Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, education, England, training, volarts
On Wednesday afternoon I took part in the first meeting of a new strategic advisory group for an informal adult learning research project being run by NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This research project is mapping training and development opportunities for facilitators of informal adult learning. This includes those who consider themselves ‘tutors’ but also a wide range of other people who encourage, organise and inspire informal learning (eg sports coaches, conductors of amateur choirs etc). We had fascinating discussions about how to give people the skills necessary to do this kind of facilitation (which was the subject of our recent ‘Taste for Tutoring’ seminars) and the difficulties of trying to identify standards, training or accreditation that could apply across the whole spectrum of informal adult learning.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, drama, olympics, training, UK, volarts
I am aware that I have sometimes been guilty of excessive hyperbole in this blog but, on this occasion, I really have to say that our creative planning event last weekend with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford was totally brilliant!
We brought 65 representatives of voluntary arts umbrella bodies to Stratford-upon-Avon for the weekend to work with RSC staff and actors to develop ideas for the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival (one of the major projects within the Cultural Olympiad). As well as the various amateur theatre umbrella bodies we also invited representatives from a range of artforms, including music, dance and poetry, to look at how we might use the festival to encourage greater collaboration between amateur arts groups as well as with the RSC and other professional companies.
There was a fantastic mood and genuine learning in both directions. On Saturday we were in the RSC’s Arden Street rehearsal rooms. RSC Artistic Director, Michael Boyd, gave an opening speech in which he said “the World Shakespeare Festival, at the very least, will be a great project we can all enjoy but, at best, could be quite culture-changing: something very radical is happening in theatre in this country”. He concluded that “the combined forces of professional and amateur theatre provide potentially a massive engine of social cohesion and social intelligence”. I had worried that, after his words of welcome, Michael Boyd might then disappear but he stayed with us all weekend (right to the end) and genuinely listened and learned from the umbrella bodies. He was really excited about what we might do together and has asked for a follow-up meeting with us as soon as possible.
Michael Boyd addressing the RSC/Voluntary Arts creative planning weekend
After Michael’s welcome I talked about the false divide between professional and amateur that developed in the UK in the twentieth century and gave a brief overview of the various parts of the Cultural Olympiad. RSC Associate Director (and Director of the World Shakespeare Festival), Deborah Shaw, then explained the vision for the festival, in which a range of pro-am collaborations will form one of the three main strands.
We spent Saturday morning working in small groups (each with a mixture of RSC staff and amateur organisation representatives) to brainstorm the key elements, messages and legacies of the World Shakespeare Festival. The groups then reported back to a plenary session chaired by Michael Boyd which developed into a wide-ranging discussion about the potential of the festival.
Michael Boyd chairing the first plenary session at the RSC/Voluntary Arts creative planning weekend
On Saturday afternoon we took part in a series of workshops led by RSC staff, including ‘Movement’ with Struan Leslie, Head of Movement at the RSC, ‘Marketing and Press’ with Jo Litt, RSC Marketing Manager; David Collins RSC Head of Marketing and Nada Zakula, RSC Senior Press Officer, ‘Approaches to Shakespeare’s text’ with Lyn Darnley, RSC Head of Text, Voice and Artist Development, ‘Stage Management’ with Nicola Ireland, Stage Management Team for RSC’s Young People’s Hamlet and ‘Editing Shakespeare’s Text’ with RSC Assistant Director Vik Sivalingam. These workshops were excellent: they would have made a good series of TV programmes in themselves.
On Saturday evening we all went to see the new RSC production of ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Courtyard Theatre. It’s a wonderful show (see my review) and it was fascinating to spot aspects of this interpretation which had been explained to us in the afternoon workshops. I was particularly interested in the reaction of some of our non-theatre umbrella bodies, for whom Shakespeare is not particularly familiar and who had never seen an RSC production before, who were completely bowled over by it.
Justin Audibert leading a session at the RSC/Voluntary Arts creative planning weekend
Three of the actors from Twelfth Night gave up their day off on Sunday to come to show us how their rehearsal process works in a session led by Assistant Director, Justin Audibert. And 65 representatives of voluntary arts umbrella bodies got to spend several hours on the stage of the Courtyard Theatre dreaming up visions of what the pro-am part of the World Shakespeare Festival might look like. The RSC staff were brilliant throughout, but the voluntary arts representatives also rose to the challenge and were enthusiastic, creative and innovative. There was an inspirational mood from the start, made more magical when we got to work in the theatre on Sunday.
Struan Leslie leading a session on the stage of the Courtyard Theatre
In chairing the last plenary session I left the final word to Tom Williams – an amateur actor with around 50 years’ experience – who recited “Our revels now are ended” from The Tempest, which finishes “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”. It was a wonderful weekend and promises to be the start of an extremely exciting and productive partnership between Voluntary Arts and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: volarts, funding, education, youth, England, vcs, ace, training
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.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, DCMS, England, research, training, volarts
On Thursday I was at the Arts Council England national office for a meeting of the Amateur Arts Partnership Development Programme steering group. (This is the name we have now agreed for the ACE/DCMS action plan responding to the conclusions of the ‘Our Creative Talent’ research.) We looked at proposals for a more coherent and consistent approach to the amateur arts across ACE’s regional offices which were to be presented to the ACE Executive Board meeting later on Thursday. We also discussed proposals on voluntary arts regional networking and capacity-building sector which we had developed at the facilitated session held at the VAE office in Newcastle last week. The steering group supported our proposals and we agreed to start a business planning process to clarify what resources would be required to implement the various elements of regional networking and capacity-building – and how these might be funded.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: England, funding, OTS, training, vcs, volarts
On Monday I was in London to attend a meeting of the Community Sector Coalition Steering Group for the Leadership & Governance National Support Service. Our discussions focused on one particular strand of the new support service which aims to address the need to improve leadership skills in small community groups. All the National Support Services funded by Capacitybuilders are designed to build capacity in front-line, grassroots, voluntary and community sector groups by working with ‘support providers’ including infrastructure organisations and umbrella bodies. In this case a pilot programme of training is planned for development workers in support providers working with local community groups to enable them to champion leadership skills. On Monday we met the consultants who have been contracted to deliver this pilot programme and helped them to start to design the training. I am very keen to ensure that at least one voluntary arts umbrella body is involved in the first training sessions, which are likely to take place in Spring 2009.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: volarts, politics, England, vcs, ncvo, research, training, OTS
On Wednesday afternoon I was at The Law Society on Chancery Lane in London to take part in the National Council for Voluntary Organisations Board meeting and AGM. The Board meeting focused on the impact of the recession on the voluntary and community sector. The Voluntary Sector Recession Summit, which took place on Monday – jointly chaired by Stuart Etherington of NCVO and the Minister for the Third Sector, Kevin Brennan – resulted in the promise of a Government action plan for the sector by early 2009. The summit identified specific actions in the areas of research, capacity-building and public policy to help the sector cope with the economic downturn. In the Board meeting we looked at extensive research undertaken by the Charities Aid Foundation and others into the effect of earlier recessions on the sector, whilst recognising that this recession might be quite different and that the sector is now much stronger than it was. Nevertheless, it still seems likely that the major effects on the third sector will not be felt immediately: there is likely to be a 9-12 month lag effect in relation to charitable giving. Perhaps the most important message that came out of our discussion was that charities should not panic: most problems to date seemed to stem from perception rather than reality. NCVO and the other leading representative bodies have a key role to play in encouraging a calm, rational approach to emerging economic problems – while not underestimating their potential seriousness. This was the final meeting of the old Board: I was one of sixteen Trustees who stepped down at the AGM as the elected members of the new, smaller Board were confirmed. I’ve really enjoyed my two years as a NCVO Trustee and look forward to playing a role on the new Members’ Assembly which will meet twice a year to discuss major third sector policy issues. The AGM was followed by the annual NCVO Hinton Lecture – in memory of the former NCVO Director Nicholas Hinton. This year’s speaker was the journalist Simon Jenkins, a former editor of the Times and the London Evening Standard who now writes for the Guardian and has recently become Chair of the National Trust. His deliberately provocative lecture warned that the strength of the voluntary and community sector was eroding local democracy as successive governments had removed real power from local councils and started consulting ‘stakeholders’ such as professional groups, lobbyists and voluntary organisations. See: http://thirdsector.co.uk/news/Article/865665/Voluntary-sector-dangerous-democracy-warns-ex-Times-editor/.
Robin Simpson
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, funding, research, training, UK, vcs, volarts
I was back in London on Wednesday to meet Ben Wittenberg, Director of Policy & Research at the Directory of Social Change. I was quite familiar with the DSC’s information and training for voluntary sector organisations but impressed to hear that the charity, which employs 45 people in London and Liverpool, works with more than 20,000 organisations a year, generating 87% of its own income. The policy and campaigning side of their work is new and growing: to date their main focus has been on public service delivery and commissioning. DSC will launch its ‘Funders’ Almanac 2008’ on 5 November. The almanac will provide vital intelligence to funders and marks the first step towards producing a comprehensive picture of funding in the voluntary and community sector. DSC then has plans for a broad campaign on giving and grant-making. Ben and I had a wide-ranging discussion about how we might be able to work together – both in relation to our lobbying and advocacy work but also where there is some crossover in our information services. We will start by collaborating on a review of DSC’s ‘Arts Funding Guide’ early next year.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I was back in London, at Leyton Orient Football Club, to attend the last in a series of seminars on ‘The Great Monitoring and Evaluation Debate’. Organised by Substance, the creators of the SPRS reporting software, the seminar looked at the problems created by the reporting requirements of funders. There is often lots of monitoring but little evaluation and it is rarely done in a way which is useful to the project organisers or participants. The challenge is to move from ‘monitoring and evaluation’ to ‘learning and development’. Substance is now working on the use of open source software tools to combine existing data sets (including mobile phone photos and recordings), rather than requiring extensive collection of new data, and create custom front ends for different funders to allow the evidence to be analysed in the most useful ways. The seminar became a little too focused on software issues and the particular system created by Substance for the Home Office’s ‘Positive Futures’ project, but it still raised some interesting points. It was good to see that some of the organisations represented had started to take a more creative approach to monitoring and evaluation along the lines developed by the Voluntary Arts Wales team. (If you haven’t seen it I strongly recommend the VAW publication, ‘Tear Up Your Tick Boxes’.)
Robin Simpson.
On Thursday I was at Community Matters in London for a meeting about the new ‘Leadership & Governance’ National Support Service. This programme – funded by Capacitybuilders as one of the replacements for the old ChangeUp national Hubs – is a partnership between NCVO, acevo and the Community Sector Coalition. The meeting I attended was an opportunity for Coalition members to help to plan the parts of the programme which will be delivered by the CSC. The emphasis for the programme (as for the all the national support services) is to help ‘Support Providers’ (including local infrastructure organisations and national membership bodies such as voluntary arts umbrella organisations) to deliver capacity-building to local front-line organisations. In the case of the Leadership & Governance support service there will be a particular focus on small community groups – including voluntary arts groups. The old Governance Hub was very helpful to VAN and enabled us to deliver a programme of governance support to voluntary arts umbrella bodies. It looks like there should be even more potential to improve leadership and governance in local voluntary arts groups through the new national support service.
