This follows an Arts Council England funded review commissioned as part of an R&D project into consortium working & strategic commissioning which found that the formal structure of a separate limited company adopted in 2009 was unnecessary. Servicing its needs and those of a separate Board took too much unfunded and unresourced time, particularly from Eventus as lead managing agent, which could have been better spent focusing on developing collaborative bids.

Eventus were successful in winning and managing over £600K of contracts, for delivery by 5 partners, including a recent half term programme for Sheffield Children’s University.

Consortium working has been a positive experience and members will continue to develop this approach through more informal consortium and partnership working.

Eventus will continue to use its experience as lead managing agents on appropriate tenders.

Sheffield was one of the pioneers of 3rd sector consortium development and other local consortia are also reviewing ways forward to meet changes in strategic commissioning.

Why does it matter? I recently saw a local authority advert for a whole range of activity leaders for ‘play, cultural, environmental and sport sessions’. All applicants should have NGB level 2 or ‘equivalent recognised qualifications from the play, sport, fitness, cultural and environmental industries.’

So what’s the cultural equivalent?  I know some specifically youth focused arts organisations take people through youth work training, but a jobbing artist working across a range of  community groups isn’t necessarily going to be included in that. So what do you offer instead?

I’ve spent many years supporting non-arts partners to employ artists based on a mixture of experience, artform training and relevance to the particular context; I can’t imaging any of that being replaced by a generic qualification.  And I’m not sure, but this ad might be for the replacement for a programme that we previously contracted quality arts organisations to deliver.

Quality – of practitioners, of experience, of expertise- has been a key concern in much of the work we’ve been doing on strategic commissioning over the past year. Increasingly it seems that commissioning processes are simultaneously too open – anyone can say they’re an artist who’s worked with vulnerable older people and commissioners have no skills in assessing that – or proscriptive, as in this instance.

So if you do know know of any equivalent qualifications, I’d be really interested to hear about them. If not, perhaps we should all start practising our roller skating – artistically, of course.

Last week someone described this as changing from wholesale (selling to the council/ NHS trust) to retail (selling directly to the customer.) This is a huge step change for participatory arts, although it is the model used by venue based companies. (And it will be interesting to see how many of these enter the personal budget market. )

At the Arts Council briefing on the new Creative People and Places yesterday, a similar distinction was made between the NPO investment to the supply side (the arts organisations) and the Creative People and Places  investment to the demand side (residents  in the areas of low engagement).

The most challenging – and interesting- problem is always to identify the people who don’t use your service then devise ways of finding out why they don’t, before you can start addressing those reasons and getting them involved.

This may well be the biggest challenge facing any of the consortia formed to bid for the funding, and it will be fascinating to see the ways in which different combinations of experience, scale and partnership working  rise to the challenge.

I enjoy my sporadic Twitter stream and am often intrigued by the retweets and the people who’ve retweeted them, as well as the followers who appear after a tweet on a particular subject. And although I’m occasionally frustrated by its impermanence – losing a link because by the time I get around to following it up the original tweet has disappeared- I like the transience.  It seems to fit the times we live in.

But, it’s time to hold my nose and jump.

The context in which the arts operate is changing so rapidly, especially for those of us who work mostly with non-arts partners. It feels right to be trying to capture that change and challenge, even if we can’t quite see where we’re going.

So from now on I’ll be blogging regularly and hope that there will be times when others want to join in that conversation.

The way councils and public sector bodies work with arts and other organisations is changing. Grant funding for projects is being replaced by commissioning and personal budgets.

Eventus have produced an online guide for artists on how to understand and work with strategic commissioning http://www.eventus.org.uk/strategic-commissioning

The guide ‘Strategic Commissioning: What Arts Organisations & Artists Need to Know’ takes artists through the policy context, signposts them to resources and has examples of good practice.

It was produced with funding from Arts Council England as part of a Research and Development project. Other outcomes include ‘A speedy introduction to strategic commissioning’ presentation so that viewers can decide whether they want to proceed further. Documents on market development and consortium working are also available on the site.

Arts Council England Yorkshire have taken the national lead on this work. They have commissioned Eventus to develop a series of training sessions for arts organisations which will be advertised shortly. Eventus are also researching case studies for the national Arts Council England website.

Sorby House, Spital Hill, Sheffield S4 7LG

Jointly organised by Sheffield Council Adult Social Care and Eventus

Self-Directed Support (sometimes called personalisation) gives people in receipt of adult social care power to buy the services they want, rather than those centrally provided.

There are opportunities for artists to develop & market services for people with SDS budgets, particularly for those with experience of arts work with vulnerable people, although you may need to develop different ways of working and marketing from grant funded projects.

There are currently several hundred people in Sheffield receiving SDS and this eventually this will become several thousand.

Arts Council England sees arts involvement in SDS as part of ‘Great Art for Everyone’

The workshop will look at:

• Why you should get involved.
• What is it?
• Market development support.

To apply: Please e mail janet@eventus.org.uk giving your name, contact details and whether you are applying as an individual or on behalf of an organisation (if the latter, please provide the organisation name)

Places are for Sheffield based artist or organisation

Individual artists are very welcome

Places are very limited so only 1 person per organisation on a first come first served basis. (There will be regional events for arts organisations in February & March)

RSVP by Friday 20 January to janet@eventus.org.uk

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/city_s_artistic_merits_1_4115804

City centre locations often feature strongly on the page, so it was a pleasure to be able to highlight some of the great community based creative and regeneration initiatives that are or have been taking place in Sheffield neighbourhoods.

And despite being given a strict limit of only one mention of a place outside the city, Clare was able to sneak in lots of mentions for arts and food places gathered together in one place on the Welbeck Estate near Worksop.

The post is based on the recommendations of our Art in Delivery report.

Broadacres are really committed to working with their residents and communities in N Yorkshire and have carried out a number of arts projects from their own resources. This post will enable them to consolidate and develop their work.

For job description and application details see    http://www.artsjobs.org.uk/arts-job/post/creative-engagement-facilitator/

Closing date 12 December.

The R&D we’ve been carrying out will result in user friendly documents and resources signposting artists to how to get involved appearing on our  website before Christmas.

As a result of this and other work by ACE Yorkshire officers, ACE nationally will be looking at resources to support artists and arts organisations.

The next steps will include:

• briefings for regional planning staff, so they are aware of the issues and can support artists and arts organisations;
• 3 regional workshops in the NW, NE and Yorkshire for arts organisations
• an updated area on the Arts Council’s website with new case studies.

Eventus will continue our R & D work, ensuring that the arts have ‘a place at the table’ in Sheffield.

Information on all the above will be posted on our website