On Monday I spoke to Jane Bryant, the new Chief Executive of Artswork (which manages the England National Youth Arts Network). Jane has been in post for two and a half months, having previously worked for Southern Arts and Arts Council England South East and as Chief Executive of the Coda Music Trust. As the conductor of two choirs, she is very familiar with the voluntary arts. Artswork has been going for nearly 24 years. It runs a nationally available professional development programme (‘Artsplan’) for artists, arts organisations and youth practitioners using the arts to work with young people. ENYAN is a network of 5500 organisations and individuals including youth arts practitioners, youth practitioners, artists and arts organisations. It has 9 regional advisory panels and a national panel which includes representatives from Arts Award, CCE, ACE and the Youth Justice Board. We talked about how Artswork and Voluntary Arts might work more closely together to build progression routes for young people from youth arts to adult amateur arts groups and to build the capacity of the amateur arts sector to develop arts practice and arts opportunities with for and by young people.
Robin Simpson.
Before I left Cardiff on Tuesday I had a brief meeting with Making Music’s new Wales Development Manager, Craig Roberts. Craig is a brass band conductor and a long-time board member of Ty Cerdd (formerly the Welsh Amateur Music Federation). He is keen to work closely with Voluntary Arts Wales and we discussed a number of ways in which we might work together.
Robin Simpson.
I was in Cardiff on Tuesday to meet Nick Beasley, Chief Executive of Audiences Wales. We discussed a variety of ways in which we might be able to work together: to help voluntary arts organisations develop their audiences; to provide support with the business of running a voluntary arts group; and to increase arts participation. We talked about the two highly successful audience development training sessions that took place in the summer, jointly run by Voluntary Arts Wales and Audiences Wales, and agreed that we would develop a series of similar events across Wales next year.
Robin Simpson.
On Monday I was at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) in London to meet Véronique Jochum, NCVO Research Manager and Tom Andrews, Chief Executive of People United, to discuss the session on ‘Participation, the arts and social change’ that we are preparing for the NCVO Annual Conference 2011 at The Brewery in London on Tuesday 1 March. This session will explore how the arts can be a catalyst for wider community engagement drawing in people who may otherwise not engage, which is particularly relevant in the context of the Big Society. It will also look at how the arts can contribute to social change and help address complex social problems creatively. Speakers will share perspectives and reflect on their experience by looking at exemplar projects that illustrate the potential of the arts within civil society and beyond. It is aimed at any organisation interested in thinking about how the arts could help them be more inclusive and innovative. Tom and I will be joined by Sam McLean, Director of Public Participation at the RSA and the session will be chaired by Tim Joss, Director of the Rayne Foundation. More details at: http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/annualconference2011
Robin Simpson.
I was in Sheffield on Friday to chair a meeting of the steering group for the Community Media Association’s Arts Project. We reflected on the second of our regional roadshows to bring together arts organisations and community media groups which took place in Sunderland earlier this week and looked at the plans for the remaining seven events. We also heard about the four winners of the ‘Connect’ exemplar collaborations between community media organisations and arts organisations.
Robin Simpson.
Later on Monday I took part in a workshop at McKinsey & Company to help Lizzie Noel, the Mayor of London’s Advisor on Volunteering to develop a volunteering strategy for London. In particular we were looking at ways to expand opportunities for young people to become involved in arts and culture.
Robin Simpson.
On Monday I was in London to meet Tabitha Allum and Lissy Lovett at Stagetext. Stagetext promotes captioning and subtitling in entertainment, educational, training and cultural venues to increase accessibility for people with a hearing loss. We discussed the possibility of training people within voluntary arts groups to provide live captioning of their performances and agreed to look at developing a few pilot projects.
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 