I was in Blackpool on Thursday to meet the Blackpool and Wyre Creative People and Places consortium. The consortium, which includes Blackpool Coastal Housing, Blackpool Council, Wyre Borough Council, the Grand Theatre and Merlin Entertainments Limited (owners of Blackpool Tower), secured £3M from Arts Council England to develop engagement in the arts in the area over 3 years. The programme, titled ‘Playground of Wonders’, will use Blackpool’s unique cultural history and facilities to look at the links between ‘entertainment’ and ‘the arts’. There are 3 strands to the programme: ‘Roll up, roll up’ – working with communities to understand their aspirations; ‘Scream if you want to go faster’ – developing local decision-making and building the local arts infrastructure; and ‘Daring Delights’ – a series of arts activities and events. There is already a strong voluntary arts sector in Wyre and an emerging voluntary arts sector in Blackpool and plans are in place to involve local amateur arts groups in the programme. My visit to Blackpool completed my meetings with all 7 consortia granted funding in round one of Creative People and Places. Without exception I have found the consortium members across the country enthusiastic, determined and creative, with a good understanding of the importance of involving existing amateur arts groups in their programmes but an appreciation of the difficulties of doing so. I have great confidence that they will deliver impressive results over the next few years and I look forward to working with them all.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday morning I was at the British Museum in London to hear the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Maria Miller, speaking on ‘Testing Times – Fighting culture’s corner in an age of austerity’. The Secretary of State said “arts and culture underpin what it means to be British … culture is able to deliver things that few other sectors can … it cultivates the creativity that underpins the wider economy”. I was pleased to hear Maria Miller say that culture “develops a sense of community” and that “culture is an intricate web of activity”. She said “it is essential that the Government invests in culture and continues to do so despite these testing times”. She also stressed that the Government is committed to a mixed economy in the arts and that no-one considers philanthropy is a panacea. Her overall message was that “we should value the arts for their own sake and make the broader case”. She finished by saying “I’ll position the arts central to economic growth”. You can read the full text of Maria Miller’s speech at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/testing-times-fighting-cultures-corner-in-an-age-of-austerity and a sceptical response from our old friend Catherine Rose at: http://ladyeffingham.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/proving-our-worth-yet-again/.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday Daniel and I were in Rhyl in North Wales to interview Tim Day, Director of Volunteering and Policy at the Wales Council for Voluntary Action for Running Your Group LIVE. Our discussion about Volunteering in the Arts looked at a wide range of issues faced by small, local, voluntary arts groups trying to recruit and manage volunteers. When most voluntary arts groups are first set up they tend to be run by a small group of friends and acquaintances: Tim talked about how groups could take the next step and look outside of their circle for volunteers with specialist skills. He discussed the importance (and the difficulty) of turning potential volunteers away if their skills don’t match what is required. Tim also looked at the emerging new forms of volunteering, such as micro-volunteering and remote volunteering. It was a really interesting interview – one of the best Running Your Group LIVE online events we have done. You can watch the recording at http://www.runningyourgroup.org (login and click on ‘Live online events’). Many thanks to everyone who joined in the live online discussion on Monday and contributed questions for Tim.
Robin Simpson.
On Monday I met Adam Lopardo at the Community Foundation, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, in Newcastle. The Community Foundation helps organisations and individuals to “manage their giving”, matching donors and funders with hundreds of community groups across the North East of England. Adam runs the Sponsors’ Club – a group of North East businesses established 22 years ago to collectively sponsor arts organisations in the region. We talked about how we might use the Community Foundation’s connections with arts organisations and other community groups to promote our Running Your Group online subscription services.
Robin Simpson.
I was in London on Friday to attend the Third Sector Research Centre Conference at the British Library. TSRC was created in 2008 with funding from the Office for the Third Sector, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. It is now in the final year of its current funding and this conference was titled “What is the future for the third sector?” TSRC Director, Pete Alcock, suggested we needed to consider three questions: is this the worst of times?; is it no longer a ‘voluntary’ sector?; and is there a need for a strategic lead for the third sector? Dan Corry, Chief Executive of New Philanthropy Capital looked at how the third sector has changed since 2008, where it is going and why we need research on all this. He discussed ‘adjustment strategies’ (collaboration, mergers, closures, consortia, co-design and co-production) and wondered whether we were witnessing a ‘hollowing out’ of the middle of the sector. I took part in a workshop on ‘Organisations’ led by Rob Macmillan from TSRC and Karl Wilding from NCVO. Karl suggested that the new generation are ‘sector agnostic’ – they don’t care how they do social change, they just want to do it. Maybe traditional organisational structures are becoming less important. We discussed the danger of organisations focussing on perpetuating their own existence. It was an interesting and thought-provoking discussion with a group including academics, funders and representatives of third sector organisations.
Robin Simpson.
Also on Wednesday I had a meeting with Anne Torreggiani, Executive Director of The Audience Agency. The Audience Agency is the new national audience development agency for England, formed through the merger of Audiences London and All About Audiences (based in Manchester). As well as providing general advice and information on audience development to organisations across England, The Audience Agency is also delivering two major projects, commissioned by Arts Council England under its Audience Focus Fund – Understanding Audiences and Best Practice (the latter in partnership with the Arts Marketing Association). Audience Focus aims to create a single framework for collecting, understanding and using audience information across the arts sector in England. We talked about how amateur arts groups might get involved in this programme and how the data collected could be most helpful to them. We also discussed the possibility of sharing information and advice with our Running Your Group online information services and possible collaboration between the Audience Agency’s community engagement team and our Up for Arts projects.
Robin Simpson
On Wednesday morning I was at the Young Vic in London for the What Next? meeting. Following my presentation to a What Next? meeting in March I had been invited back (“by popular demand!”) for a longer conversation about the amateur arts. This week we discussed the need to look at the whole cultural ‘ecosystem’ – including the amateur arts and the commercial arts – in order to make a stronger and more coherent argument for the value of culture. We considered the idea of developing local What Next? groups around the country to bring together a wide range of arts and cultural organisations – including amateur groups – to develop the conversation further. It was interesting and encouraging to see some of the most prominent arts institutions, including the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, the Roundhouse and the Young Vic, talking about the importance of the amateur arts and their need to connect better with the amateur sector. I have now been invited to speak about this at the What Next? conference in London on 29 April.
Robin Simpson.
I was at Creative Scotland in Edinburgh on Tuesday for a Luminate Festival Strategy Group meeting. Luminate is Scotland’s annual creative ageing festival, supported by Creative Scotland, the Baring Foundation and Age Scotland. Festival Director Anne Gallacher updated us on decisions about commissions for the 2013 festival. We also discussed the future governance model for the Luminate Festival and considered the external evaluation of the 2012 festival.
Robin Simpson.
On Thursday 21 March I was at the Southbank Centre in London for a reception to launch the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s new Cultural Value Project. The project seeks to establish a framework that will advance the ways in which we define and think about the value of cultural engagement as well as the methods by which we evaluate it. Professor Rick Rylance, the Chief Executive of AHRC, said “while we might feel we instinctively understand the value of culture and its importance to our lives, defining and expressing that value is surprisingly difficult, let alone the challenge of persuading others of its importance. But it is vital for us all, and for the future, that we do.” Each of the speakers at the reception, who also included the Universities Minister David Willetts, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre Jude Kelly and the Director of the Cultural Value Project Professor Geoffrey Crossick, made it clear that this project is about helping to make the case to Government (and particularly to the Treasury) about why culture needs public support and how we can measure how much support is appropriate. David Willetts made a comparison with work undertaken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to assess the value of a meadow: everyone would agree that meadows are valuable and to be encouraged but Government had to find a way of measuring how much support it should allocate to developing and protecting meadows. Something similar needs to be done for culture. David Willetts emphasised this should not be about reducing cultural activity merely to its economic value – “not economic measures but measures that would be understood by economists”. The Cultural Value Project will fund awards to researchers in higher education institutions and approved independent research organisations. The deadline for applications to the first funding call is next week but further calls for proposals will follow.
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 