Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, drama, England, funding, ncvo, vcs, volarts, volunteering
On Wednesday evening I attended the AGM of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). 2009 is NCVO’s 90th anniversary and Chief Executive, Stuart Etherington, spoke about the origins of the organisation and how it grew out of a number of regional ‘Guilds of Help’. NCVO now has more than 7,500 member organisations ranging from small community groups to the largest charities. The AGM was followed by the annual Hinton Lecture which, for the first time in its eleven-year history, had an arts theme. Sir John Tusa’s lecture was titled ‘The arts and the voluntary sector: friends or distant cousins?’. Sir John (currently Chair of the University of the Arts, the Clore Leadership Programme and the Wigmore Hall Trust) started by saying that, in a dozen years as Managing Director of The Barbican, he had not consciously been involved with the voluntary sector: it had not occurred to him that it could be useful, necessary or natural. He examined the differences in purposes, relationships, responsibilities, beneficiaries and funding between the arts and the voluntary sector but he also emphasised their commonalities and interdependence. Sir John said “the arts are critical to civil society: they are the conscience of society” and “a civil society uninterested in the arts isn’t much of a civil society”. He thought the voluntary sector was ahead of the arts in the area of assessment and gathering evidence of effectiveness and felt the case for arts funding might be stronger as presented in the wider context of the voluntary sector. Sir John’s conclusion was that the arts and the voluntary sector are “side by side but not yet firm friends”. I was very pleased to hear Sir John Tusa emphasise that the organisations funded by Arts Council England “are only a small part of the whole arts sector” and delighted to hear him quote, as an example, some statistics from the National Operatic and Dramatic Association (NODA). In the question and answer session at the end of the lecture I suggested that arts organisations have much to learn from the wider voluntary sector about best practice in relation to governance, Trustee Boards, volunteering etc. Sir John agreed that there would be substantial benefits to both the arts and the voluntary sector from a closer relationship – presenting a stronger argument for funding and a more powerful lobby on issues of common cause such as tax reform. It was really useful to have the high-profile opportunity created by the Hinton Lecture to discuss how we might encourage closer working between the arts and the rest of the voluntary sector – and to see so many arts organisations represented at an NCVO event.
Robin Simpson.
This morning I was at the Gulbenkian Foundation in London to take part in ‘Steady State?’ – the first of a series of events hosted by Mission Models Money (MMM) and ERA21 to discuss whether further growth of the arts and cultural sector is sustainable. The event was chaired by Charlotte Jones, Chief Executive of the Independent Theatre Council, and I was joined on the panel by Maurice Davies from the Museums Association, Hilary Gresty from the Visual Arts and Galleries Association, Dave Moutrey from the Cornerhouse and Lyn Gardner from The Guardian. We were asked to talk about whether the arts and cultural sector is too ‘overbuilt’. Do we have too many buildings? Too many organisations? Does the next decade need a radically different approach in the light of the UK’s deficit, the global recession and the threat to our environment? Inevitably our discussion created more questions than answers but it was an interesting debate and really good to see the voluntary arts treated seriously as an integral part of the wider arts sector. There are two further ‘Steady State?’ events next week in Edinburgh (where Fiona Campbell from Voluntary Arts Scotland is going to be on the panel) and Newcastle (where I will be taking part again).
Robin Simpson.
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: England, Europe, funding, volarts, volunteering
On Wednesday I was back in London to attend the England Volunteering Development Council meeting where we heard from Markus Held, Director of the European Volunteer Centre about plans for the European Year of Volunteering 2011. The European Commission agreed, in June this year, to designate 2011 as the European Year of Volunteering and it is now awaiting approval from the 27 national ministers on 27 November. The aim is “to get Europe talking about volunteers for a whole year”. Assuming it goes ahead, one effect will be that for the next two years existing EU funding programmes will give priority to applications relating to volunteering. More details at http://www.eyv2011.eu.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: England, funding, politics, research, vcs, volarts
On Monday afternoon I met Matthew Scott, Director of the Community Sector Coalition to discuss a number of policy themes that might form part of the Coalition’s new strategic plan. We talked about the likely impact of a Conservative Government on the community sector: Shadow Third Sector Minister, Nick Hurd, is to address the next meeting of the Community Sector Coalition in December. We agreed on the importance of small grant schemes as seed-bed development for community groups. Matthew described the community sector as an ‘iceberg’: only a fraction of the sector is clearly visible – there are massive numbers of informal, un-constituted community groups which it is nearly impossible to map. We also discussed the Voluntary Sector Compact and its relevance to small community groups. Finally, we looked at the issues of climate change and sustainability and the extent to which the arts might be used to explore the climate change message.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, DCMS, England, funding, heritage, politics, vcs, volarts
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: ace, education, England, funding, training, vcs, volarts, youth
On Tuesday I was in Sheffield to visit the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action. NAVCA is the national umbrella body for local third sector infrastructure in England and represents 344 local councils for voluntary service and similar organisations. In a series of quick one-to-one meetings (that felt a bit like speed dating!) I talked to a range of NAVCA staff, got a good overview of the work of the organisation and identified a number of areas in which we might be able to work together. I discussed with NAVCA Chief Executive, Kevin Curley, the role NAVCA members could play in the model for local delivery of capacity-building for voluntary arts groups that we are currently working on with the Arts Council England Amateur Arts Partnership Development Programme steering group. Carrie McKenzie, NAVCA’s Sport Partnership Adviser, told me about the work she has been doing (funded by Sport England) to embed a culture of collaboration between sport and the wider third sector and we discussed how we might develop a similar approach in relation to the voluntary arts. Every Child Matters Adviser, Angela Barnes, explained the work NAVCA is doing (funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families) to support young people, disabled children and the extended schools programme. I talked to Barney Mynott, Policy & Communications Manager, about how we might work together on advocacy and information services. Helen Oparinde told me about NAVCA’s SKILD project (Skills and Knowledge for Local Development) which provides training for development workers supporting front line third sector organisations. Finally I met Terry Perkins, Public Law Training Officer, who explained how the Public Law Project is allowing third sector organisations to influence decisions made by public bodies. It was a very interesting day and I came away determined to encourage voluntary arts groups to make more use of the wide range of (often free) services available through local Councils for Voluntary Service: to find your nearest CVS go to: http://webdb.navca.org.uk. Many thanks to Kevin, Carrie and everyone at NAVCA.
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.
