On Tuesday I took part in a telephone meeting with Chris Warner and Jayne Stokes from the Regeneration Directorate in the Department for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage at the Welsh Government and Peter Owen from the Culture, Sport & Media Division. This was a follow-up to the meeting Hamish and I had with Chris and Peter in March. We talked about how to involve the voluntary arts sector in the forthcoming review of the Welsh Government’s approaches to regeneration. We also discussed the potential for developing some pilot projects to look at the role voluntary arts groups can play in relation to regeneration, possibly linked to the new Voluntary Arts Wales Up for Arts project in North Wales.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday afternoon I was at Tate Britain in London for a meeting organised by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to discuss the honours system and how to increase the number of nominations for women in the arts and media. Lord Stevenson, who is Chair of the Arts and Media Committee which considers nominations from these sectors, chaired a fascinating session of presentations and discussion. He was joined by two other members of the Arts and Media Committee, Dame Jenny Abramsky and Dame Liz Forgan (“a gaggle of Dames?”) to talk about the quite shocking disparity between the numbers of nominations for male and female candidates for honours. Jenny Abramsky said “the honours system should be diverse, should be fair and should recognise what is going on in this country”. Liz Forgan said “the honours list is a very cheap, simple way of saying thank you to people”. She felt there was no shortage of potential nominees in the arts and media. Alison Bennett from the Cabinet Office, which oversees the honours system, explained that nominations are considered by eight expert committees (including the Arts and Media Committee). The Community, Voluntary and Local Services Committee (CVLS) accounts for around 40% of the honours list. Nominations are received directly from members of the public as well as via Government departments. Alison told us that women have never made up more than 47% of the overall list and the disparity was particularly bad in the higher level awards. In the 2012 New Year honours there were 7 Dames compared to 27 Knights. Within the arts and media nominations only 37% were for women (and only 33% were awarded). Pat Le-Bruin from DCMS said that it seemed that “everyone assumes someone else is doing something”. She emphasised that DCMS is happy to work with organisations planning to nominate someone, to advise them on how to create effective citations etc. We also heard from the playwright and critic, Bonnie Greer OBE, who spoke about how she had felt on being awarded an honour. She talked passionately about why she had decided to accept and said “if I can be awarded an OBE then everybody can”. It was a fascinating and inspiring session and certainly succeeded in enthusing me to look at what more we could do to encourage nominations for honours from the voluntary arts sector.
Robin Simpson.
On Monday I was at the University of Glamorgan in Cardiff to take part in a meeting about storytelling in Wales. Voluntary Arts Board member, Hamish Fyfe, is Director the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan and called this meeting to look at how storytelling might be celebrated, supported and encouraged in Wales. Joining us around the table were representatives of museums, libraries, Cadw (the Welsh Government’s historic environment service) and several storytellers. We considered the possibility of trying to establish a centre in Wales along the lines of The Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh, though I think we felt that there were other ways of supporting storytelling that might be more effective than a building. Broadly we looked at three themes which I categorised as past (capturing and preserving traditional Welsh stories), present (supporting, celebrating and raising the profile of storytelling across Wales) and future (developing skills in storytelling and encouraging more people to participate). It was a really interesting first meeting and we agreed to meet again later in the year to develop these thoughts.
Robin Simpson.
I was at the Senedd in Cardiff on Thursday afternoon to give evidence to the Welsh Assembly Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee’s inquiry into participation in the arts. The inquiry was launched to look at whether budget cuts in the arts sector may be having a negative effect on participation in the arts among some groups of people. You don’t get the chance to say much in these sessions: I was one of three witnesses in a 30 minute slot. It was good to be alongside Maggie Hampton from Disability Arts Cymru and Leanne Rahman from the Black Voluntary Sector Network – together we were able to stress the need for funding, support and collaboration to encourage disabled people and BME communities to participate in the arts. I said I felt questions about the relationship between the Welsh Government and the Arts Council (the arm’s length principle) and whether we need greater scrutiny of the Arts Council were red herrings in relation to how we address gaps in arts participation. Most participation happens through organisations that are not funded by ACW. I made the point that the amateur arts is largely self-sufficient and sustainable and the overall levels of participation were almost the same in 2010 as they were 10 years before (according to the ACW Omnibus Survey). You could get rid of the Arts Council and not affect the overall levels of participation. But the effect of cuts in arts funding is to further disenfranchise those parts of the population who tend not to participate in the arts and need support and encouragement to do so. So arts participation as a whole always survives funding cuts but is likely to become less diverse and favour people from more affluent, cohesive communities. Finally I stressed the need for a more radical approach to raising the levels (and diversity) of arts participation by developing collaboration and links between professional participatory/community arts and the amateur/voluntary arts sector.
Robin Simpson.
The Lowry, Salford
On Tuesday I was at The Lowry in Salford for Arts Council England’s ‘State of the Arts’ Conference. I was fairly critical of last year’s ‘State of the Arts’ Conference, saying here that “the main conference sessions were disappointingly lacking in creativity in terms of their format”. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a much more creative approach this year, with the plenary sessions beautifully staged (and stage-managed) in The Lowry’s massive Lyric Theatre. I spent all day rather cheekily taking credit for this improvement which was clearly a response to my stinging criticism, only to find that when I bumped into ACE Chief Executive, Alan Davey, in the afternoon and congratulated him on the more theatrical style of the conference he said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, “well you made such a fuss last year we had to do something!”.
One of the best things about the conference this year was that it was chaired by Kirsty Wark: she was a wonderful chair – listening carefully to the speakers, understanding the issues, keeping everyone to time and being incredibly fierce when necessary. She was part of a strong BBC presence, emphasising the developing partnership between ACE and the BBC and the proximity of Media City UK, just across the water from The Lowry. We were welcomed by Peter Salmon, Head of BBC North, and in the afternoon the BBC’s Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, interviewed the choreographer Arlene Phillips about whether TV does great art. This was a session that seemed to divide the audience – while many were impressed by Arlene Phillips’ passion and enthusiasm and welcomed this very different voice as a challenge to the usual suspects at an arts industry conference, there was also some very audible muttering about her views on the differences between the arts and entertainment and her sometimes self-contradictory statements about the need for a populist approach.
Opening the conference ACE Chair Liz Forgan suggested that this is “a golden age for the arts”, even if it is on the edge of the unknown. The Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, said “the arts are more important than ever before” and “the arts are their own justification, in and of themselves”. He was clear that “we believe Government should provide the core funding for the arts”. He said “we support the mixed economy model for funding the arts – something that is almost unique to this country” and “we support, absolutely, the arm’s length principle”. As David Brownlee from the Theatrical Management Association (TMA) started to ask the Minister a question, Ed Vaizey interjected to ask when the TMA Awards were going to be held. He said he had tried to find this out on the TMA website but it wasn’t up to date and went on to criticise arts organisations that don’t keep their websites up to date. A little later in the session, Kirsty Wark read out a tweet that had appeared on the computer screen in front of her (from @MarcusRomer) which pointed out that Ed Vaizey’s own blog hasn’t been updated for nearly 2 years!
State of the Arts Conference delegates in the foyer of The Lowry, Salford
Away from the plenary sessions, I attended the two ‘Artists and Communities’ breakout sessions. Apart from the inevitable digression into terminological issues (what do we mean by ‘Artists’? what do we mean by ‘Communities’ why not ‘Artists in Communities’ or ‘Artists of Communities’? etc.) these were interesting discussions about participation, engagement and community arts. The four speakers, Dan Thompson, Rosie Kay, Peter Jenkinson and Ruth Little, were all entertaining and thought-provoking.
State of the Arts is a big conference, this year attracting around 500 people: the delegate list is more likely to be in the running for the Booker Prize than the BBC Short Story Award. Whatever you think of the conference sessions it’s a wonderful networking opportunity: I managed to talk to a host of old and new contacts – including Alan Davey, Jim Tough, Richard Russell and Cluny Macpherson from ACE and Nick Capaldi, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Wales.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: Europe, ncvo, OTS, politics, UK, volarts, volunteering
On Friday afternoon I attended an Office for Civil Society Strategic Partners event, ‘European Years: What do they mean for us?’ at Europe House in London. Connecting the European Year of Volunteering 2011 with the European Year of Active Aging 2012 and the European Year of Citizenship 2013; this event involved the European Commission and key government departments coming together in dialogue with a range of civil society organisations. As the European Year of Active Aging 2012 begins, we shared learning from previous European Years as part of the last gathering of our European Year of Volunteering 2011 steering group. The general consensus seemed to be that the European Year of Volunteering had been very successful across Europe but only partly successful in England. The challenge was exemplified by one participant in a European Year of Volunteering event in Manchester who had memorably said “what on earth has Europe got to do with Oldham?!” There was some very sensible discussion about the need for a greater handover period between European Years – maybe three months at the end of each year in which the connections between the two themes are explored in more detail.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, DCMS, England, Europe, funding, olympics, politics, UK, volarts
I was back in London for a meeting at Queen Mary, University of London about the Points of Contact programme, organised by People’s Palace Projects. It feels a long time since we visited Brazil in March 2010 and a great deal has happened in the interim. There is a new Government in Brazil and a new Culture Minister – and there have been big changes to arts funding in England. So it was good to hear that People’s Palace Projects has now secured funding (from Arts Council England and the British Council) and agreement from the Brazilian Government to continue the Points of Contact exchange programme. The programme will now reflect five themes: youth arts, disability, digital, sustainability and the Cultural Olympiad (providing a link between the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games). In the first year of this second phase, Points of Contact will focus on youth arts, starting with the visit of a Brazilian delegation to the UK in March 2012. We talked about how those UK arts organisations involved in the first phase of Points of Contact have been influenced and changed by the programme and how we might be able to work with People’s Palace Projects in the next phase.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, politics, research, volarts
On Friday I have been at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in London to take part in a stakeholder workshop to introduce and discuss a new BIS-funded Informal Adult and Community Learning (IACL) Learner Survey, commissioned as part of the current IACL review. The IACL Learner Survey will be a telephone survey of 4,000 learners to explore their routes into learning, their motivations for learning and the impacts they experience as a result of learning. In particular it will aim to capture the impact of IACL learning in relation to the objectives set out in the Government’s New Challenges, New Chances publication. BIS has commissioned the social research agency TNS-BMRB to carry out the research. In Friday’s workshop we looked in detail at the areas the telephone questionnaire will cover. We were also given details of separate BIS-commissioned research into Adult Learning and Wellbeing.
Robin Simpson.
