Created in Birmingham

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the Crescent Theatre (not been there in a while) for a briefing from the Arts Council on the new funding arrangements for arts organisations.

Someone from Stan’s Cafe went in the morning and has written up a few thoughts. It’s worth a read as it articulates a few frustrations beautifully. To nick a bit of that write-up:

Now there will no longer be RFOs, every current RFO is being invited to apply for National Portfolio Funding. One advance is that this application process is open to any organisation that qualifies, rather than having to be invited to apply as before. There will certainly be opportunities for some companies to move up from project funding

And that last bit was the reason why a fair few people were in the room.

The session went down reasonably well, given the circumstances. Ros Robins (ACE Regional Director) was sympathetic but direct and didn’t make much attempt to hide the fact that the Arts Council have suffered a blow and are trying to find their feet again.

Here are the slides from her talk:

My notes

I scribbled a few notes and they’re reproduced below, for what they’re worth. Apologies in advance for any omissions or inaccuracies. I’ll try to clarify anything I can.

RFO’s end March 2012
National Portfolio Funding starts April 2012
G4A not changing much now.
Strategic (or managed) funds are changing

Gritted teeth from Ros while outlining the cuts.

Not all bad – some Lottery money coming back in 2013. More info on that nearer the time.

ACE WM reduced their staff from 46 to 27 in the recent restructure. Been asked to halve admin costs again, but will be required to do so in a couple of years time. To achieve this they recognise that they’ll have to wok in collaboration more. There will be a move from doing strategic projects to commissioning others to deliver them.

NPF orgs can’t apply for G4A.

ACE has five 10-year goals:

1. Talent and artistic excellence are thriving and celebrated
2. More people experience and are inspired by the arts
3. The arts are sustainable, resilient and innovative
4. The arts leadership and workforce are diverse and highly skilled
5. Every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts

Four major changes to the funding programme:

• open application process (online)
• fixed term of normally 3 years but flexibility for variable length funding agreements for 2-6 years
• funding agreements with orgs based on clear criteria and shared goals
• funding agreements based around ‘strategic’ and ‘programme’ relationships rather than one size fits all

Eligibility

• UK based with activity mainly taking place in England
• Min £40k funding (would be £20k but due to the level of reporting and evaluations that will be required that wouldn’t be enough)
• Engage people in arts activities/help arts orgs to do their work
• Oustanding track record or outstanding potential
• No profit to be distributed to members/shareholders
• Majority will be delivering a programme of artistic work
• Orgs delivering strategic work will have to demonstrate leadership, will have high expectations placed on them and will not necessarily be large flagship organisations
• Applicants must be incorporated
• Must contribute to at least two of ACE’s goals

Criteria for decision making

Stage 1 – assessing the application:

• Contribution to goals and priorities
• Governance, leadership and engagement
• Financial sustainability of the org

Stage 2 – balancing the portfolio:

• All goals priorities
• Diversity
• Range of artforms
• Dfferent sizes/types of orgs
• Geographical spread

Consortium bids are possible. Might be too soon to coordinate them this first time round, but looking over hte 10 years, so there is time to develop a consortium over the next couple of years and put an application in later on.

Applications

All applications must provide:

• Mission
• Proposed programme of work and how funding would be used
• Management accounts 2010/11
• Planned budget 2011/12
• Outline budget for years after
• Non-RFO’s must provide:
• Most recent financial statements
• Evidence for meeting the criteria (governance, quality, engaging audiences, risks)

Orgs decide how much to apply for.

Timeline

• Nov – open for applics
• Nov – briefing meetings and ongoing conversations
• Jan – deadline for applications 10am on 24 January 2011
• Jan – Relationship Managers start to assess applications
• Feb – moderation
• March – decisions
• April – publish Arts Council Plan 2011/12 to 2014/15

It will be a very competitive process. Have a fallback position in case you don’t get funding. G4A applications may be less competitive in 2012. Think about whether you want the extra responsibility and scrutiny.

Two campaigns kicked off this week which merit a mention.

I Value The Arts has been put together by the National Campaign for the Arts, supported by a slew of promotional partners.

Save the Arts is is organised by the London branch of the Turning Point Network, a national consortium of over 2,000 arts organisations and artists. There’s a list here. They’re after 100,000 signatures for their petition and have a David Shrigley cartoon too:

What to do

Supporting them both will take about 5 minutes. Tops. So, if you’re keen to support the arts and campaign against severe cuts then sign the petition, pledge your support and stick a logo wherever pleases you and ask others to do the same.

Then get on with telling some more people about why supporting art and culture is a good idea.

What not to do

Predictably, members of the arts commentariat have wasted no time in wasting time, busying themselves with arguments, posturing and point-scoring. I’m not linking to them because they don’t deserve the attention. Idiots.

The good news:

Screen WM’s 2010/11 Investment Fund opens on Tuesday 4 May 2010

The bad news:

Screen WM is also announcing that the UK Film Council has now confirmed a significant reduction of Lottery funding to each of the nine regional screen agencies. They are also reallocating all skills and training funding previously distributed through the regional screen agencies to Skillset. Skillset will now handle all applications for skills and training funding, to apply visit www.skillset.org . Screen WM will continue to work closely with Skillset to ensure a smooth transition of skills funding in the region.

[...] there is a total cut of 25% to Screen WM’s 2010/11 Lottery funding from the UK Film Council

[...] the impact of these cuts mean that inevitably there is an overall reduction in Lottery funding available in our 2010/11 Investment Fund. This means that Screen WM will be funding fewer projects in total in comparison with previous years and the application process this year will undoubtedly be more competitive. As such, Screen WM has taken the decision to be more targeted in approach and provide more specific support to projects

As a result, Screen WM will specifically be investing in:

• Film and Media Education ‘Hubs’
• Film Festivals
• Film Script Development
• Regional Film Industry support networks

I’m hoping posts like this don’t become too commonplace. Fuller info over at Audiences Central.

There are two organisations after some support at the moment.

mac are after the last little bit of funds they need to cover their refurbishment. They’re not too far off by the sound of things (it’s the last 1% they’re after) and are hoping enough people can be tempted to donate a fiver or so (more if poss). I just chipped in.

To sweeten the deal they’ve put up a little gamey thing you can play with called Famous for Five.

Rather more ambitiously, this story went up on the Birmingham Post website today:

Birmingham City Council wants to raise £34 million from local people and businesses to go towards the £189 million cost of the library in Centenary Square

Seeing as how I can’t find anything at all about this online anywhere, I’m just going to copy and paste the whole thing here. I know there’s a flyer doing the rounds though, I saw one on the pinboards at the back of the CiB Shop.

Anyway, here’s the blurb…

CREATIVE LEAP Call for Artists who want to kick start a career in the creative sector Creative Leap is a new development programme for emerging artists which will enable you to turn your creative ideas into reality.

It is open to artists working in any artform including film and digital media, visual and performing arts, written and spoken word.

The scheme is aimed at individuals who have had limited opportunities to produce and showcase work. Artists from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds are particularly encouraged to apply.

Creative Leap will offer artists the chance to:

• Apply for a grant of up to £2,000 to develop and showcase innovative new work/projects
• Participate in a professional development training programme working within a pool of artists
• Work with an artform mentor to support the development of creative ideas and new work
• Work with a career start-up mentor and receive industry information, advice and support

Creative Leap is about new work, new collaborations and new ideas to create work in both traditional and unusual spaces. We want ideas for new work to be artist generated and led, and we’re here to discuss your ideas with you and to support you from the initial development stage through to showcasing. We’re also here to help newer artists access or progress in the industry and to support your career development needs.

A Creative Leap introductory meeting will take place in early May and the programme will then run in part time stages with showcasing taking place between September 2010 and March 2011.

Taking part in the programme is free of charge.

To apply for a place on Creative Leap, you will need to be:

• Over 18
• Living or working in any of wards making up the following Birmingham constituencies :

Erdington – Erdington, Kingstanding, Stockland Green, Tyburn wards
Hodge Hill – Bordesley Green, Hodge Hill, Shard End, Washwood Heath wards
Ladywood – Aston, Ladywood, Nechells , Soho wards
Perry Barr – Handsworth Wood, Lozells & East Handsworth, Oscott, Perry Barr wards

The deadline to apply for a place is Wednesday 14th April 2010.

If you want further information on Creative Leap, and to apply for a place, please contact Pat Dawson on 0121 446 3267 or email pat@sampad.org.uk.

Creative Leap is a collaborative project run in partnership by sampad, Ulfah Arts and the Drum and supported by Birmingham City Council.

Arts Council England has opened a consultation on the priorities for the arts over the coming decade.

They want your views to help form a 10-year strategic framework with long-term goals for each artform and find new ways to help those they fund already. Alan Davey, chief executive of Arts Council England, has this to say:

If we are to succeed in supporting art and artists, creativity and excellence, we must identify the key long-term goals that drive our decision-making, our investment priorities and our relationships with artists and audiences.

This consultation sets out our understanding of the current landscape, celebrates the success of the arts and identifies areas for development over the next ten years.

The consultation closes on 14 April 2010, so if you want your voice to be heard and your input used, you can complete the Arts Council’s questionnaire here. For more information on the process and background to the consultation, take a look at the Arts Council website here.

Cllr Martin Mullaney has announced the Emerging Festivals Fund – grants of £500 to £4,999 for new niche festivals. Applications have to be in by 4 February, which seems like incredibly short notice for what this is. More details here.

Might this be useful to the folks at the recent The Challenge of Change event? So what sort of small festivals is the city currently lacking?

It’s probably worth seeing this in light of the comments from Neil Rami of Marketing Birmingham that I linked to the other day. When asked which cities have marketed themselves effectively through culture he named Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow and:

Rotterdam, as they have come from nowhere. They have spent eight years capacity building their ability to host festivals and in that time have gone from something like 8 each year to 109. They saw festivals as a way of building a career for an artist and for telling a story. They now import festivals, poaching them from other cities as well as starting their own.

For me, arts funding is an area that’s shrouded in mystery and confusion. But then I’ve never applied for any, so maybe it’s not such a big deal.

Anyway, two folks who have recently shed some light on the situation are Pete Ashton and Clare Edwards.

Pete went along to the Arts Council yesterday to chat about the Digital Content Development (DCD) fund. In a lovely, comprehensive post he’s found out what the fund’s for, what organisations have been doing wrong in their applications to date and what Anna Douglas and Steve Manthorp (the fund’s administrators) are looking for in applications.

Pete would also like to make it clear he’s available to help organisations (RFO’s only I’m afraid) who are trying to figure out what to use the fund for.

Clare was recently asked for advice on finding funding for a creative project. She was happy to help and thought it’d be useful to put her tips in a blog post, so here are Clare’s tips for finding funding for a creative project.

The Arts Council recently asked for regional submissions to win a significant pot of money under the title ‘Artists Taking the Lead’ - linking into themes of the Cultural Olympiad, and leading up to the 2012 Olympics.

The first selection process has happened, and details of the potential regional winners have been announced and can be found here.  Unsurprisingly, all of the West Midlands shortlisted are designed to happen in Birmingham (with perhaps the exception of Imagineer Productions – which doesn’t specify, but has obvious Coventry connections?) and so it seemed relevant to point it out to the CiB readers and point you to the site where comments are invited on which idea excites you the most.

I have rather strong feelings on the selected few and would be curious to find out what you all think.  If any particularly strike you (either positively or negatively!) then feel free to leave a quick comment below explaining why.

Two days after news of funding cuts the Arts Council have announced they are investing an extra £44.5 million in artists and arts organisations over the next two years to help maintain artistic excellence during the economic downturn.

The initiatives include:

• Sustain – a new £40 million open application fund for arts organisations suffering as a result of the recession.
• £500,000 support for the Town Centres Initiative to enable more artistic activities to take place in empty retail spaces.
• A £4 million increase in the Grants for the arts budget over the next two years

Hundreds of artists across the country are already helping to reinvigorate ailing town centres by taking over empty retail space for creative activities and it is hoped this new fund, which will award grants of £1,000 to £10,000 will enable many more to do so.

One example of this is currently happening in York. York Museums Trust, supported by Visit York, are piloting a digital design programme to which will look to dress empty shop windows with external, high quality vinyls which will feature contemporary digital designs that respond to their setting. More at BoxerCreative. A while back I also wrote about similar ideas from Council leaders in Wolverhampton.

In the past, when each new government spending budget is announced most of us grumble a little about the rise in alcohol and cigarette tax. and quickly forget all about it. But this year’s budget speech attracted more public attention than ever. It is more than obvious to say that the decisions made will directly affect all of us during these grim days of recession, not least those of us reliant on arts funding.

Before Wednesday’s announcement those in the know were predicting the fate of the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and guessing the arts were unlikely to be spared in the predicted £15bn of public spending cuts. The largest chunk of DCMS spending goes on Arts Council England, in which cuts up to £14m were being expected.

The outcome for the Arts Council  is a £4 million cut in funding, which they responded with this statement:

It is a shame that the government has found it necessary to cut funding to culture but we will do our best to protect the interests of audiences who deserve the best art there is.

That is why, in implementing these cuts, we will not reduce our planned investment in the arts organisations we fund on a regular basis – many of whom have already planned against expected income in 2010/11. Instead we will reconsider our existing and planned new projects and look to find savings there.

This is a short term solution but not without its implications as these projects are our investment in the development of the arts.

The arts are far more than a luxury add-on – they are quality of life and, with sufficient public investment, they can be central to economic recovery.

NB: The latest £4million cut is in addition to the £6.5million per annum savings in the Arts Council’s running costs announced as part of the original settlement.

The statement is fairly generic, so what this will mean to the West Midlands remains to be seen but it is reassuring to know that currently funded organisations won’t see a reduction in funds.

In a meeting yesterday it was decided that the Arts Council will not fund any further plans from The Public, West Bromwich, including those for the long awaited interactive gallery. The reasons given are an absence of a firm opening date for the gallery and the considerable increase in annual revenue funding required to deliver the plan. It was announced last year that tickets for the gallery will be priced at £6.95 for adults, which stoked the fires of many angry taxpayers.

They have, however awarded Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council an award of up to £3m to allow them to develop a revised plans and to bring the building fully into public use. The Arts Council’s intention is that the significant investment made by all the funders will benefit the residents of Sandwell.

Sir Christopher Frayling, Chair of Arts Council England, said:

“We are the national development agency for the arts, and investing in ground breaking creative projects that have the potential to give more people access to great art is central to what we do. That is why we supported this project and why, at every stage, we have worked with our partners and carefully weighed the level of risk involved against the potential public benefit.

But the fact is that, although the building is open, the interactive art gallery at the centre of the vision for The Public is not. We have done everything we can but there comes a point where we have to make a difficult judgement – and regretfully, that moment is now.”

The Public will be releasing a statement later on today.

At the kratesitwards (as some are calling them) on Saturday, Coun Neville Summerfield bigged up some of the support initiatives for creative types in Birmingham:

• Creative Birmingham – pulling together key public agencies investing in the creative industries
• Design Space – accommodates and finances new design agencies in the Jewellery Quarter
• SRB6 Creative Industries – offers a range of business support to new businesses in the north-west of the city
• Enterprise City – provides coaching and mentoring services to new and expanding businesses
• Business Support for Creative Industries Programme – £9m flagship initiative.  Created 800 jobs, safeguarded 400 jobs, helped start 250 businesses and supported 1,200 businesses in total.  Generated over £15m in new sales

As far as I can tell, SRB6 has ended, enrolment in Enterprise City is closed (the scheme ends in March 09) and I can’t find any info about Creative Birmingham at all.

D’log tried looking into the schemes mentioned when Coun Summerfield responded to the issue of support for the creative sector last month. He had problems finding any useful information too.

The thing is, maybe there are lots of helpful support schemes out there but how many eligible people/companies know about them and where’s the information being made available? I guess the place to go would be Creative Launchpad (currently residing online here) or Business Link but it’s a shame the info doesn’t seem to be collected together somewhere useful.

Actually, I’ve just found West Midlands Finance, which describes itself as “comprehensive, continually updated finance information for West Midlands SMEs”. Feel free to register and have a root about but the need to register has put me right off – what’s the need exactly? Humph.

D’Log has spotted that the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery have been given some money by the  DCMS/Wolfson Foundation Improvement Fund to develop new audiences.  From the BBC:

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery will spend its £300,000 grant on a new gallery telling the story of the city from medieval times to the present.

Some good news from the Edge has dropped into my inbox.  Having secured a ten-year lease for their premises they’ve now secured funding for a big refurb:

The wonderful SITA trust have blessed us with the resources to install a new heating system, disabled loos, insulation and a new kitchen!  This will be stage one of our ongoing plans to develop the place as the (informal) venue for experimental arts in the city and operate year-round.

There’s good news and bad(-ish) news: the bad(-ish) news is that public activity will be suspended until late summer while things are sorted out.  The good news is that they’d like people to help out with, in their words:

mainly smashing stuff and chucking it away/recycling, quite therapeutic, actually

So if you’d like to get involved drop them a line.

There are still a few events happening at the Edge in the meantime – the Strange Ways Cheapside Show is there until 12 July and there are some talks on 25 July which I’ll blog about later.