Description
The continuing squeeze on public sector budgets and pressure on services, coupled with major demographic changes, means that the need for local innovation is growing. The challenge is how to achieve better outcomes for local people without incurring substantial cost. Some commissioners have found that engaging different local practitioners from the arts and cultural sector is enabling them to get great outcomes for citizens, improve services, increase wellbeing and remain cost effective.
The UK has a substantial arts and cultural sector but they frequently sit in councils leisure or local economic development teams. The arts have a power to benefit wider society and this power is largely unrealised. The Cultural Commissioning Programme (CCP) is a three year programme running from July 2013 to June 2016, funded by Arts Council England. The programme works to help the arts and cultural sector engage in public sector commissioning and to enable public service commissioners to increase their awareness of the potential for arts and cultural organisations to deliver their outcomes. The programme has documented successful arts and cultural interventions in areas such as
- Supporting older people
- Mental health and well-being
- Place based activity such as community capacity building.
This seminar series will cover both theory and practice. We will initially introduce the case for commissioning public service outcomes from arts and cultural providers, review stories of strong practice and highlight the barriers to greater levels of commissioning. We will hear from commissioners who are leading innovation in this area about the methods they have used and the results they are seeing. The seminar will be co-presented by NEF (the New Economics Foundation) and commissioners with experience of commissioning from arts and cultural providers.
Delegates will:
- Learn from practical examples of arts and cultural activities
- Understand the methods used to commission in this way
- Review their own commissioning portfolio and identify opportunities for arts and cultural interventions
- Explore practical steps to change their own practice
- Take away a package of materials to support them to make change locally
Programme*
9:30-10:00 Registration & Refreshments
10:00-11:30 Morning session
- Ice-breaker
- Making the case for arts and culture in mainstream public services
- What the recent research is telling us
- Mapping current experience or levels of cultural commissioning
11:30-11:45 Break for refreshments
11:45-13:00 Morning Session continued
- Sharing our story of change: case study presented by Kent Council Council (TBC)
- Discussing opportunities and current barriers to commissioning more of this work.
13:00-14:00 Lunch & short film of a performance/interactive session from Arts & Cultural Organisation (TBC)
14:00-14:45 Afternoon session
- Sharing practical examples
- Reviewing the evidence
- Identifying priority areas for more arts and cultural interventions
14:45-15:00 Break
15:00-16:00 Afternoon session continued
- Action planning to identify steps to enable change in your locality
16:00 Close
* This programme is correct at time of publication, but programme content may be altered without notice to reflect speaker changes, which are beyond our control.
