Big Society?

I originally agreed to write a blog a couple of weeks ago on The Big Society, and what it might mean for arts organisations. Having been to a conference on it, and what it might mean for local authority representatives and voluntary organisations in Staffordshire yesterday I’m glad I waited as I’m a little clearer following a day on the front lines.

We started the day with a graphic featuring three interlocking circles: Social Action, Public Sector Reform, and Community Empowerment.

A brave representative from Government Office laid out what current thinking on The Big Society was and the opportunities, then had to listen to the National Council for Voluntary Action lay into it. They were followed by a London PR agency which had been involving corporations in community projects; an academic who interrogated the meaning behind some of the words bandied about in Big Society literature; and in the Social Investment Bank and the National Lottery some existing organisations that might actually fund Big Society projects.

What did I take away from the day?

Any lingering hopes that there will be significant new resources to fund work should be disposed of. Money will be re-directed from existing programmes and will only fund small pilot and trial projects. Take one example, the idea that all sixteen year olds should do National Service. If even half of all sixteen-year olds were enrolled in this programme, the total annual cost would be more than the entire local authority budget on youth work in England. The Big Society bank will be run as a conventional loan business, and anyone taking a loan out will find a commercial rate of interest charged. Though the government is trying to develop youth volunteering it has, for example, cut the funding to national youth volunteering charity vinspired. The conditions that make it possible for people to contribute to Big Society projects are not equally distributed in society.

But…..

Much the most useful pointers of the day came in discussion on volunteering. It is clear that volunteering will only become a larger factor for arts organisations. Any future growth won’t be underpinned by recruiting new staff, and our ideas of the role of volunteers have to change from us using them in a very directive way to expand our capacity. Some thoughts:

How do we build common interest causes around our organisations?

‘What is in it for me?’ is the basis of most motivation for volunteering – so how do we articulate clearly what’s in it for our volunteers?

How can we use some of the developments in volunteering – from online micro-volunteering through sites such as Spotsoftime ; time crediting sites such as Spice and so on.

A couple of days before I had met the arts consultant Micheal G Noonan who is collecting and distributing examples of how the arts are using ideas like timebanking and online volunteering. His Youtube channel is here with lots of interviews with arts orgnaisations using volunteering in imaginative ways. And you can see me interviewed about a project my company is up to.