Say goodbye wave hello

Well, I did warn you March might be quiet on here... but I'm back. Kind of.

It's a bit of a shame, really, as in many ways I wanted to ramp up activity here, but it seems the work ethic got in the way during my last few weeks at the Arts Council. However, I was trying to do a few too many things at once to eke out the time and energy to do justice to the subjects that arose here. You may, therefore, never hear about the 'Cafe Culturel' discussion I took part in, with Kate Fox, in which I read poems by Zbigniew Herbert and Czeslaw Milosz and a women in the audience sang us a song after telling us about her job interview, or about what I learnt about arts leadership on the first part of a coaching course, about my struggles turning the theories of resilience into something like plain English or my writing the mother of all leaving poems for 14 colleagues leaving the Arts Council, or the fantastic and art-full week my wife and I have just had in New York.

Those of us who have departed as a result of the recent restructure - which stems back to the last Government Spending Review and will see an extra £6.5M for Regularly Funded Organisations, with the Arts Council having around 25% less staff - are now all off to pastures new. In my case that's my own business, Thinking Practice. The name combines the two elements I believe the arts and culture sector need to integrate even better - more consciously perhaps - than now, and because I hope other people will become involved over time.

The aim is to help the arts and cultural sectors, and maybe the broader third sector, create a fairer and more beautiful world, by helping them to increase their own impact and build their resilience through creative approaches that combine thinking (eg analysis and strategy) with practice (eg doing, learning, coaching). You can read about it on a beta site here.

Lots of people have asked whether I'll carry on blogging when I leave the Arts Council. The short answer is yes, although obviously it's a quite different context. I started Arts Counselling because it seemed the perfect form to share enthusiasms and ideas, whilst demonstrating that not everyone who works for the Arts Council is a faceless bureaucrat. (There are a total of 27 of those according to the most recent HR stats, apparently.) Sadly my Executive Board colleagues have been terribly slow in following my example, not for the first time either, though once someone shows them the on switch for the blogosphere, who knows? Seriously, I'm told Andrew Nairne's twittering is cult following amongst some, and there are more and more ACE-types on there, so things/people are opening up. If you want to petition Alan Davey to take up the Arts Counselling baton his email is publicly available, and I for one think he'd do a great blog.

Opinion has been split on whether I should keep the Arts Counselling name for future blogging. It is - obviously - a brilliant name, but given its origins can't help but relate to my now former employer. I'm incredibly proud of that organisation and my time there, and will be using what I learnt for the rest of my career, but it feels time to let go of that association for my writing. Later this week then, I will start blogging on Thinking Practice. You can expect the same mixture of ideas, thoughts, links, descriptions of experiences, questions and recommendations. You'll also be able to subscribe by email as many people do to Arts Counselling. If you are currently a subscriber you can subscribe to Thinking Practice by clicking here. Please do, I'll be disappointed, and my ego shattered, if too many of you were just watching out of funder-curiosity rather than hanging on my every word.

There's one more post I think it appropriate to put here, then this site will be dormant but available, as I think there's some useful stuff here. I'll find a way of archiving some of the more durable posts on the Thinking Practice site. Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the feedback and thoughts. Remember: it's time for some Thinking Practice.

Who's filling whose gap?

The back page ad in Arts Professional recently has been for Blackbaud, who provide ‘innovative ticketing, fundraising, marketing and CRM solutions’. That’s the second half of their pitch – the first half was what caught my eye. Blackbaud, it says, has ‘helped hundreds of arts and cultural organisations to fill the gap in government funding through innovative ticketing...’ (My italics.)

It’s interesting because it seems to be underpinned by a model of 100% government funding for a supplier-led arts world with the customers filling the gap, rather than a ‘market failure’ model which see government funding as making possible valuable things which cost more than the market (ie paying customers of one sort or another) can afford, or a demand-led model with funding encouraging consumption. And it’s a commercial organisation putting it forward.

I may be reading this too closely, of course. It could just be smart marketing people playing to their audience. And the quote from Su Matthewman at West Yorkshire Playhouse is much more positive in its view of customers. But if the CRM specialists make this kind of Freudian slip, what does it say about how audiences – people who put their hands in their pockets to pay for art they want – are seen by arts organisations? Or about how those organisations see their business models?

Who wants to be in charge?

Here’s an interesting example of what no-one in the real world calls participatory decision-making or 'peer involvement'. Tennent’s, the lager company which sponsors a number of music events in Scotland, have created The Tennent’s Mutual. This gives control of programming, ticket prices, even format of gigs over to the public – or those music fans who want to become members of The Tennent’s Mutual. Founding members of The Mutual will select artists, debate locations for gigs and call the shots on ticket prices by interacting as a community and voting for their preferences online. Tennent’s have started it off with a fund of £150,000, and recruited a number of expert advisors to share their views but not make decisions. Any profits will be reinvested in future gigs or festivals.

Although it’s early days, the Vote and Forum and sections show how people are reacting to the chance to influence things. Even where the bank account went was voted upon by members. It will be interesting to see how the programme differs from the norm – and whether this kind of involvement guarantees big audiences.

Anyone aware of other arts organisations devoting even part of their programming budgets to this kind of public involvement? And how might this model be used by public funders of the arts – be it Arts Council or, say, local authorities? (Who are increasingly taking parallel approaches for local decisions such as street furniture, repairs and so on.)

I came across this model in Trendwatching’s latest briefing – ‘41 new business ideas to copy or be inspired by’. Well worth a look, for entertainment value if nothing else.

How many people are simply Not Bothered?

Involve (an organisation dedicated to increasing public participation and involvement in decision-making) have published a fascinating new report, Participation Nation. This focuses on ‘reconnecting citizens to the public realm’, which is a slightly think-tanky way of saying getting people involved in shaping and enjoying their own lives, especially where government influences them.

One chapter of Participation Nation (shame about the title, sounds like a parody of a reggae toaster from the 70’s…) looks at what people do with their spare time, and what it calls ‘The timesqueeze generation’. This describes the pressures on time and energy as much more pressing than lack of information, for instance. It argues people fall into 5 categories of engagement, from ‘Community bystanders’ (the 36% Not Bothered) through to ‘Active protestors’ (party members and writers to newspapers). Almost 70% of us are, allegedly, either ‘passive’ or ‘bystanders’.

This is not dissimilar to the pattern of arts participation, with more than half of adults attending only once or twice a year. We need to see cultural consumption in the context of people’s whole lives if we’re to genuinely affect deeply-rooted historical patterns. The DCMS Taking Part survey shows there’s plenty of scope for change, and huge correlation with participation in other areas of social life, as well as with educational attainment and class.

Involve have developed a site giving practical guidance to anyone wanting to increase public participation in their work, peopleandparticipation.net . This is highly adaptable for arts organisations. You can read some Arts Council publications relating to Taking Part here.