On Tuesday afternoon I spoke at the Community Learning Trusts Workshop at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The 15 pilot Community Learning Trusts have been in operation across England since August 2012. They have been tasked with: creating local infrastructure with real identity; testing new partnership and collaborative models; growing and diversifying provision, participation and providers; generating additional resources for Community Learning; developing approaches to community consultation; and developing approaches to widening the provider base. On Tuesday I was part of a panel session on exploring other funding streams. Joining me on the panel was Leesa Herbert from NCVO (who spoke about the excellent Funding Central website: www.fundingcentral.org.uk), as well as representatives of the Big Lottery Fund and the Campaign for Learning. I took the opportunity to promote our Running Your Group online subscription services – both for the Community Learning Trusts themselves and the self-organised learning groups they support.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, funding, politics, volarts
I was in London on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Community Learning Stakeholder Reference Group at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. When the Government published ‘New Challenges New Chances: Further Education and Skills System Reform Plan: Building a World Class Skills System’ in December 2011 it made it clear that its funding for Community Learning in England will be focussed on the most disadvantaged people, that local communities would be involved in defining need in relation to Community Learning and that the effect of public investment in Community Learning must be maximised by attracting additional income from other sources. ‘New Challenges New Chances’ also proposed establishing new Community Learning Trusts. 15 pilot Community Learning Trusts have been in operation since August 2012. These Community Learning Trusts have been tasked with: creating local infrastructure with real identity; testing new partnership and collaborative models; growing and diversifying provision, participation and providers; generating additional resources for Community Learning; developing approaches to community consultation; and developing approaches to widening the provider base. The Community Learning Stakeholder Reference Group will meet throughout 2013 to assess the progress of the pilot Community Learning Trusts. At Tuesday’s meeting I was pleased to see the continuing emphasis on the importance of self-organised learning groups and the need to support such groups – including local voluntary arts organisations.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, politics, research, volarts
On Friday I have been at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in London to take part in a stakeholder workshop to introduce and discuss a new BIS-funded Informal Adult and Community Learning (IACL) Learner Survey, commissioned as part of the current IACL review. The IACL Learner Survey will be a telephone survey of 4,000 learners to explore their routes into learning, their motivations for learning and the impacts they experience as a result of learning. In particular it will aim to capture the impact of IACL learning in relation to the objectives set out in the Government’s New Challenges, New Chances publication. BIS has commissioned the social research agency TNS-BMRB to carry out the research. In Friday’s workshop we looked in detail at the areas the telephone questionnaire will cover. We were also given details of separate BIS-commissioned research into Adult Learning and Wellbeing.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, funding, politics, volarts
On Thursday I was at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in London to take part in a meeting of the Informal Adult and Community Learning Stakeholder Reference Group. On 1 December the Government published ‘New Challenges, New Chances’ – a Further Education and Skills System Reform Plan. This plan includes a brief reference to community learning, promising that “BIS funding will continue to support a universal community learning offer, with a wide range of learning opportunities available to all adults in England”. Specifically it says “in the 2012/13 academic year we will pilot different locally-based ‘community learning trust’ models to channel Adult Safeguarded Learning funding and lead the planning of local provision in cities, towns and rural settings”. A prospectus for these ‘community learning trusts’ is due to be launched in Spring 2012 and our meeting was the first opportunity for the Department to hear the views of a variety of stakeholders about how this new system might best work. I suggested that the ‘community learning trusts’ will need to involve self-organised learning groups such as voluntary arts organisations to help to link together the various aspects of informal adult and community learning, rather than just concentrating on learning providers that receive direct Government funding.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday I was at the British Library in London to speak at the NIACE Adult Learner’s Week Policy Conference, ‘Culture, Community and Inspiration in Informal Adult Learning’. The conference saw the launch of ‘Tough times for adult learners’ – the NIACE Survey on Adult Participation in Learning 2011 – which concludes that there has been quite a dramatic drop in the last five year period in the numbers of over 19s taking part in LSC-funded learning. I spoke, as part of a panel session, about the vast numbers of people engaged in informal learning through voluntary arts groups. Mary Lowe and Helen Jones from Voluntary Arts England ran a ‘learning zone’ within the conference, focussing on VAE’s work on arts participation and health and wellbeing. It was an interesting and thought-provoking day.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, funding, OTS, politics, vcs, volarts
I was back in London on Friday for a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) roundtable consultation about The Big Society as part of the programme to reform and refresh informal adult and community learning (IACL). This was the second of a series of roundtable events. We looked in detail at how BIS-funded IACL provision currently supports the development of the Big Society vision and what more BIS-funded IACL could do to help build a Big Society. We also talked about how self-organised groups, including the tens of thousands of voluntary arts groups, could support the Big Society. I was interested to hear that the new Cabinet Office definition of Big Society now includes 5 ‘themes’: 1. empowering communities, 2. encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society, 3. transferring power from central Government, 4. supporting co-operatives, mutuals, charities and social enterprises and 5. publishing Government data.
Robin Simpson.
On Wednesday morning I was at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in London to meet Stuart Edwards. Stuart is Deputy Director of the Quality Improvement Division at BIS and is responsible for the Department’s informal adult and community learning reforms which will consider how the £210m Adult Safeguarded Learning budget can best deliver the vision set out in the Government’s Skills for Sustainable Growth white paper. They will also look more broadly at how to create the conditions that will promote and support the vision for informal adult an community learning set out in Skills for Sustainable Growth. Stuart and I talked about the important contribution of the voluntary arts sector to informal adult and community learning and discussed how the contribution voluntary arts groups might make to joining up informal adult learning within communities.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: DIUS, education, England, politics, volarts
On Friday afternoon I took part in the second meeting of the Informal Adult and Community Learning Reform Stakeholder Reference Group at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The focus of this meeting was to plan a series of ‘policy roundtable’ consultation events which will take place over the next few weeks. These events will look in detail at specific aspects of informal adult and community learning, including: funding, infrastructure, access, Big Society, impact, progression and quality.
Robin Simpson.
On Tuesday afternoon I was at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to take part in the first meeting of the new Informal Adult and Community Learning Reform Stakeholder Advisory Group (catchy title?!). This group, which includes representatives of a wide variety of types of informal adult learning, is to advise the Minister, John Hayes, on how best to encourage learning to take place in local communities and to reach disadvantaged people. In the Comprehensive Spending Review last October, John Hayes and Vince Cable successfully defended the existing £210M budget for informal adult and community learning (known as the ‘adult safeguarded budget’). With the replacement of the Learning & Skills Council by the new Skills Funding Agency, changes to local adult education provision and the publication of the Government white paper, ‘Skills for Sustainable Growth’, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is about to embark on a consultation process to decide the best way to use the adult safeguarded budget. In Tuesday’s meeting we started to plan a series of roundtable consultation meetings that will take place in February and March. John Hayes joined us towards the end of the afternoon to thank us for our work and reiterate his passionate belief in the importance of informal adult and community learning.
Robin Simpson.
Filed under: meetings | Tags: ace, arts, DCMS, DIUS, England, excellence, politics, volarts
On Monday evening I was in the Attlee Room at the House of Lords for the Voluntary Arts England Epic Awards winners’ reception where the awards were presented by two Government Ministers, John Hayes MP, the Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, and Ed Vaizey MP, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries. The Epic Awards were devised by Mary Lowe in response to the challenge issued to Voluntary Arts by Arts Council England Chief Executive, Alan Davey, at the Our Creative Talent conference at The Barbican in July 2008. Alan challenged us to develop a scheme to showcase and encourage excellence and innovation in the amateur arts. I was particularly pleased, therefore, that Alan Davey was able to join us on Monday to meet the four award-winning groups. The reception, hosted by the President of Voluntary Arts, Lord Luce, was attended by representatives of each of the winning groups, MPs from the winners’ constituencies and representatives of the Epic Awards sponsors. In welcoming everyone to the reception, Lord Luce talked about the origins of Voluntary Arts:
“Almost my last act as a Minister, in 1990, was to say that I think the amateur arts ought to have something that will give them inspiration and encouragement in the work that they do and that needed some kind of a parent body who could provide them with advocacy, support, information and advice. My budget was very small but I managed to find a very small sum of money as a kind of seedcorn fund which I said should be used for the creation of support for amateur arts. When I left the Government of my own volition in 1990 after 5 years as a Minister … I then joined a small group that helped to set up what has now emerged as a highly successful organisation. I am very proud of it and very proud to be the President of Voluntary Arts.”
John Hayes presents the Engagement and Partnership Awards to Apsara Arts and Milton Keynes Islamic Arts Heritage and Culture Organisation
The Further Education Minister, John Hayes, who presented the Engagement and Partnerships Awards, said:
“I believe in all of the virtues that art brings – the way that it can inspire, the way it can ignite, the passions that it can engender, the things it can communicate, the touch of the sublime brought to lives of people in all kinds of ways and all kinds of forms, through artistic endeavour … I celebrate what you’re doing in these Epic Awards. I celebrate the joy of all those people associated with amateur arts across the country and I am just pleased and proud to be a very small part of that joy.”
Ed Vaizey presents the Innovation and Creativity Awards to the Cobweb Orchestra and UC Crew
Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, who presented the Innovation and Creativity Awards, said:
“It’s delightful to be here for a number of reasons. First of all to be reminded again how important voluntary arts are to the arts world … I will work with Arts Council England to make sure we continue to remind the world that the world of the arts extends far beyond those organisations that simply receive funding from the Arts Council. I’m glad to see these awards are supported by Arts Council England and I will continue to work with the Arts Council to make sure that the message goes out that the Arts Council is there for everyone … Just as we talk about innovation coming from some of our leading arts organisations, those arts organisations that regard themselves, as it were, at the top of the pyramid could certainly learn from many of the voluntary arts organisations who are also pushing to innovate.”
The representatives of the award-winning groups were great – lovely people with inspiring stories to tell. Apsara Arts from Croydon won the Engagement Award for their Story of London project which explored the history of Asians in London. Milton Keynes Islamic Arts, Heritage and Culture Organisation received the Partnerships award for their Islamic Art Banner – a project that enabled local students to explore Islamic culture through contemporary and traditional art. The Innovation award was won by the Cobweb Orchestra for their Undercover Orchestra Bolero – a flash-mob rendition of Ravel’s Bolero at Newcastle’s Eldon Square bus station that became a YouTube sensation. Breakdance group UC Crew from St Helens took the Creativity Award for their anti-smoking project. In their brief acceptance speeches, several of the winners warned about the damage being inflicted on the arts by public funding cuts, making their case firmly but politely. Andy Jackson from the Cobweb Orchestra said:
“With all the cutbacks, everybody knows that the professional arts are in for a really tough time, but this is our moment people. This is when us voluntary artists are really going to make the big difference.”
It was a wonderful evening, at which the excellence and innovation of the amateur arts was recognised at the highest level. The presence of two Government Ministers was an indication of the way amateur arts activity contributes to a range of agendas and recognition of the current high profile our sector has achieved in England. Many congratulations to Mary Lowe and the Voluntary Arts England team and our considerable thanks to Lord Luce.
We plan to run the Epic Awards again in 2011 and to expand the scheme to be UK-wide. You can read case studies of the winning groups and other entrants at: http://www.epicawards.co.uk
Robin Simpson.
Cultural Playing Field 