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.
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.
On Tuesday afternoon I was at the Community Media Association in Sheffield for the first meeting of the CMA Arts Project Steering Group. CMA Arts Co-ordinator, Tamar Millen, updated us on her progress to date and we discussed her first draft of the new CMA Arts Strategy. I agreed to set up a meeting for Tamar with a range of voluntary arts umbrella bodies to start to discuss how voluntary arts groups and community media organisations might collaborate.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, education, England, funding, training, vcs, volarts, youth
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.
On Wednesday I was at the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations in Manchester for the second meeting of the NCVO Members’ Assembly. It was good to see NCVO continuing to use a creative approach to the assembly meetings: the format again gave us good opportunities to interact with most of the other people in the room and incubated some innovative ideas on ‘the good society’. As part of the development of NCVO’s civil society agenda, and the NCVO Manifesto for the general election, we considered the questions: “what is the good society?”; “how do voluntary and community organisations help to create the good society”; and “what will we need from the next government to achieve it?”. I worried, at first, that this might lead to an unrealistic utopian discussion but as we worked through the exercises some very clear ideas emerged. It was a really interesting and thought-provoking day.
Robin Simpson.
I was in Peterborough on Wednesday for a meeting of representatives of amateur theatre umbrella bodies to discuss the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival. At the end of October we are taking 100 representatives of voluntary arts umbrella bodies to Stratford-upon-Avon for a creative planning weekend where we will work with staff and actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company to plan the 2012 Festival. This is a fantastic opportunity for the voluntary arts sector to develop a model for working in collaboration with a major professional arts institution. Our meeting this Wednesday helped us to clarify our aims and ambitions for this project and enabled us to start developing some specific ideas about amateur involvement in this aspect of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Robin Simpson.
