On Thursday I was in Birmingham to take part in a meeting of the NCVO Members Assembly. The theme of the day was ‘responsible capitalism’ and we opened with a fascinating presentation from Michael Green, an economist who was formerly Head of Communications at the Department for International Development. Michael laid out the options for dealing with the “great vampire squid” of capitalism, urging the charity sector (particularly the charitable foundations) to become “activist investors”. Christine Berry from FairPensions – a charity which works to promote responsible investment by pension funds and other institutional investors – similarly talked about “leveraging the influence of shareholders to improve corporate behaviour”. The third speaker was Charlotte Gardiner, Policy Manager at NCVO, who talked about her role as a Board member of Enabling Enterprise – a Community Interest Company that helps young people develop their employability skills. In the interesting and wide-ranging discussion that followed there was much talk about the commercial sector wanting the voluntary sector to be more business-like. Ray Kipling thought we should be asking the commercial sector to be more voluntary sector-like. Ray, who used to work for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, asked how many commercial business could motivate a lot of people to go out late at night and face death? It was great to see a new North East region representative on the NCVO Members Assembly – Lisa Gardiner who some of you with very long memories will remember was the first Voluntary Arts England Information Officer. Lisa now works for North Tyneside VODA: it was lovely to see her again.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: comment | Tags: DCMS, England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, UK, volarts, Wales
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Voluntary Arts Week, which provides a unique opportunity to highlight and celebrate the often-neglected riches of the UK’s voluntary arts sector.
Around the UK nearly ten million people belong to voluntary arts groups and regularly take part in the voluntary arts. This includes activities such as singing in a choral society, acting in an amateur theatre group, folk dancing, painting, lace-making, calligraphy, pottery and bell-ringing. Every week millions of people take part in voluntary arts rehearsals, classes and meetings. This activity becomes such a vital part of people’s lives that it can be the main focus of their week: the day-job sometimes seems like a mere distraction from the preparation for our next performance or exhibition.
Participation in voluntary arts groups is, for many people, their main opportunity for social interaction – the place to make friends. It is incredibly difficult to measure the importance of the voluntary arts to its participants but it is clear that it makes a massive contribution to the quality of life, wellbeing, happiness and learning of millions of people across the country.
From 12 to 20 May 2012 Voluntary Arts is promoting the first UK and Ireland Voluntary Arts Week. Voluntary arts groups across the country will be running special events during the week to raise their profile and celebrate their achievements. Groups can add their events to the Voluntary Arts Week website where the full list will be published. We are also encouraging everyone involved in the voluntary arts to promote their activities through the ‘What’s in your Window?’ campaign, showing their skills by creating a crafty window display at home, or in a local community centre, library or charity shop during Voluntary Arts Week.
Please take a look at the Voluntary Arts Week website, take the time to visit some Voluntary Arts Week events, look out for the What’s in your Window? displays, try taking part in a voluntary arts group for the first time or take the opportunity of Voluntary Arts Week to tell people about your own involvement in the voluntary arts.
You can support Voluntary Arts Week in the following ways:
- encourage more voluntary arts groups to register their events at http://www.voluntaryartsweek.org/ (it’s not too late!)
- attend the Voluntary Arts Week 2012 launch event in Falkirk town centre tomorrow: Voluntary Arts Scotland has secured the use of an empty shop unit at 43 High Street, Falkirk. Between 12 pm and 4 pm on Saturday 12 May the doors will open and passers-by will be welcomed into the space where they can try their hand at some of the arts and crafts on offer, watch a performance or two and find out more about the groups running in their area. There is a fantastic range of groups involved, with activities ranging from Floral Art to Martial Arts, and everyone is invited!
- visit some Voluntary Arts Week events – use the events listing at http://www.voluntaryartsweek.org/ to find events near you
- tweet about Voluntary Arts Week using the hashtag #voluntaryartsweek
- take photos of Voluntary Arts Week events and other voluntary arts activities and use the instagram app (free for iphone and Android) to upload them with the hashtag #voluntaryartsweek
- keep an eye on the Voluntary Arts Week blog – go to http://www.voluntaryartsweek.org/ and click ‘News’
- encourage people to display their art or craft skill in a window, take a photo and upload it to the ‘What’s in your Window?’ page at http://www.voluntaryartsweek.org/
- read my guest blog on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website at: http://blogs.culture.gov.uk/main/2012/05/voluntary_arts_week.html
- join us online at 2 pm on Wednesday 16 May for ‘Voluntary Arts Week LIVE’ – a live video webcast which will feature Voluntary Arts Week highlights and interviews from across the UK and Ireland – go to http://www.voluntaryartsweek.org/ at 2 pm on Wednesday to watch and comment live
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I had a telephone meeting with Dr Andrew Miles at the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. Andrew is leading the Understanding Everyday Participation project – a five-year research study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its Communities, Culture and Creative Economies funding programme. Voluntary Arts is one of the project partners and Andrew and I discussed the role Voluntary Arts will play in the initial phase of the study which will focus on mapping the cultural ecosystems in six contrasting communities (four in England and two in Scotland – supported by additional funding from Creative Scotland). We also talked about the parallels and potential overlap with Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday afternoon Daniel and I were at the offices of Children England in London for the latest Running Your Group LIVE online event – an introduction to child protection and safeguarding. I interviewed Kevin Garrod, the National Partnerships Manager for Safe Network – the National Third Sector Safeguarding Unit – live on www.runningyourgroup.org. The interview included basic information about where to start if you are running a local amateur group that wants to undertake some activities involving children, dispelling some of the myths about criminal records disclosures, an update on forthcoming changes to the statutory guidance and the development of a vetting and barring scheme, the growing importance of taking measures to ensure online safety and much more. Kevin urged those involved in amateur groups working with children, young people or vulnerable adults to undertake at least Level One training which you can do online (free of charge) via the Safe Network website at http://www.safenetwork.org.uk or through your Local Safeguarding Children Board (which you can find at http://www.safechild.co.uk). Our interview was webcast live as streaming video, with text chat allowing Running Your Group subscribers to put their questions directly to Kevin (many thanks to those of you who did). The video recording will be available shortly to watch in full on the Online Events page at http://www.runningyourgroup.org. In the meantime you can watch a short extract at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJuMvfh-Cw. This was our second Running Your Group LIVE online event and we managed to get the technology working much better this time. Kevin Garrod was a great interviewee – well-informed, clear and open. He helped us to present a simple, straightforward overview of a subject that can appear confusing and daunting to many amateur groups. If you were not able to join us live on Tuesday please do watch the video recording at http://www.runningyourgroup.org.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I was at Mary Ward House in London to take part in the NCVO Impact of Infrastructure 2012 conference. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) is approaching the end of its 3-year Value of Infrastructure Programme (VIP), funded by the Big Lottery Fund. Opening the conference, NCVO Deputy Chief Executive, Ben Kernighan, said there had been a big investment in voluntary sector infrastructure over the past decade – which he called a “golden age for funding for the voluntary sector”. The current Government focus is towards the ‘front line’ rather than infrastructure organisations. But Ben emphasised that “infrastructure is a really important part of the sector and has emerged from the sector … its role in providing a voice and advocacy for the sector is crucial”. He also spoke about a shift from supply-led to demand-driven support. Leesa Herbert from NCVO explained how the Value of Infrastructure Programme provided a robust and relevant framework, categorising the three key common roles of infrastructure organisations as: connecting; developing; and influencing. Sara Burns from Triangle Consulting explained how they had worked with NCVO to develop the VIP impact measurement tools. I spoke, in the afternoon plenary session, about how Voluntary Arts has started to use these impact measurement tools and the way in which we introduced staff and Board members to the system through a series of exercises at our 2011 Awayday. The Impact of Infrastructure conference was an extremely interesting and well-attended event. There were around 150 delegates – mainly from local voluntary sector infrastructure organisations (Councils for Voluntary Service and similar) but with a reasonable representation of national specialist infrastructure bodies like Voluntary Arts. Given how often it seems like we are a unique and complicated organisation, it was very reassuring to meet so many people doing similar work in different locations and sectors.
Robin Simpson.
On Thursday I was at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London to attend ‘Because we’re worth it!’ – a national summit exploring and celebrating the value of participatory arts. The event was organised by Connected Culture and Mailout. Connected Culture is a network dedicated to adult participatory arts and Mailout is the national online resource for participatory arts. Welcoming us to the ICA, Arti Prashar of Spare Tyre and Rob Howell from Mailout said they had been overwhelmed by the positive response to the summit: they said they could have sold it out twice over and there was clearly a massive interest in participatory/community arts. Rob Howell said that Mailout has calculated that only 7.5% of Arts Council England’s core funding goes to participatory arts: he challenged the sector to work to increase this to 15% by the next round of ACE National Portfolio Organisation funding. Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, delivered the keynote ‘thought for the day’, suggesting that the arts sector “had it pretty good” under New Labour but he didn’t think the sector as a whole had exploited the opportunities as much as it should have. Too many arts organisations are too dependent on arts grant funding. Matthew Taylor asked us whether we could make a new case for the arts. He said “the arts sector should not be afraid of instrumentalism but it should be our instrumentalism” and he felt this “would lead to a shift in arts funding towards participation”. But he warned that we need to be able to distinguish between good and bad practice: “the Achilles heel of the arts is that we are all too polite to each other”. During the questions and answers at the end of the opening plenary session, Matthew Taylor used a sporting analogy, talking about his son’s involvement in football and cross-country running. When you take part in amateur football you never encounter a professional: the professional and amateur football worlds are very far apart, with most of the money heading towards the elite professional end of the spectrum. But in cross country running the beginner can find himself competing alongside someone who runs for the national team. And, even if you finish 15 minutes behind that international athlete, you all sit down together and have a cup of tea afterwards. Matthew Taylor asked us whether the arts is more like football or cross country running. He pointed to the answer by referring to a session he chaired in the ACE/RSA State of the Arts Conference in 2011 when John Hope-Hawkins from the Society for All Artists – a national voluntary arts umbrella body – spoke about the work the SAA’s amateur members were doing in old people’s homes to encourage people to paint. No-one at that massive arts industry conference seemed to take any interest.
Robin Simpson.
I was at NCVO in London on Wednesday where Jenny Phillimore from the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham and I presented a research seminar on amateur arts and civil society. We discussed the results of our AHRC Connected Communities research project into The Impact of Grassroots Arts Activities on Communities with a group of representatives of third sector and arts organisations. Jenny described the three levels and seven areas of impact identified by our study and said how struck she had been, in particular, by the emphasis that had emerged on the importance of beauty, fun and laughter. It was an interesting discussion which reinforced the need for further research in this area.
Robin Simpson.
