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.
On Tuesday I was at the Learning Revolution Expo event at Old Spitalfields Market in London. Paul and I were running ‘Zone 2 – taking action’ which focused on issues relating to self-organising groups of learners. It was a fascinating day and a very innovative format which encouraged some high quality networking. We made lots of useful contacts and came away quite inspired. It was encouraging to see the Further Education Minister Kevin Brennan there to formally launch the Learning Revolution Festival and to have a video message from Lord Mandelson emphasising the importance the Government attaches to informal adult learning. And it was great to see two of our new freelance facilitators, Matthew Burge and Wendy Smithers.
Robin Simpson.
EVDC is always a great networking opportunity, bringing together a wide range of volunteering infrastructure and volunteer-involving organisations. At the last two meetings we have been discussing the future role of EVDC – its functions, membership and administration. While there is a danger of doing too much navel-gazing, it has been helpful to revisit the purpose of these meetings. We also heard this week about the progress of the Association of Volunteer Managers, which has just had its second AGM, and about the Volunteering England/British Red Cross fringe events at the main political party conferences.
Robin Simpson.
On Thursday I was back in London to attend a meeting of the England Volunteering Development Council. We heard a presentation on the progress of the Modernising Volunteering National Support Service which is looking at employer-supported volunteering, new forms of volunteering, volunteering in faith-based organisations and increasing diversity. Justin Davis-Smith from Volunteering England talked about the work VE has been doing with the TUC to update the guidelines on relations between paid staff and volunteers which date back to 1979: comments are sought by the end of July on the draft new guidelines which are on the Volunteering England website. We had an update on the ‘refresh’ of the Voluntary Sector Compact: the revised Compact will be available from next Monday 20 July for a three month consultation. There was some concern about the implementation of the Department for Work and Pensions volunteering brokerage scheme which aims to place 34,000 long-term unemployed people in volunteering opportunities over the next two years. Saskia Daggett from Volunteering England presented a comprehensive review of the work of the six action groups which were established to follow-up the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. These action groups have now finished their work and the list of their achievements is very impressive. Finally we heard more details of the YouthNet/Volunteering England 2012 Volunteering Legacy project which aims to build a sustainable electronic volunteering infrastructure.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I was in London again to attend a meeting of the Community Sector Coalition. Our guest speaker was Philip Blond, Director of the Progressive Conservatism Project at DEMOS. Philip is charged with “rethinking what modern conservatism means”. The proverbial ‘Red Tory’ is an impressive performer – intelligent, articulate and extremely fast-talking: it was often quite a struggle to keep up with him. Among many other things, he argued that most people feel society is broken: associative relationships have weakened. The key question for the community sector is “what builds associative non-state civic behaviour?” The resources for community renewal lie in the community itself: the state and the market now need to play a different role. Whereas traditional Tories want to reduce demand on the state by passing over responsibilities to the voluntary and community sector, “progressives see the voluntary and community sector as more effective in delivery than the state”. Philip Blond spoke a great deal about ‘subsidiarity’ – “power should be exercised at the most appropriate level” and ‘the right to parish’ – giving a group of local people the opportunity to manage the public money that is spent on their community. He felt that third sector organisations could share more back-office costs and should have the right to use unused public offices and other assets. At least I think that’s what he said! My impression was that his focus was mostly on VCS organisations providing public services rather than wider issues about civil society. But much of what he said was encouraging for the community sector and he gave us some clear advice on how best to make our case to a potential Conservative government.
Robin Simpson.
I was back in London on Tuesday for my regular meeting with Sophie Chapman at the Office of the Third Sector. It’s all change at the Cabinet Office with Tessa Jowell taking over from Liam Byrne and Angela Smith becoming the new Minister of State for the Third Sector. We discussed progress on the 2012 Volunteering Legacy: three new posts are being created at Volunteering England, a project manager will be based at YouthNet to oversee development of the new online Participation Portal and the Office of the Third Sector is working with the Government Olympic Executive on the development of a national marketing campaign about volunteering and participation.
Robin Simpson.
