Cultural Playing Field

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.

At my regular meeting with our informal voluntary cultural sector alliance partners Heritage Link and the Central Council for Physical Recreation, we were joined by Pete Moorey from NCVO who worked with us on our joint campaign over the diversion of Lottery funds to the 2012 Olympics. We talked about the latest select committee reports on the funding of the Olympics and agreed to write a joint letter to the Secretary of State, Andy Burnham, to remind the Government of the commitments that it made to us at the beginning of the year. We also discussed the Cultural Olympiad, the draft Heritage Protection Bill, the development of a European voluntary sector ‘compact’ and much more.

I was in London on Wednesday for a meeting of the acevo Arts, Culture & Heritage Special Interest Group. Among many other things we had some very interesting discussions about the ‘public benefit’ changes resulting from the 2006 Charities Act which could result in some ‘fee charging charities’ losing their charitable status. Although this will mainly affect independent schools there may be implications for arts and heritage charities that charge substantial fees for their services. We also heard the latest rumours about the ‘Hodge Review’ of the regional cultural agencies in England and discussed the Heritage Bill, the forthcoming DCMS seminar on excellence in relation to the voluntary sector (which came about as a result of the acevo group’s meeting with Margaret Hodge at the end of January) and the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.