The Times Supplement: Working Towards 2012

The first of many supplements, The Times Supplement, dated 17 May 2006, offers a fairly comprehensive coverage of some of the key issues.  Its coverage of historical information is particularly interesting.

The main shortcoming of the Supplement, in my view, is the lack of coverage of Culture and its importance for 2012 and the period of up to ten years after the Olympics, described in the cultural sector as the 'legacy'. It would have been helpful to see a coverage of what the five London Boroughs which are hosting the Olympics, and indeed the rest of London will be doing to develop their cultural provision for 2012, how international visitors and the local audiences will be entertained and most importantly, how local communities will take part in developing cultural programmes.

Readers who missed the supplement can still read it at www.timesonline.co.uk/towards2012

Trouble Reported in Black and Minority Ethnic Theatre

The Arts Professional, issue 122 of 22nd may 2006 reports that the 'theatre sector has been criticised on race' and says that an independent report has called for a network of dedicated buildings to be established for Black theatre to reverse decades of under-funding.

Mirador will soon present its own views on this key report.

Mirador Culture launches CDR

Mirador Culture has launched Creative Diversity Recruitment - CDR, a new support service for arts and cultural organisations. Only one of the areas of  its focus is on recruitment. We believe that no organisation can positively confirm its commitment to cultural diversity unless its HR policies relate to its business plans, its customer care policies and its staff recruitment and retention strategies. So cultrual diversity is concerned with reaching audiences as much as with human resource management to help gain long-term competitive advantage.

Our focus on Creative Diversity places the onus of new product development for diverse markets on diverse teams. Diversity has to generate a creative response to help reach new and diverse audiences and to consolidate your marketing plans. It is best not to treat it as an imposition.

Creative Diversity has its own web log at http://creativediversityrecruitment.wordpress.com It provides professional insights through various analyses of creative diversity by using a number of free checklists. It also directs your recruitment advertising at self-registered people who have an interest in diversity. A database of professional people who are active in this market is being updated all the time.

We start taking recruitment advertising from 1st June.

Do you need an external challenge and a critical friend? CDR offers services of senior professionals who have worked at the coalface of delivery systems. CDR has also finalised the development of a confidential review methodology, known as the Creative Diversity Challenge Framework. Its logic is derived from years of experience of monitoring and evaluation of organisations, high level expertise derived from applying similar methodologies used by the Audit Commission and adaptation of assessments used by funding bodies.

Please call Kalwant Ajimal on 01483 538265 or email to make enquiries in confidence kalwant.ajimal@btinternet.com

Making Sense of Creative Diversity

The terms 'cultural diversity', 'diversity', 'inclusivenes' and 'creative diversity' all represent various aspects of a common and ongoing debate.  The key issues of interest to investors in culture can be summarised by linking cultural diversity to sustainable development.

Beliefs, traditions and values are connected to various forms of artistic expression which help to create sources of meaning for communities and groups, even countries. The essence of this connected approach is that it addresses the fundamental challenge of distinctiveness.

How are arts organisations responding to the new opportunities?

Within a short period of time, if this is not already happening, an increasing number of arts organisations in London are going to be looking at the new markets leading to 2012 as an "opportunity". However, these efforts must be preceded by critical and objective reviews of their operations before they try to jump on the Olympics bandwagon!

Mirador has prepared an initial checklist for evaluating these options. This list is best seen as a means of looking at the 'big picture' before detailed actions are considered. The following questions are not to be seen as a challenge to curb the new euphoria.

The Perceived Opportunities:

1. Why do individual and corporate players in the cultural sector see the Olympics as an opportunity? What has really changed?
2. What do they have to do now better before they can tap these new opportunities? How well are they performing now?
3. What is the scope for winning more audiences by introducing marketing improvements that the 'new business' of the Olympics will offer them? 
4. Why could they not achieve these improvements before? Are there any untapped marketing opportunities then that still exist now?

The Real Opportunities:

1. How are the new programmes going to be funded and delivered? What will be the impact of these decisions be on the development of arts and cultural organisations?
2. How many organisations will actually realise that these decisions are best made by challenging their own 'business planning assumptions' before they can act?
3. There are also key questions for arts funders and programming bodies. Have they made any projections for growth of audiences? How did Athens and Sydney deal with these questions? Can we learn from their experience?
4. Arts organisations will have to make critical choices - to what extent can they plan and fund realistic expansion based on existing resources?
5. Are the arts organisation planning to fund growth, which is not the same as expansion!

The Attainable Opportunties:

Sooner or later the arts funding mechansim may have to address the real challenge - by determining what is attainable and what is not.

1. Will the best option be to develop a 'audience/market model' which projects growth on a realistic basis and then decides to fund only the most realistic programmes for provision?
2. Will the arts funders opt to 'prescribe' their preferred growth by stating the only options that they will fund by using competitive criteria?
3. Will the arts funders receive additional Lottery money at the expense of other causes to fund growth in cultural provision?

Considering the possible impact of the Government's comprehensive spending review, the answer may well lie here-  what is attainable by using realistic planning scenarios both at the 'macro' level and the organisational or 'micro' level

Just Out!

The economic importance of the creative industries 

What does the term 'creative industries' mean? How significant is the creative sector? What opportunities does the sector present?

In the past, consensus on defintions has not been easy to achieve. As a result the estimates of the size and importance of the creative sector vary.

This is straight from NESTA's website.  Please see the Page tab above marked 'Publications and Research'.

Ensuring cross-cutting delivery systems

The early rounds of comprehensive performance assessments (CPA) carried out by the Audit Commission have shown that most local authorities have found the services commonly grouped under 'Environmental Services' to be amongst the most challenging ones to deliver. The challenges that lie ahead for waste management and recycling, street cleansing and maintenance, grounds and parks management, highways engineering and especially parking services are going to be phenomenal for service providers in the region.

It is clear that inter-borough collaboration will be critical to ensure success in providing a clean and safe environment for 2012. This will require a new vision to inform service delivery models, support investment planing and plan resource management in general.

Cultural Planning in East London for 2012

The submission of a successful bid to host the London Olympics in 2012 has created unprecedented euphoria and enthusiasm. However, many 'nervous' observers on the sidelines may feel that the people and organisations in charge of planning and delivery may not be able to meet their targets. Of course, people who work in culture bring their own personalities, confidence and experience to bear on the challenges in which they are involved. It is not going to be easy to reach consensus.

Mirador sees its role as a neutral and objective observer and as a supportive commentator. In general, this blog aims to put forward fewer personal opinions and more of professional contributions. I do not have any privileged access to information and the reader is reminded to look again at the Disclaimer for this blog. 

How does Mirador see the exciting developments in the cultural arena during the next few years leading to 2012 and the legacy programme of the Olympics?  Mirador will offer commentaries by addressing the key needs and priorities. It most cases the observations will be generic in nature and will not be designed to offer advice or comments on the work programmes of any specific delivery organisation. Mirador may also work with a few of the agencies involved in cultural planning and delivery. In these cases, compliance to client confidentiality will override all other distractions.

 Here are some initial observations: 

• It would be very interesting to see how the five London Boroughs that are the ‘official’ hosts for the Olympics will review, develop and reconfirm their joint cultural policies and strategies during the next few months. This exercise should result in repositioning of cultural provision in the whole East London ‘region’.

• For ‘repositioning’ to be successful, the London Boroughs will also need to look at their markets differently. Traditionally, cultural services departments addressed their local markets that are confined to their boundaries. Success in 2012 will require that all service providers look at regional marketing plans for some services and national and even international marketing strategies for others.

• The participating boroughs will be best advised to look at their new challenges in terms harnessing their collective motivation and developing co-financing options, confirming joint structures for delivery in key areas and adopting shared performance management criteria where applicable.

• Investment in developing homegrown cultural productions must start now. For any local producers and presenters to have a reasonable chance of offering their services to the procurement and programming agencies for 2012, local producers will need to invest in strategies to make their outputs meet quality, cost and other competitive criteria.  Local arts and cultural producers may even need to review their aims and objectives, challenge their structures for delivery and then commit themselves to developing their capacity to deliver.

• Investment in developing capability should receive top priority. Many organisations will have the capacity to deliver but they may not be capable.

• Many of the major arts and cultural organisations in the East London- North East London axis have excellent track records, they have secure command of resources and show clarity of vision. Most of these organisations are attractive candidates for incremental funding that should be tied to regional parameters for delivery and new programme development based on an expanding market. It will be very interesting to see how arts organisations develop during this exciting period.

• There is scope for investing in the renewal of at least a dozen town centres. Mirador hopes to express its views on how new ‘cultural hubs’ may better serve the needs of visitors and residents during the next ten years.

• Community engagement and participation is going to be vital. There are interesting proposals on the ground and a few recent initiatives have demonstrated merit. However, there is no substitute to developing and adopting community consultation plans which are fully inclusive and flexible.

• Cultural provision and skills development will go hand in hand. How is the region going to review its skills agenda and which agencies are going to be taking the lead in planning and delivery? Investment in lifelong learning should provide the discipline and content for the key outputs relating to the skills agenda for 2012.

The worst-case scenario is unacceptable

The worst-case scenario is unacceptable. Instead Mirador aims to work with its present and future clients and partners to address the following:

• Innovation and creativity. The markets for culture are changing  and the challenge in the next ten years is to resist a culture of providing ‘more of the same’.

• New entrepreneurialism.  Local authorities and their partners will need to be much more entrepreneurial than has been the case in the past.

• Competition. Audiences, especially new audiences, can be very selective about where they spend their money.

• Investment in education and skills. Cultural providers and their staff will require access to lifelong training.

The worst-case scenario

The worst case scenarion presents major losses to the local cultural economies if cultural planning was to fail and local provision is not enhanced to meet the demands of new or expanding markets.  A worst-case scenario prevails where:

• arts and cultural producers, community groups, local authorities, arts funders and business sponsors fail to analyse and scrutinise their options for growth by promoting culture as a driver for the local economy 
• cultural planners are unable to attract skilled workforce or invest in their training 
• lack of strategic planning frustrates the development of future capacity to deliver cultural output 
• cultural programmers may be driven to procure new artistic work from other countries at the expense of alienating local producers 
• lack of investment in partnerships fails to leverage resources into the economy 
• lack of planning fails to identify co-dependencies, namely the delivery of secondary services such as catering  
• lack of development of culture as a cross-cutting agenda precludes new investment from builders and planners