‘Your Place or Mine? Engaging New Audiences with Heritage’

A national conference organised by English Heritage and National Trust

Manchester Town Hall on 2-3 November 2006

The conference aims to motivate and inspire people involved in community engagement and heritage work, through sharing ideas and experiences, learning practical skills and debating key issues. It is a unique opportunity to look at how and why we engage new audiences, such as people from Black and Minority Ethnic groups, young people, people on low incomes and people with disabilities, with heritage.

A dynamic combination of workshops, debates, panel discussions and performance will look at the realities faced in the sector: from sustaining new audiences to understanding the needs of different social and cultural groups, from what to do when things go wrong, to embedding culture change across your organisation. There will be practical sessions for building skills, sharing ideas, learning from innovative projects and meeting new colleagues. The conference will include work on display and in performance by community groups, who will share the platform in talking about the impact of this work.

Who should attend?

· Professionals working in outreach or audience development across the heritage sector.

· Professionals in marketing, conservation, historic properties, and others within the heritage sector for whom engaging with communities is an increasingly important part of their work

· Policy makers and influencers with interests in heritage and cultural tourism

· Organisations outside the heritage sector who work with community groups who may not realise the potential of using the historic environment to involve and engage their groups.

For further information, visit:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/yourplaceormine

Conference programme and booking information will be sent out in May. To join the conference mailing list, please send your name, address and contact details to:

0044 (0)1273 882112

conference@sam-culture.com

"Up until February she was responsible for Sure Start, the government's flagship scheme to provide family support services in Britain's poorest areas. Now she is chief adviser on children's services to the education secretary, Ruth Kelly. Eisenstadt is clearly thrilled at the prospect and smiles broadly as she describes what the job involves. Whereas before she was responsible for implementing policy, and making it work on the ground, her job now is to draw on her experience and come up with ideas about how things should work."

A fascinating insight into what makes one of the most powerful people in education tick.

Last week's budget had a distinctly educational theme. It's a moot point whether it is because of Muggin's turn or as reward for those MPs who voted for the recent White Paper. No mention of pensions. No mention of Health. Education had its day in the limelight. 'Excellence in Education: My priority', said Gordon

It's good that a government puts learning at the centre of thinking. The budget was a posy of glossy bits though, rather than a strategy.

The surprise for schools was the celebration of science teaching - the promise of 3,000 extra teachers and the announcement, not usually the province of chancellors, that science will be benchmarked alongside numeracy and literacy.

Gordon Brown promised lots of extra loot for headteachers - £100k or so if they are lucky. He used curious language, saying that the heads would get the money, not apparently the school or its governing body. A pendantic point perhaps but governing bodies have the legal responsibility for budgets and school policy. Our chancellor lives in the romanticised world of the heroic head teacher.

The significant moment of course was the announcement that by 2008 the spend per pupil in the public sector will match that in the private sector. It wasn't clear whether this would include catch up in capital spending on buldings. Nevertheless, a ground breaking statement. 

In other education sectors there was decent news in the opening up of learning opportunities to young adults and a review of research funding.

Interesting but not exciting - no mention of how to improve further education, address deteriorating salaries in both FE and HE, and not a bean about the investment needed to achieve the learning community models being asked for by the new childrens services.

A copy of the budget speech>

At the foot of a Friday email from a London colleague:

"By the way, if you’re up late tonight, please flick onto Channel 4 at around midnight, and check out my theme music on the Poker Nations Cup. It’s my first time on terrestrial telly, so I’m very excited."

Whoever knew that the gambling sector supported new commissions and young composers! Maybe now it makes more sense why Tessa Jowell has remit for both...

The 2002 National Art Awards in Grahamstown, South Africa, has a flash driven web site worth the trouble exploring. Although a bit slow at times it is a worthwhile document of the event. Muscle through to vignettes.

The Dana Foundation's newsletters are treasures, often exploited on these pages. Go to the web site and sign up for the brain and the arts education editions.

February's issue of BRAIN WORK contained an article that should make grey haired arts educationalists feel a bit easier. For starters A Different View of Aging chucks out the myth that the brain sheds neurons by the bucket load each day, leaving an empty and vacuous mass/mess. The issue for us aging souls is in essence that we forget how to make use of neurons and they start to sulk in the corner, chatting between themselves about how much better life used to be.

While the researchers featured in the article are straightforward in their assertion that genetics plays some role in aging processes they equally stand up for a nurture model - be physically and socially active, stay socially engaged, and reduce risk factors ...

Here is where the arts cuts in. Do running at the gym by all means. Be the world's greatest Sudoku expert if you want. Better still, start to dance, paint and make up poetry.

Dana's reported researchers ran an Argentinian tango dancing sessions with a group of older adults and found improvements  in cognition and day to day tasking. Perhaps Argentinian tango dancing has the edge on other art forms but the principle seems to have been proved.

There seems to be a simple linear argument; socially and mentally enrich your life - the body gracefully responds by becoming stronger physically and mentally - live longer. No problem. 

The OpenSource event was held in Crewe last Friday – a partnership event from Amplifier, Sound Sense and Musicleader NW.

Marc Jaffrey, the Music Manifesto Champion sparked the debate off with some thoughts and ideas about the manifesto and other music education things. Specifically he touched on:

- The necessity to have a coherent, excellent grassroots offer as well as elite (not elitist) progression routes

- Issues around provision, especially where to young people those offers appear oppositional (even if they’re not)

- The high school becoming a portal for service/ extended hours/ etc

Other speakers included Pete Moser from More Music Morecambe who made sparked me off thinking about the difference between professional/ paid, organised, community music and other sorts of indigenous, home-based, local music-making. He also addressed and documented some of the issues surrounding the ever-changing community music landscape from the mid-1970s to the present day, that there is no such thing as a fixed, transferable model, that there are transferable principles but that’s as far as he would go because community music should be embedded and have a real sense of place.

Other issues touched on throughout the day were reflective learning – and making sure that freelancers especially have the space to do so. Also the age-old sector agenda problems of individualism/ personalisation vs generic/ stereotyped.

There were some points on which we all agreed – the centrality of young people and that we’re all learners and teachers all the time.

A worthy legacy to the Amplifier project would be this kind of knees-up once a year or so. Followed by a good stiff drink at the bar, and a jam in the back room…

And while we're on all things RSA, they have a good journal which is also available to read online.

I managed to miss this article about specialist schools, with input from Ted Wragg and John Dunford. Go read.

Firstly a warm welcome to anyone who's found us via my e-bulletin.

So, Sara and I went along on Thursday last to Mark Thompson's RSA lecture - he the BBC DG - at Whitworth Hall, Manchester Uni.

It began with us being late (because I'd daftly thought it was at the Whitworth Gallery) and thinking we'd missed the start, only to find that the man himself was later and we were kept waiting. Tsk.

For the Beeb, the stakes are high - undoubtedly moving core departments such as childrens and sport from London to Manchester/ Salford is a risk, and no-one yet knows if they have the money to do it the way they would like. The White Paper should be out today. Mark said he was determined to carry it through but I couldn't help feeling at what cost to him, the staff, the locality and the Beeb in general if it's anything less than the whole he has promised. Surely a half-baked move would look potentially even more tokenistic?

It was a foregone conclusion that he was going to sing the praises of the North and its creative and cultural industries - no-one drives five hours up the M6 to tell a roomfull of Northerners that they're anything less than great. Sara and I differ on this though - she thought he was overly praising and thus slightly patronising, I thought he was more sincere, not least given some of his best work at C4 and the BBC has come from oop here...

He was of course the consumate politician - said lots but nothing at all, but I'm sure that you don't get to being DG without that skill.

If you listen to the audio stream (which is promised soon) on the RSA site and stay with it right to the end, you might even get to hear my question to the man himself... 6music listeners and bloggers of the Beeb unite!

Mailout, the influential magazine and network for people in participatory arts has just featured a couple of artsednews friends on their back page. Chris May, once at Arts Council England now the director of East Lancs Creative Partnerships (are they the same organisation?) shared his thoughts - 'I want to see curiousity, imagination and the sense of joy in young children...our collective mistake is to forget [their capability]', he said. Chris named influences, including Tom Clarke, the 'lunatic theatre practitioner, who said 'write your own life'. Yup, good sentiment. We'd like more Tom Clarkes and more Chris's for that matter.

Below, on the same back page, Julie McCarthy, Chris's successor at ACE, gave an account of her working life, evidently thriving but extraordinarily busy. A thinker and doer that Julie.

Well, there's not much to tell at the moment - other than an appointment, seven founding partners and an intention to build a charity around youth and volunteering - but this is sure to be major news for the rest of 2006...

Sara and I have just had the most interesting hour in the office in a long while - challenging each other to write words relating to “high” and “low” art on post-it notes and survey the mess and paper wastage… (don’t ask, long story)

We spent about 10 minutes just writing one word per note and sticking them on the wall (“high”) or floor (“low”) – crude I know but effective. Then we read them out one note at a time, by category, and looked at them to see what they might say, whether they could be grouped, challenge each other on why, etc. Fascinating!

Here’s ten sample words/ phrases from both camps:

Opera, Ballet, BBC, Sound art, Obscure, Expensive, Site specific, Literature, Haute Couture, Commercial/ independent

Craft, Channel 5, Rap, The Charts, Ring tones, Cartoons, Karaoke, Understood, Folk, Film

Other observations…

There are some words that are genuine crossovers for whatever reason – folk, books, film, celebrity, animation, photography, craft, commercial, independent, self-publicising.

Some of the sames/ differences are about language – books/ literature, comic/ cartoon, video/ film.

Some of the sames/ differences are about “motive” – statement/ idea/ money/ public and self/ value/ expression/ private.

There’s something in all of this about being opposite and equal? Or fringe, edge, subversion, counterculture?

A recommended activity.

(from BBC Magazine)

The most valuable attitude we can help children adopt – the one that, among other things, helps them to write and read with most fluency and effectiveness and enjoyment – I can best characterise by the word playful . . . It begins with nursery rhymes and nonsense poems, with clapping games and finger play and simple songs and picture books. It goes on to consist of fooling about with the stuff the world is made of: with sounds, and with shapes and colours, and with clay and paper and wood and metal, and with language. Fooling about, playing with it, pushing it this way and that, turning it sideways, painting it different colours, looking at it from the back, putting one thing on top of another, asking silly questions, mixing things up, making absurd comparisons, discovering unexpected similarities, making pretty patterns, and all the time saying ‘Supposing . . . I wonder . . . What if?’

(by Philip Pullman, in The Guardian, 22 January 2005)

(Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005, via Arts Council England's Reflect and Review publication)