Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, drama, England, funding, ncvo, vcs, volarts, volunteering
On Wednesday evening I attended the AGM of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). 2009 is NCVO’s 90th anniversary and Chief Executive, Stuart Etherington, spoke about the origins of the organisation and how it grew out of a number of regional ‘Guilds of Help’. NCVO now has more than 7,500 member organisations ranging from small community groups to the largest charities. The AGM was followed by the annual Hinton Lecture which, for the first time in its eleven-year history, had an arts theme. Sir John Tusa’s lecture was titled ‘The arts and the voluntary sector: friends or distant cousins?’. Sir John (currently Chair of the University of the Arts, the Clore Leadership Programme and the Wigmore Hall Trust) started by saying that, in a dozen years as Managing Director of The Barbican, he had not consciously been involved with the voluntary sector: it had not occurred to him that it could be useful, necessary or natural. He examined the differences in purposes, relationships, responsibilities, beneficiaries and funding between the arts and the voluntary sector but he also emphasised their commonalities and interdependence. Sir John said “the arts are critical to civil society: they are the conscience of society” and “a civil society uninterested in the arts isn’t much of a civil society”. He thought the voluntary sector was ahead of the arts in the area of assessment and gathering evidence of effectiveness and felt the case for arts funding might be stronger as presented in the wider context of the voluntary sector. Sir John’s conclusion was that the arts and the voluntary sector are “side by side but not yet firm friends”. I was very pleased to hear Sir John Tusa emphasise that the organisations funded by Arts Council England “are only a small part of the whole arts sector” and delighted to hear him quote, as an example, some statistics from the National Operatic and Dramatic Association (NODA). In the question and answer session at the end of the lecture I suggested that arts organisations have much to learn from the wider voluntary sector about best practice in relation to governance, Trustee Boards, volunteering etc. Sir John agreed that there would be substantial benefits to both the arts and the voluntary sector from a closer relationship – presenting a stronger argument for funding and a more powerful lobby on issues of common cause such as tax reform. It was really useful to have the high-profile opportunity created by the Hinton Lecture to discuss how we might encourage closer working between the arts and the rest of the voluntary sector – and to see so many arts organisations represented at an NCVO event.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday afternoon I was at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to talk about how we might encourage the use of church buildings for cultural activities. I met Jeremy Dann from DCMS and Rebecca Payne and Ruth Watkinson from the Church of England and we talked about promoting the use of churches to voluntary arts groups. I was interested to learn that churches can now declare themselves ‘partially redundant’ in order to be able to lease part of the building to a community group or other organisation. I was also keen to discuss how we might promote the best practice information and advice available from Voluntary Arts to churches who organise and promote their own arts activities.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday I was in London for a meeting with Clara Goldsmith, who is responsible for Arts Council England’s national arts engagement campaign, and Caroline Diehl, Chief Executive of The Media Trust. Clara updated us on progress with the campaign, which is due to be launched publicly in Spring 2010. We then looked in detail at the role The Media Trust might play by helping people to capture their own stories and documenting the various campaign activities around the country.
Robin Simpson.
This afternoon I have been at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for a meeting of what was the Learning Revolution Festival Action Group. Now that the October festival is finished this group is going to continue as a Learning Revolution stakeholder communications group to advise on the vision and direction of strategic Learning Revolution communications activity and to plan major communications activities, including an Expo or similar for 2010.
Robin Simpson.
This morning I was at the Gulbenkian Foundation in London to take part in ‘Steady State?’ – the first of a series of events hosted by Mission Models Money (MMM) and ERA21 to discuss whether further growth of the arts and cultural sector is sustainable. The event was chaired by Charlotte Jones, Chief Executive of the Independent Theatre Council, and I was joined on the panel by Maurice Davies from the Museums Association, Hilary Gresty from the Visual Arts and Galleries Association, Dave Moutrey from the Cornerhouse and Lyn Gardner from The Guardian. We were asked to talk about whether the arts and cultural sector is too ‘overbuilt’. Do we have too many buildings? Too many organisations? Does the next decade need a radically different approach in the light of the UK’s deficit, the global recession and the threat to our environment? Inevitably our discussion created more questions than answers but it was an interesting debate and really good to see the voluntary arts treated seriously as an integral part of the wider arts sector. There are two further ‘Steady State?’ events next week in Edinburgh (where Fiona Campbell from Voluntary Arts Scotland is going to be on the panel) and Newcastle (where I will be taking part again).
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DCMS, England, funding, heritage, ncvo, olympics, OTS, vcs, volarts
On Thursday I was in London for my regular meeting with Heritage Link and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. We were joined by Chris Atkins, Head of Lottery Distribution and Third Sector Policy at DCMS and had a wide ranging discussion about the voluntary cultural sectors. Among many other topics we discussed the progress of the sector coalition on Gift Aid, the Office of the Third Sector’s withdrawal of its Campaigning Fund and Heritage Link’s Cultural Olympiad project, ‘Discovering Places’, which has been awarded £1M from the Olympic Lottery Distributor.
Robin Simpson.
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.
Cultural Playing Field 