Cultural Playing Field

On Wednesday afternoon I attended a meeting of the DCMS Voluntary and Community Sector Forum. With the departure of Alan Davey (to Arts Council England), the Forum has a new chair – Graham Turnock, Director or Programmes and DCMS Third Sector Champion. We heard a presentation on funding for youth culture and the interface between DCMS and the Department for Children, Schools and Families – focusing on the ‘Aiming High’, ‘Myplace’ and ‘Find Your Talent’ programmes. We also heard from Sarah Wilkie of the MLA about the ‘Community Libraries Programme’ and from Steve Mannix of LOCOG about the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Finally we discussed how to involve VCS organisations in the project board overseeing DCMS involvement in the new Government target PSA21 (communities).

On Wednesday Reemer and I were in London to meet James Stevens at DCMS who is responsible for overseeing the Government’s new ‘5 hours a week’ cultural offer to children (now disappointingly branded ‘Find Your Talent’). James was keen to reassure us that he saw voluntary arts groups as an important part of the cultural offer. ‘Find Your Talent’ is to be developed through 10 pilots over the next 3 years. Applications are invited by 7 April from partnerships wanting to run the pilots. James encouraged us to contact (and to invite voluntary arts umbrella bodies to contact) the ‘regional contact groups’ who are advising partnerships on their applications to stress the need for applications to consider the involvement of voluntary arts groups. He also said there would be opportunities for us to talk to the successful partnerships once the pilots are chosen to encourage them to build voluntary arts groups into their activities. It was great to be talking to DCMS about this at such an early stage in the process – and that they had invited us to see them. We were reassured by James that ‘Find Your Talent’ will provide a real opportunity to show children that the voluntary arts are an integral part of the wider cultural continuum and their local community. More details at: http://www.creative-partnerships.com/offer.