Cultural Playing Field

On Tuesday evening I was at the Barbican in London for the pre-conference reception hosted by the Carnegie (UK) Trust. Kate Braithwaite, Chief Executive of the Carnegie Rural Commission, welcomed delegates and Voluntary Arts staff gave examples of the organisation’s activities across the UK and Ireland. The talking was interspersed with some excellent voluntary arts performances including madrigal singers, drummers, drama, storytelling and a chamber choir.

Susanna Reid interviews Professor John Benyon (Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester) to launch 'Edutainment'

The formal proceedings concluded with the launch of the new Voluntary Arts England publication ‘Edutainment: the benefits of arts and crafts in adult and community learning’ - a collection of case studies edited by Paul Devlin. Susanna Reid (from the BBC1 Breakfast programme) interviewed Professor John Benyon (Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester) who wrote the forward to ‘Edutainment’ about lifelong learning and the arts and crafts. Guests then enjoyed the last few hours of the hottest day of the year eating, drinking and networking in the delightful surroundings of the Barbican Conservatory - “a hidden tropical oasis in the heart of the city”. We are enormously grateful to the Carnegie (UK) Trust for supporting an inspirational and entertaining event and to everyone who helped to make it such a memorable evening.

Last weekend I attended the ‘Amateo’ conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where we agreed the constitution for a ‘European network for active participation in cultural activities’ and elected the first Board for the new organisation. VAN is the UK representative amongst the seven founding members of ‘Amateo’. In launching the network, its first President, Villy Dall from Denmark, emphasised that the idea was not to duplicate what other European organisations already do: the main idea was to convince politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg that the application procedures for European funding schemes need to be made more accessible to amateur cultural groups. Amateo will press for an opening up of European funding to the amateur sector and will then develop support to help groups with the application process. Amateo aims to encompass not just the 27 countries of the European Union but all 47 members of the Council of Europe. Villy said that the most essential argument is that the amateur arts need to be recognised as part of the arts across Europe.

The conference was small but friendly and constructive. There were around 40 delegates with Robin Osterley from Making Music and me the only representatives from the UK or the Republic of Ireland. As well as the business of the conference we enjoyed a reception hosted by the Mayor of Ljubljana, a fantastic concert in the medieval coastal town of Piran, featuring choral groups from Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic, and the 39^th annual Slovenian Outdoor Choral Festival in the village of Sendvit.

This festival consisted of massed choirs involving nearly 4000 singers from across Slovenia as well as Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Argentina. An amazing event at which we were introduced to the Prime Minister of Slovenia. A very enjoyable conference and hopefully the start of a new chapter for the amateur arts across Europe. For more details see www.amateo.info

Yesterday morning I was at Canary Wharf in London at the offices of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) to meet the UK Cultural Programme Advisor, Francesca Canty. Francesca told me that, since the ‘Inspire Mark’ for non-commercial projects inspired by the 2012 Games was launched on 11 March they have had 30 applications. She is very keen to ensure that the first few projects granted the Inspire Mark include some from voluntary arts groups in order to reinforce the message that the Cultural Olympiad is open to all groups – regardless of scale. We talked further about how the Voluntary Arts Network could work with the regional and national Creative Programmers to ensure that voluntary arts groups maximise the opportunities presented by the Cultural Olympiad to achieve recognition at a national and international level. We discussed the possibility of a series of LOCOG roadshows around the country specifically for voluntary arts groups. Francesca emphasised that to achieve the Inspire Mark, projects will have to embrace the Cultural Olympiad criteria and values and be new and innovative – “like never before”. I assured her that voluntary arts groups were more than capable of rising to this creative challenge.

On Monday afternoon I was at Tate Modern to attend a National Campaign for the Arts advocacy seminar. Representatives of a wide range of arts organisations discussed topics including the recent Arts Council England funding changes, the McMaster report on ‘excellence’, ‘Find your talent’ and the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. There were some interesting points made but it’s a shame that any gathering of arts organisations always seems to end up spending more time talking about money than anything else. Still it was lovely to see Philip Hedley in fine form: from when I started working in the arts (and I suspect many years before that) no gathering of arts organisations has ever seemed complete without the passionate, entertaining and often mischievous interventions of the former Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.

This morning I was at Live Theatre in Newcastle for one of the regional briefing sessions on the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. As Bill Morris announced on the London 2012 blog this morning, the Cultural Olympiad is now “open for business”. Details of how to apply to have your project recognised as part of the Olympiad are now at: www.london2012.com/beinspired. Months of delicate legal negotiations with the IOC have resulted in an agreement to endorse a ‘non-commercial mark’ for the 2012 Olympics. This is the first time this has ever been achieved and makes the concept of a four-year UK-wide cultural festival viable. The ‘Inspire Mark’ (which bizarrely we were only shown the tiniest glimpse of in this morning’s official presentation) will be used (sparingly, at least at first) to endorse non-commerical projects and events inspired by the Olympics. This means that it will only be available to projects without any commercial sponsorship which may prove to be a problem for some. We were told that the application process for Cultural Olympiad projects will have a 7-week turnaround time and everyone will first have to have discussed their ideas with the relevant local Creative Programmer. In this morning’s question and answer session I asked Lorna Fulton, the North East Creative Programmer, how she planned to cope with potentially thousands of enquiries from voluntary arts groups in the North East. I was delighted that her answer was that she understood discussions were going on nationally about this with the Voluntary Arts Network. We still have work to do on this but it’s great that the Creative Programmers seem to have accepted the importance of VAN playing a role. But, as Bill Morris says in his blog: “The truth is that all of this will come to naught without great content” and I am still frustrated by the clear need for a small grants fund to inspire local community groups across the UK to dream up projects that fit the criteria for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Time to redouble our efforts on this.

We clearly need a small grants fund to inspire local community groups across the UK to dream up projects that fit the criteria for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The idea of a four-year UK-wide festival needs small local groups if it is to work. At present there is little motivation for the Cultural Olympiad amongst these groups because of the disillusion created by the transfer of Lottery funds to pay for the Olympic venues. I have been using the phrase “ambition deficit” to describe this which a few people have picked up.

LOCOG is adamant that the Olympiad won’t just ‘badge’ things that were already going to happen - they want all Olympiad projects to be truly reflective of the Olympic ideals and the values and themes of the Olympiad. I think voluntary arts groups are the ideal people to rise to this challenge and would undoubtedly dream up some fantastic creative solutions to reflect these values within their local community - if they were not completely switched off by the whole thing!

We know from plenty of experience with small grants funds that the presence of the fund acts as a catalyst to get people devising projects - many of which will then happen whether or not they get a grant from the fund. But without a fund few groups are going to even start thinking about devising projects. Also it is important that the small grants fund is UK-wide if we are to counter the commonly-held impression that the Olympics (and the Olympiad) is just for London and the South East.