I was in London on Thursday for a meeting about AHRC research project ‘Amateur dramatics: crafting communities in time and space’ – the first academic study of amateur theatre in the UK. This project is being led by Professor Helen Nicholson (Royal Holloway, University of London) with Professor Nadine Holdsworth (University of Warwick) and Dr Jane Milling, (University of Exeter). I took part in the first advisory group meeting for this project in October 2013, so it was great this week, 18 months into the project, to hear details of the researchers’ interim findings. Helen said people from the amateur theatre scene have been overwhelmingly generous. The research team have been writing case studies about members of the Little Theatre Guild and the National Operatic and Dramatic Association. Nadine has been looking at how amateur theatre is archived and the ways in which the theatres themselves are archives. She spoke about the ‘hard economics’ of amateur theatre and the labour necessary to attract audiences, maintain turnover, keep buildings open, hire space and costumes and sell adverts in the programme. You can read the project’s interim report at: http://issuu.com/amateurdramaresearch/docs/amateur_theatre_report_1ef015e9eca65c/1
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, CLG, DCMS, health, politics, research, UK, vcs
On Wednesday I was in London to take part in the What Works Centre for Wellbeing panel meeting. We assessed applications made by research teams from across the country to run the four evidence programmes that will form the bulk of the work of the new What Works Centre. The What Works Centre for Wellbeing will be one of a number of What Works Centres which have been established to synthesise evidence to improve public and policy decisions. The Wellbeing Centre will build on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) national measurement programme. The Centre has initial funding of £4.3 million over three years. The Centre will comprise a central hub and four evidence synthesis programmes. The primary customers for the outputs of the Centre will be service commissioners, decision makers, practitioners and policymakers working both locally and nationally using evidence to ensure the best results for their localities. The four evidence programmes will look at wellbeing in relation to: work & learning; culture & sport; community; and cross-cutting themes. I was asked to assess applications for both the culture & sport and the community programmes. On Wednesday we agreed which applicants will now be called to interview. It was a really interesting day and it was great to have the chance to make the point that the Centre should be looking at wellbeing in relation to grassroots participation in creative, cultural activities.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, education, England, funding, politics, UK
- Ed Miliband speaking about the arts and culture at Battersea Arts Centre
On Monday evening I was at Battersea Arts Centre in South London to hear a speech about arts, culture and creativity by the leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband MP. This event was organised by the new Creative Industries Federation and the Federation’s Director, John Kampfner, introduced Ed Miliband, saying “[The arts] is our superpower. We need to nurture it through innovation, entrepreneurialism and joined up working. We need to do far better, as the Warwick Commission reported, in making the arts accessible to all and yes, we need a body politic that is proud to invest in what makes this country great.”
Ed Miliband started by saying: “I care about you and your success because I think the arts, culture and creativity define who we are as a nation, because you make an incredible contribution to our economic success and because I think government policy has to make a difference and help you succeed as an industry and a sector. And I’m conscious that by making a speech [about the arts] I’m venturing into relatively uncharted, not to say risky, territory.”
He said all of us will have our first memories of what moved us as children. Publicly funded art and culture is vital to our dynamism. Access to the arts and culture is not an optional extra, it is essential. He thought the findings of the Warwick Commission should worry us all.
Ed Miliband outlined three parts to Labour’s plan in relation to the arts and culture: increasing creativity in schools; improving access to culture; and encouraging people to work in the arts and creative industries. While it was wonderful to hear a party leader speaking so enthusiastically about the arts so close to a general election, I was disappointed that he did not say anything about the importance of participation in creative cultural activities – particularly as this was such a significant theme of the Warwick Commission report.
Ed Miliband said “I come with an offer, a different offer to put policy for the arts, culture and creativity at the heart of the next Labour Government mission. Of course we should keep the Department of Culture: it says something about our country that that should even be a question. But I want to go further. I don’t believe culture belongs just to one Department, because what you do matters across our whole society and we can only achieve the vision of a society that I believe in, based on equality and social justice, if we recognise the value of the arts and culture across every part of Government.”
He said he would make a permanent change to how the arts and culture are represented in Westminster, creating a Prime Minister’s Committee. There would be a focus on equality of access across the country and further devolution of resources. He spoke about the significance of the 50th anniversary of Jennie Lee’s 1965 White Paper on Wednesday and said “tonight I rededicate myself to making that mission our own” and we should “hold my feet to the fire over this”.
Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband
In the questions that followed the speech, Stella Duffy, Co-Director of Fun Palaces, asked Ed Miliband: “If we only look at funnelling people into education, into buildings and into institutions, we are forgetting those people in community who need our support around the arts and culture too.”
Ed Miliband replied: “Stella, where does that take you to in particular?” and Stella responded: “It takes us to Voluntary Arts, it takes us to 64 Million Artists, it takes us to Fun Palaces, it takes us to the Cultural Learning Alliance. There are hundreds of organisations, many of us quite small, quite new, who are looking at the arts in a completely different way. We are saying there are millions of people in the country who are scared to go into the buildings, even in the very beginning. They haven’t had it in schools for the past 5 years, they haven’t had what Jennie Lee promised, and what we are saying is we need to be asking those people in their communities. Stop flying in experts and as the community what they want.”
Ed Miliband said “I think it’s important what you’re saying but isn’t the key to this (and there are a lot of people in the room who would know more about this than me) what we said about education. The reason I talked a lot about education is it is so crucial, because if you don’t necessarily have it in your family background where else are you going to discover culture creativity and the arts?”
Stella replied: “Totally – I am that girl. I didn’t have it in my family either. But it’s also in community. Unfortunately we have an attitude of behaving as if the arts only belong in big buildings at the moment, and there are hundreds of thousands of arts centres that also need our support just now.”
Ed didn’t seem to fully understand the point Stella was making and spoke again about the importance of cultural education in schools.
David Jubb, Artistic Director of Battersea Arts Centre, summing up at the end of the evening, said: “Last Thursday the BBC and What Next launched the Get Creative campaign across the country, and to Stella’s point about how more people become involved in art and culture, if everyone in this room can go out and get involved in that Get Creative campaign, with your organization, your resources, that would be terrific.”
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: arts, England, Scotland, UK, volarts, Wales
On Monday afternoon I was in London to take part in a meeting of the Cultural Campaigning Network. This regular gathering of national organisations engaged in campaigning in relation to culture is always a fascinating and incredibly useful forum. On Monday we talked about the BBC Get Creative campaign, the Government’s consultation on lotteries, the Warwick Commission report, the UK general election, the 2016 elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and much more.
Robin Simpson.
Kinetica Bloco
On Thursday morning Peter and I were at Conway Hall in London for the launch of BBC Get Creative. Around 250 people, including journalists, leaders of a wide range of arts organisations, celebrities and amateur artists crammed into the hall for the main press launch of the twelve-month campaign. The event was opened by Kinetica Bloco – the fabulous samba band from Brixton who performed for us at the Amateo Conference in Cecil Sharp House in 2012.
BBC Director General, Tony Hall
The BBC Director General, Tony Hall, formally launched Get Creative, saying the campaign intended to “inspire everybody to make art, to do something creative”. Lord Hall said how pleased the BBC was to be working with a range of great partners, including Voluntary Arts. He said “we want to find out what art and creativity mean to everyone in the country”. David Lan and Deborah Bull spoke, on behalf of the What Next? movement and the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value, about the origins of Get Creative and how the idea of a campaign had been developed with BBC Arts. Deborah also explained that the Conway Hall event was just one of fourteen launch events happening across the UK on Thursday morning.
Alan Yentob and Johnny Vegas
After the formal speeches BBC Creative Director, Alan Yentob, interviewed the actor Timothy Spall about his personal involvement in visual art and the role that this had played in his education and career choices. Timothy Spall was passionate, inspiring and very funny. Alan Yentob then introduced the comedian Johnny Vegas who spoke about his passion for pottery and ceramics. He said “A creative idea is a chance to redecorate your soul”. A potter’s wheel was produced and Johnny Vegas accepted the challenge to make a functioning teapot in less than a minute. He said “I want people to look at this and say ‘I can do better than that’ and get off their backsides and go to a pottery night class. You can do better than me – that isn’t a big achievement in life. But if it inspires one of you then it’s worth it.” You can see whether he succeeded at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/DLyYlfzPtp20r1v9J2QDP4/johnny-vegas-60-second-teapot-challenge
The teapot
Finally, Deborah Bull invited everyone to take part in a range of creative activities led by amateur artists around the room (which had been organised for us by Daniel). These included handbell ringing with Tim Willets, feltmaking with Cathy Unwin, mosaic making with Tamara Froud, Indian dance with Sita Thomas, jewellery making with Fiona Eastmond and origami with Deborah Mason and Mark Bolitho from the British Origami Society. It was great to see how many people stayed and enthusiastically took part in these activities. I will long treasure the memory of watching TV presenters Lucy Worsley and Alex Jones together with the Director of BBC Arts Online, Peter Maniura, being led in an Indian dance session by Sita. Video footage of the Conway Hall launch event was shown on BBC London News on Thursday evening – this available (but only until 7 pm Friday evening) at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b052g6t3/bbc-london-news-19022015 (it starts at 21:10)
There are photos from the London launch event at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kc9qn/p02kc5rr
Meanwhile, across the UK Voluntary Arts staff were involved in running 11 of the other 13 Get Creative launch events. It was a phenomenal effort by the Voluntary Arts team which has reinforced our key role in BBC Get Creative. You can see a summary of all the launch events at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3Q81xs2ScgNDtt286qzfvSx/get-out-and-get-creative
In Scotland Jemma’s first piece for BBC Radio Scotland was broadcast on Thursday and you can hear it at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052mx86 (starts at 1:36). Jemma and Kelly will be guests on the Janice Forsyth show on BBC Radio Scotland on different days next week, along with the leaders of several voluntary arts groups and artform umbrella bodies.
Thursday was a great day for Voluntary Arts and I felt very proud to have been involved in our work on BBC Get Creative. I’m still reeling from everything that happened and trying to take it all in. For example, during the formal speeches at Conway Hall I noticed that, to my right, at a table at the side of the hall, a woman was busily engaged in some bead-making. This reminded me of the wonderful Craftivist Garden #wellmaking event at Toynbee Hall a few weeks ago when people were eagerly knitting throughout the speeches. I assumed this bead-maker was one of the amateur artists we had assembled for the launch event and I took a few photos of her engrossed in her craft activity while Timothy Spall was speaking on the stage. It was only on Thursday evening, when I was looking back through my photos at home, that I realised the enthusiastic bead-maker was Sandi Toksvig – it was one of those kind of days!
Sandi Toksvig
I was quoted on the BBC News website see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31531887
and in Arts Professional: http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/bbc-leads-campaign-get-creative
Full details of BBC Get Creative are at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/sections/get-creative and I would urge you to watch the wonderful promotional film at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/sections/get-creative
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, England, politics, volarts, Wales
On Monday afternoon I was at Portcullis House in Westminster to meet the Labour Shadow Culture Minister, Chris Bryant MP. In a wide-ranging conversation we talked about Our Cultural Commons, the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value, the BBC Get Creative campaign, the Arts Council England Creative People and Places scheme, the final GPS Culture report ‘A New Destination for the Arts’ and the DCMS Select Committee report on the work of Arts Council England. We discussed the policies of Arts Council England and the Arts Council of Wales in relation to participation and the voluntary arts. We also talked about the speech given by the Welsh Deputy Minister for Culture and Sport, Ken Skates AM, to the Arts Council of Wales conference last week. Chris spoke about the development of the Labour Party’s election manifesto and speeches on the arts to be given next week by Ed Miliband (on Monday 23rd February in London) and Chris himself (on Wednesday 25th February in Birmingham). Chris is also going to be addressing the All Party Parliamentary Group on crafts in the next few weeks. It was an interesting first meeting with the new Shadow Culture Minister. He understands the importance of the voluntary arts sector – and spoke about several examples of voluntary arts groups in his own constituency – but his focus is, naturally, on the forthcoming general election.
Robin Simpson.
The Crafts Council, Islington, London
On Thursday I was at the Crafts Council in London to meet Rosy Greenlees and Annie Warburton. We had an extensive conversation about the current work of the Crafts Council and Voluntary Arts and identified several areas for potential collaboration. We talked in detail about Our Cultural Commons. We also discussed ‘Our Future is in the Making: An Education Manifesto for Craft and Making’, which was launched at the House of Commons in in November 2014, see: http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/education-manifesto/. I was particularly interested to hear about the work the Crafts Council has been doing with the Polish community in Liverpool as part of a research programme looking at diverse practices of making across England. We also spoke about the Craft Clubs, established by the Crafts Council in 2009 in partnership with United Kingdom Hand Knitting Association and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, see: http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/craft-club/. There are around 800 Crafts Clubs still going and we discussed how to ensure they are are all aware of the Voluntary Arts online information services.
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 