funds. A Conservative Government would increase the proportion of Lottery money distributed by Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England by reducing the proportion currently channelled through the Big Lottery Fund. The intention is that this redistribution would cut grants to statutory bodies by the Big Lottery Fund without reducing funding to the voluntary and community sector, though it may be difficult to achieve this so neatly in practice. We were keen to stress that a significant number of voluntary and community sector organisations currently secure Lottery funding through the arts, heritage and sport distributors – and could therefore potentially benefit from the proposed changes. (Indeed the vast majority of arts, heritage and sport Lottery funding goes to third sector organisations.) We also discussed the implications of last week’s announcement by the Shadow Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, that a Conservative Government would seek to merge English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, DCMS, education, England, Northern Ireland, olympics, OTS, Scotland, UK, vcs, volarts, volunteering
I was in London on Wednesday to take part in the ‘Volunteering and London 2012’ symposium, organised by Volunteering England. This event brought together volunteering agencies and voluntary sector infrastructure organisations from across the UK. We heard from David Huse, Head of Volunteering at LOCOG, about the latest plans for recruiting, training and managing the 70,000 games-time volunteers needed to help run the Olympic and Paralympic Games: the application process for these volunteers (including volunteer performers for the ceremonies) will be launched in summer 2010. We then had a presentation from the Government Olympic Executive about plans for a social legacy marketing plan: the ‘big idea’ is to use London 2012 to inspire participation in volunteering, culture, sport, education and more, across the UK. There will be a campaign to inspire the whole of the country to give time to their local communities. A creative agency has just been appointed and the campaign will be launched in early 2010. We also heard from the Volunteer Development Agency in Northern Ireland, Volunteer Development Scotland and Greater London Volunteering about the progress of their 2012 volunteering initiatives – including the ‘People Making Waves’ programme in Scotland which includes Voluntary Arts Scotland’s ‘Make a Splash’ project. The symposium was followed by a second meeting of the London 2012 Volunteering Legacy Stakeholder Advisory Group where we specifically focussed on the Volunteering England/YouthNet project which is expanding the national volunteering database (do-it.org.uk) to include a wide range of opportunities catalysed by London 2012.
Robin Simpson.
Our main focus this time was the impact of the recession on the third sector. The consensus was that the main effect to date has been on matched funding. In the short term it seems as if the recession has encouraged a significant growth in levels of volunteering. The real impact on public sector funding is likely to be in 2 – 3 years time. In this context it’s going to be important for us to look at how the third sector can best support DCMS negotiations with The Treasury ahead of the next Comprehensive Spending Review. The other subject on this week’s Third Sector Forum agenda was to discuss the implementation of the new DCMS Third Sector Strategy. It will be a key function of the Forum to monitor the progress of the strategy over the coming year.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, DCMS, education, England, olympics, volarts
I was back at DCMS on Tuesday where Reemer and I met Mandy Barrie, Nick Pontefract and Stephen Darke from the arts team. We talked in detail about the Arts Council England Amateur Arts Partnership Development Programme – particularly the actions on ‘regional networking’ and ‘capacity building’ that Voluntary Arts England is leading. We also discussed informal adult learning and progress in relation to several aspects of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills white paper ‘The Learning Revolution’. We updated Mandy, Nick and Steve on the planned launch of the Participation Manifesto and our various initiatives to encourage voluntary arts groups to get involved in the Cultural Olympiad.
Robin Simpson.
On Monday I was at DCMS in London for a meeting of the Opportunity and Excellence Programme Board. This Board oversees the department’s progress against two of its four ‘departmental strategic objectives’ and brings together senior civil servants with the Chief Executives of Arts Council England, English Heritage, Sport England, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council and the National National Museum Director’s Conference. On Monday we discussed the set of indicators that will be used to track progress against the ‘excellence’ target (DSO2). I stressed the need to look at how we can collectively encourage excellence in those parts of the cultural and sporting sectors that do not receive public funding. We also spent some time discussing barriers to participation (in relation to the ‘opportunity’ target (DSO1)). Research shows that the common barriers (across the cultural and sporting sectors) are lack of awareness, practical difficulties, personal difficulties and psychological fears. The last of these seems to be the most significant in relation to arts participation with lack of confidence and perceived lack of skill being the most common reasons for not participating.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, DCMS, education, England, olympics, OTS, UK, volunteering
Finally on Wednesday I took part in a preliminary meeting of the 2012 Olympics Volunteering Inspiration and Legacy Stakeholders Advisory Group at the Cabinet Office. This is to become the formal stakeholder advisory group for the government’s 2012 legacy programmes. We heard from David Brooker, Director of Legacy at the Government Olympic Executive, who is responsible for all aspects of the legacy the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are intended to generate. The Government’s 2012 Legacy Action Plan was published in June 2008 and covers the legacy for East London, the legacy for sport, the economic legacy and the social legacy. David spoke to us specifically about the social legacy programmes, focussing particularly on the planned campaign to inspire participation and the plan to increase levels of volunteering. These will involve a major social legacy marketing campaign linked to a mechanism for directing people to opportunities to participate in sport, health, education, the environment and culture across the UK. Claire Easterman from YouthNet explained the YouthNet/Volunteering England project, funded by the Office of the Third Sector, which will develop the national volunteering database (‘do-it’) to create a single place to bring together all the opportunities to participate which are inspired by 2012. I still have concerns about the lack of connection between this project and both the informal adult learning ‘portal’ being developed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the online aspects of Arts Council England’s forthcoming national campaign on arts participation – all three of which should provide voluntary arts groups with the opportunity to advertise for more members. But I am pleased to be part of this new stakeholder advisory group and hope to be able to ensure that the voluntary arts sector takes advantage of the various opportunities presented by the 2012 legacy programmes.
Robin Simpson.
