On Thursday afternoon I met Keith Merrin from the South East Northumberland Creative People and Places consortium. We talked about the challenge of mapping existing amateur arts organisations and how to measure the impact of the Creative People and Places programme on the amateur arts sector. We also discussed the potential use of the Up for Arts model and brand within Creative People and Places.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday I was at The Point in Doncaster for a meeting with the Doncaster Creative People and Places consortium. Doncaster Voluntary Arts Network is one of the three core members of the consortium so there is already a strong degree of involvement of local amateur arts groups in the ‘Right Up Our Street’ programme. We talked about how to persuade other amateur groups to respond to the challenge to increase engagement in the arts in Doncaster over the next three years.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: webcast | Tags: excellence, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, training, UK, volarts, Wales
On Monday I hosted Running Your Group Weekly which featured two Epic Award winners – Liz Stone from the Welsh Basket Makers South Wales Group who joined Daniel in our Cardiff office and Sarah MacLean from Barra Bunting who spoke to us live from Barra. It was great to hear more about the stories of these amazing projects and to learn how Liz and Sarah first got involved in their craft activities. Both were also able to show us some examples of the willow weaving and bunting created by their award-winning projects. You can watch our discussions at http://www.voluntaryarts.org/running-your-group/running-your-group-weekly/ and please join us there next Monday at 5 pm for another Running Your Group Weekly video webcast.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, excellence, funding, Scotland, volarts
On Tuesday I was in Edinburgh for a meeting of the Luminate Festival Strategy Group at Creative Scotland. The second Luminate Festival (Scotland’s creative ageing festival) will take place in October 2013. On Tuesday we looked at the evaluation of the inaugural festival undertaken by BOP Consulting, considered recommendations on the future governance structure for the festival from Arts & Business Scotland, and discussed the latest plans for the 2013 festival. See: http://www.luminatescotland.org/
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: webcast | Tags: England, excellence, olympics, training, UK, volarts
On Monday I hosted Running Your Group Weekly. Kevin and I were joined by Irene Heathcote from Quilts 4 London – the winners of the 2013 England Epic Award. Irene told us how a simple idea to make gifts for the athletes at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games developed into a massive project that involved thousands of people across the UK (and Australia!) with Irene’s postman making four deliveries a day as the pennants rolled in. You can watch our conversation with Irene at http://www.voluntaryarts.org/running-your-group/running-your-group-weekly/ and please join us there next Monday at 5 pm for another Running Your Group Weekly video webcast.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, England, politics, research, Scotland, volarts
I was in London on Tuesday to meet Catherine Bunting for an update on the Understanding Everyday Participation research project. We talked about how the lack of progress against the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s public service agreement (PSA) target to raise the levels of participation in the arts had inspired the development of the Participation Manifesto (a partnership between Voluntary Arts, the National Campaign for the Arts, the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers and others), the creation of the original Up for Arts project in 2007 and the commissioning of the Our Creative Talent research in 2008. We looked at how these three initiatives had eventually led to the development of Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme and how the Up for Arts project model developed by Voluntary Arts might contribute both to Creative People and Places and to the Understanding Everyday Participation project.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: webcast | Tags: excellence, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, training, UK, volarts
On Monday I hosted Running Your Group Weekly. Daniel, Kevin and I were joined by Niall Bogue from Project St Patrick in Fermanagh – the winners of the 2013 Ireland Epic Award and the Peer Award for Excellence. Niall told us about the casual conversation over a few drinks which led to the development of a new kind of St Patrick’s Day Parade involving 500 participants and an audience of 14,000 people. He explained how this massive undertaking is still managed by a committee of nine volunteers and described their eclectic approach to making the St Patrick’s Day celebrations a truly cross-community event. You can watch our conversation with Niall at http://www.voluntaryarts.org/running-your-group/running-your-group-weekly/ and please join us there next Monday at 5 pm for another Running Your Group Weekly video webcast.
Robin Simpson.
On Friday I was in Rochester to meet the Swale and Medway Creative People and Places consortium. I think this is the largest of the seven consortia funded by Arts Council England in the first round of Creative People and Places. The core consortium consists mostly of small, grassroots organisations and there is already a clear focus on the role of local amateur arts groups within the planned three-year programme. We had an exciting initial conversation about how to challenge, motivate and involve amateur arts groups.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: excellence, politics, Republic of Ireland, UK, volarts
I was in Derry on Thursday for the Epic Awards 2013 Winners’ Reception: it was a wonderful occasion.
Before the Epic Awards activities got started, Kevin, Stephen, Marilyn and I had lunch with politicians from the Northern Ireland Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure Committee, which had been holding its meeting in Derry. The Chair and one other member of the Committee then came to the evening Epic Awards reception.
- Flower arranging at Verbal Arts Centre
Throughout the afternoon the Verbal Arts Centre was full of local voluntary arts groups demonstrating their activities and allowing members of the public to try their hand at a variety of arts and crafts. The atmosphere was lovely and the building was packed – with a TV crew squeezing past participants to get the best shots. During the afternoon we learned that the Epic Awards Winners’ Reception had just been mentioned on BBC Radio 2.
The evening reception started with performances from the City of Derry Guitar Festival and the Taiko Drumming Circle. We then commenced the presentations, with the winning groups receiving their prizes from the Mayor of Derry, a Government Minister (Jonathan Bell from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister) and Voluntary Arts Chair, Peter Stark. As in previous years, the acceptance speeches by the representatives of the four Epic Award winning groups were passionate and inspiring. A packed audience was charmed and astounded by the stories of what had been achieved by voluntary arts groups across the UK and Ireland.
Taiko Drumming Circle
At the end of the evening we announced that our new Peer Award for Excellence (for which all the shortlisted groups were asked to nominate each other) had been won by the Ireland Epic Award winners, the Fermanagh St Patrick’s Day Parade. This news brought the house down – with the Fermanagh group genuinely thrilled. Theirs is an amazing story – of reinventing the idea of a St Patrick’s Day parade as a cross-community, non-sectarian carnival which last year attracted 14,000 people.
Details of all the Epic Award winners (and photos of the award presentations) are at http://blog.epicawards.co.uk/2013/02/winners-receive-awards-and-accolades-at-one-epic-party/ – many congratulations to them all. And many thanks to everyone across Voluntary Arts who helped to make the 2013 Epic Awards so successful.
Robin Simpson.
Monday saw the publication of the National Assembly for Wales Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee Task and Finish Group report on ‘Participation in the Arts’.
The report recommends that “the Welsh Government should put in place a participation action plan, to sit alongside its accessibility action plan, with the purpose of increasing participation levels across Wales” and that “the action plan should include measures to ensure co-ordination across government departments and joint working by partners, including local government and the voluntary sector”.
The report refers in detail to the evidence given by Voluntary Arts Wales to the Participation in the Arts enquiry and says “We welcome the way that ACW‟s strategy includes support for network organisations such as Disability Arts Cymru, the Black Voluntary Sector Network Wales and Voluntary Arts Wales. We feel that, in terms of increasing levels of participation, these networks can play a central role. Therefore, these networks should be consulted in the drawing up of the participation action plan and should play a role in ensuring that it is implemented.”
It was also great to see constructive comments about the voluntary arts in many of the responses to the enquiry. For example “Cwmni’r Frân Wen and Gwent Theatre indicated that more collaboration between the voluntary arts sector and the professional arts sector would be beneficial to the voluntary arts.”
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 