1. Arts Council England: Autumn Briefing
Thursday 15 November 2012
The Lowry, Salford
Global Rainbow, Preston 2012
Photo: Brian Slater
2. Agenda and timings for today
10:30am Registration
11:00am Welcome and introduction
11:05am The Arts Council’s organisation review
(including Q&A)
11:45am Revising our priorities
12:30pm Lunch
1:30pm The funding environment and making the case
(including discussion, panel session / Q&A)
2:55pm Closing comments
3:00pm End
4. Our vision and purpose
• our vision is to enrich people’s lives through their artistic and cultural
experiences
• our purpose is to lead growth and ambition in the arts and cultural
sector across England: investing public money effectively to
encourage and enable artistic excellence; championing the value of
the sector; and collaborating with the sector to ensure its future
resilience
• our success will be in delivering our strategy: Achieving great art for
everyone and Culture, knowledge and understanding: great
museums and libraries for everyone
5. Organisation review
• a result of the Government’s requirement that the Arts Council cuts
its administrative costs as applied to its grant in aid for the arts by
2014/15
• making savings on this scale has required a major restructure and
substantial reduction in staff numbers, and will call for new ways of
working
• we will remain an intelligent and collaborative investor, leading
growth and ambition in the sector; and being accountable for public
money
• we will have to do things differently, through more streamlined
investment processes and a more focused set of priorities - we will
do less and do it differently
6. Principal changes
• an overall reduction in staff numbers across the organisation from
559.5 full time posts to 442 (117.5)
• four Executive Directors, reducing from eight, accountable for
delivering our strategy, with the Chief Executive
• property costs will come down by 50% through reductions in the
size of offices, we will have main offices in London, Birmingham,
Manchester and Bristol, and smaller local offices to keep us close to
the arts and cultural sector, and to local government
• five areas covering London, the South East, the South West, the
Midlands and the North
7. One national organisation with local presence
• our thinking has been guided by the principle of being an intelligent
and collaborative investor - and by the need to protect our
relationship management capability, which is highly valued by the
arts and culture sector
• collaborative working, both internally and externally, will be at the
heart of what we do
• artform and cultural policy expertise will be distributed amongst our
staff working across the country – everyone will have a local and
national focus
8. Locations
North
Newcastle
Dewsbury
Manchester
Midlands
Nottingham
Birmingham
South East
Cambridge
Brighton
London
South
West
Bristol
9. Boundary change
• to ensure each area has an equally distributed workload, and that
we can have effective relationships
• the South West boundary will move eastwards to incorporate
Hampshire and the unitary authorities of Southampton, Portsmouth
and the Isle of Wight.
• our staff in the South West will build relationships with organisations
over the coming months, supported by their colleagues in the South
East
10. Leadership distributed across the organisation
National policy leads
• Children, Young People and Learning
• Creative Media
• Engagement and Audiences
National discipline leads
• Combined Arts • Touring
• Dance • Philanthropy and fundraising
• Libraries • Organisational resilience and
• Literature environmental sustainability
• Museums • International
• Music • Diversity
• Theatre
• Visual Arts
7
12. Executive Board
Chief Executive
National Director
Advocacy and
Communications
Deputy
Chief Executive
Chief Finance Officer
Executive Executive Executive
(Director Finance &
Director Director Director
Corporate Services)
13. North Personal
Assistant
Assistant x2 Area Director
Administrator
Director Senior Manager,
x3 Operations Senior Manager,
Advocacy &
Communications
Senior
Relationship Assistant x5 Assistant, Officer,
Manager x8 Operations Advocacy &
Communications
Relationship
Manager x41
14. Final post numbers
Posts 2012/ 2013/
2013 2014
Executive & Executive Support 22 13
Investment, Planning & Governance 39 21
Investment Centre 40 41
Corporate Services 74.5 56
Arts & Culture, including AELCU 55 44
Advocacy & Communications , including 33 30
Customer Services
London 60 63
Midlands 58 42
South East 58 36
South West 29 30
North 91 66
Total 559.5 442
15. Transition timeline
Over three phases
From now until December
• as many appointments as possible to Director roles
From January to March
• new Executive Board and wider leadership group making further
appointments to the new structure
From April
• external and internal recruitment to vacant posts
• The new organisation will be in place by 1 July 2013. There may be
changes to office arrangements and locations for some months after
this
17. Reviewing our priorities - what are we trying to achieve?
A small set of clear measurable priorities
• No more than five to six priorities?
• Not a ‘bundling together’ of multiple priorities
• Relevant across arts, museums and libraries
• The new priorities will form the basis of our strategic
funding and are aimed at gaps not addressed through
our other funding programmes which remain focussed
on our five goals
18. What do we mean by “goal” and “priority”?
A goal is a desired result that an organisation envisions,
plans and commits to achieve
• we will focus our activity, working with our partners, on five
long term goals; we will invite organisations to work with us
using investment to help achieve our goals
A priority is something given specified attention
• these will provide the focus for activity which the Arts Council
is uniquely placed to deliver directly, using strategic funds
19. Questions
• What would be your top three priorities (from the current set of
13) beyond 2014/15 and why?
• Which of these priorities do you consider will no longer be a
priority after 2014/15 and why?
• How should our priorities be refined in the light of our new
responsibilities for museums and libraries?
• External context for the arts and culture:
• what key changes in the external context might have a
bearing on our future priorities?
• how do you think the priorities need to be refined to reflect
this?
• are there any new priorities that we need to focus on from 2014
– 17 in order to deliver our goals and why?
20. Feedback
Send feedback to priorities@artscouncil.org.uk
22. The funding environment
• Chancellor’s Autumn statement 5 December
• the Arts Council is
o preparing the case for investment in arts and culture
o refreshing the priorities that sit under the five goals of Achieving
great art for everyone
o designing next investment strategy
o determining the processes to underpin it
• an external reference group will work with us
23. Making the case for arts and culture
The cultural sector is a credit to Britain
Through creating great art, building our communities and
contributing to economic growth:
o Innovation and regeneration across the country
o Building a talent ladder
o Promoting the UK on a global stage
•We have created a powerful platform for cultural, social
and economic growth
•The Olympics exemplified the strength of this platform
•We have a modest ask to government to allow growth to
continue
24. Making the case for arts and culture
• the Arts Council will support your communications and
engagement work
• use messages in our on-going advocacy work
• use examples and stories of the work that you do
What you can do
• write your own confident story about how you contribute
• use this story with all your audiences
• read Measuring the economic benefits of arts
and culture and add your economic impact study to the
Arts Council blog http://blog.artscouncil.org.uk/
• share the messages with your staff and board
• acknowledge your public funding and tell your story
25. Discussion
• What evidence of the impact of arts and culture on
either people or places can you share with us to help
build the case?
• What action can you take through your own local
and national networks to make the case?
Nominate someone on your table to chair and feed back
2 or 3 key points.
