On Wednesday afternoon I attended the final meeting of the ‘Modernising Structures Action Group’ – one of six action groups established to follow-up the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. This group, chaired by Stephen Dunmore (former Chief Executive of the Big Lottery Fund) has been looking at ways of strengthening and supporting the volunteering infrastructure in England. We heard a presentation from Martin Simon, Executive Director of Time Banks UK, about ‘timebanking’ and the role that Volunteer Centres might play in relation to Time Banks. We also considered an analysis of the roles of ‘Volunteer Champions’ undertaken by The Red Foundation as part of the National Support Service Modernising Volunteering stream. See: http://www.volcomm.org.uk/
On Tuesday I was in London for my regular meeting with Louise de Winter at the National Campaign for the Arts. We discussed in detail the draft NCA Arts Manifesto for the next General Election and I suggested a number of small amendments and additions. It was interesting to compare the new NCA Manifesto with its predecessor from 2004/05: I like the new approach which is more focussed on what the arts can do and why they are important and makes a small number of general demands of government rather than a lengthy and very specific shopping list. I was pleased to see the voluntary arts no longer dealt with in a separate section but fully integrated throughout the manifesto (starting with a mention in the second sentence of the introduction!).
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I was in London to attend the first meeting of the new NCVO Members’ Assembly. NCVO’s recent governance review reduced the size of its Board of Trustees but created the Assembly as a way of retaining the representative voices of all parts of the NCVO membership. The Assembly comprises about 50 people representing geographical regions and thematic electoral colleges: I am one of two representatives of ‘recreation and culture’. All of which sounds fairly formal and stuffy, but there was a determination to make the bi-annual Assembly meetings as informal and creative as possible. Wednesday’s meeting used ‘Open Space’ techniques to allow Assembly members to dictate the agenda and it worked really well. There was a massive noise level in the room throughout the day as people got stuck in to hundreds of intense conversations. Every single person made a substantial contribution to the debates – which is not something you can say very often about a meeting of 50 people! – and the closing comments indicated a high level of enjoyment, enthusiasm and inspiration. I worry a little that this may have created very high expectations – both for the next meeting and for how the NCVO Board uses the ideas and opinions that came out of the Assembly: this is now a key challenge for NCVO. As part of our exploration of the future of civil society, I led a discussion on ‘the conundrum of infrastructure’ (which I still think sounds like an Indiana Jones film!). The key message generated by this discussion was the danger of infrastructure organisations getting too distant from their members and beginning to exist for their own sake. Infrastructure organisations should be less focused on perpetuating themselves and concentrate on enabling their members to do what they do better: we may need to work harder to stay rooted with our members. This might usefully be applied to all infrastructure organisations, including NCVO itself.
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 