On Thursday I was at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London to attend ‘Because we’re worth it!’ – a national summit exploring and celebrating the value of participatory arts. The event was organised by Connected Culture and Mailout. Connected Culture is a network dedicated to adult participatory arts and Mailout is the national online resource for participatory arts. Welcoming us to the ICA, Arti Prashar of Spare Tyre and Rob Howell from Mailout said they had been overwhelmed by the positive response to the summit: they said they could have sold it out twice over and there was clearly a massive interest in participatory/community arts. Rob Howell said that Mailout has calculated that only 7.5% of Arts Council England’s core funding goes to participatory arts: he challenged the sector to work to increase this to 15% by the next round of ACE National Portfolio Organisation funding. Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, delivered the keynote ‘thought for the day’, suggesting that the arts sector “had it pretty good” under New Labour but he didn’t think the sector as a whole had exploited the opportunities as much as it should have. Too many arts organisations are too dependent on arts grant funding. Matthew Taylor asked us whether we could make a new case for the arts. He said “the arts sector should not be afraid of instrumentalism but it should be our instrumentalism” and he felt this “would lead to a shift in arts funding towards participation”. But he warned that we need to be able to distinguish between good and bad practice: “the Achilles heel of the arts is that we are all too polite to each other”. During the questions and answers at the end of the opening plenary session, Matthew Taylor used a sporting analogy, talking about his son’s involvement in football and cross-country running. When you take part in amateur football you never encounter a professional: the professional and amateur football worlds are very far apart, with most of the money heading towards the elite professional end of the spectrum. But in cross country running the beginner can find himself competing alongside someone who runs for the national team. And, even if you finish 15 minutes behind that international athlete, you all sit down together and have a cup of tea afterwards. Matthew Taylor asked us whether the arts is more like football or cross country running. He pointed to the answer by referring to a session he chaired in the ACE/RSA State of the Arts Conference in 2011 when John Hope-Hawkins from the Society for All Artists – a national voluntary arts umbrella body – spoke about the work the SAA’s amateur members were doing in old people’s homes to encourage people to paint. No-one at that massive arts industry conference seemed to take any interest.
Robin Simpson.
I was at NCVO in London on Wednesday where Jenny Phillimore from the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham and I presented a research seminar on amateur arts and civil society. We discussed the results of our AHRC Connected Communities research project into The Impact of Grassroots Arts Activities on Communities with a group of representatives of third sector and arts organisations. Jenny described the three levels and seven areas of impact identified by our study and said how struck she had been, in particular, by the emphasis that had emerged on the importance of beauty, fun and laughter. It was an interesting discussion which reinforced the need for further research in this area.
Robin Simpson.
I was at the Senedd in Cardiff on Thursday afternoon to give evidence to the Welsh Assembly Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee’s inquiry into participation in the arts. The inquiry was launched to look at whether budget cuts in the arts sector may be having a negative effect on participation in the arts among some groups of people. You don’t get the chance to say much in these sessions: I was one of three witnesses in a 30 minute slot. It was good to be alongside Maggie Hampton from Disability Arts Cymru and Leanne Rahman from the Black Voluntary Sector Network – together we were able to stress the need for funding, support and collaboration to encourage disabled people and BME communities to participate in the arts. I said I felt questions about the relationship between the Welsh Government and the Arts Council (the arm’s length principle) and whether we need greater scrutiny of the Arts Council were red herrings in relation to how we address gaps in arts participation. Most participation happens through organisations that are not funded by ACW. I made the point that the amateur arts is largely self-sufficient and sustainable and the overall levels of participation were almost the same in 2010 as they were 10 years before (according to the ACW Omnibus Survey). You could get rid of the Arts Council and not affect the overall levels of participation. But the effect of cuts in arts funding is to further disenfranchise those parts of the population who tend not to participate in the arts and need support and encouragement to do so. So arts participation as a whole always survives funding cuts but is likely to become less diverse and favour people from more affluent, cohesive communities. Finally I stressed the need for a more radical approach to raising the levels (and diversity) of arts participation by developing collaboration and links between professional participatory/community arts and the amateur/voluntary arts sector.
Robin Simpson.
I was at the National Theatre in London on Tuesday to take part in the World Shakespeare Festival partners’ meeting. This event, chaired by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Director of Communications, Liz Thompson, brought together marketing and communications officers from organisations including the National Theatre, Barbican, Sage Gateshead, Royal Opera House, British Museum, National Theatre Wales, Birmingham Rep, Northern Stage, Shakespeare’s Globe and Brighton Festival. Our Open Stages project and the way amateur theatre groups are getting involved in the World Shakespeare Festival got prominent attention (it was the first item we discussed!). Ian Wainwright from the RSC outlined the progress of Open Stages and representatives of three of the Open Stages partner theatres (Contact in Manchester, Questors in London and the National Theatre of Scotland) described the plans for their forthcoming Open Stages showcase events. It was also fascinating to hear about the multitude of other World Shakespeare Festival productions in preparation across the UK – from Simon Russell-Beale in ‘Timon of Athens’ at the National Theatre to ‘Forests’, a new work based around the forest and heath scenes from a variety of Shakespeare plays which is being directed by Calixto Bieito at Birmingham Rep, to a new Welsh language translation of ‘The Tempest’ by Gwyneth Lewis which will be performed at the National Eistedfodd. There is so much going on within the World Shakespeare Festival it is very difficult to grasp all the details. But that is nothing compared to the mass of events under the wider Festival 2012 banner: we had a presentation from Claire Hutchinson from LOCOG, Head of Marketing for Festival 2012, which was mind boggling in terms of the scale and variety of activity due to take place around the country over the coming months. The World Shakespeare Festival starts on 23 April (Shakespeare’s birthday), full details at: http://www.worldshakespearefestival.org.uk/
Robin Simpson.
On Thursday I was at the Arts Council of Wales in Cardiff to interview ACW Chief Executive Nick Capaldi in our first Running Your Group LIVE online event. The Arts Council of Wales is supporting the development of our Running Your Group online services in Wales and part of our agreement with ACW is a commitment to a number of online events with a Wales focus. This first interview also gave us an opportunity to test the technology and practice how these online events will work. Daniel and I arrived an hour before we were due to go live – but only managed to get a working internet connection with about five minutes to spare! Nonetheless we started webcasting on schedule at 2 pm and a small number of people from all corners of the UK joined us to watch the live video stream and contribute to the text chat. We had some problems with the sound – most people could see the video quite clearly but had great difficulty hearing us: we may need to invest in a better microphone. But apart from that the system worked and we were able to receive questions and comments from subscribers while we were webcasting. Nick Capaldi was a very easy person to interview – extremely eloquent, thoughtful and interesting – and very kind with some of my less than perfectly framed questions. Our discussion covered the issue of quality in relation to the amateur arts, the role of umbrella bodies, the Arts Council of Wales Investment Review and the National Assembly for Wales Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee inquiry into Participation in the Arts. Nick said some very supportive things about the amateur arts and Voluntary Arts Wales but I think I managed to push him on a few key points rather than giving him too easy a ride. You will be able to judge for yourselves as the full, unedited interview will shortly be available to watch again on the Running Your Group online events page (with enhanced audio!). We also plan to make the interview available as an audio mp3 file so you can listen to it on your ipod or mp3 player and we will be issuing a short video with some highlights from the interview on YouTube. Watch out for more Running Your Group LIVE online events soon.
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 