I’ve just finished an unusually busy round of work in schools: insets with more than 100 teachers, workshops with more than three times that many students, all in the space of a few weeks. The work was arts-led and creativity-driven, intended to offer students a different perspective on certain subject matter and expose teachers to some processes they might not otherwise have access to.

It’s an interesting time to be working so intensively as an insider/outsider in our education system. I say ‘insider’ because I probably experience a wider variety of schools, both culturally and geographically, than most teachers, which offers a very broad perspective on ‘education’ as it now happens. But on the micro level, I’m always an outsider: as anyone who works in schools knows, each school is its own little universe, distinct in culture and operation, even if linked in its aims to every other school in the country, not to say the world. 

Still, having now finished this recent burst of delivery, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve glimpsed something of the zeitgeist when it comes to publicly-supported education in this time of global austerity. And here’s what sticks. 

 - The teaching profession is harder than its ever been. Longer hours, more paperwork, more targets, bigger classes, fewer resources, more scrutiny. A friend working in finance said recently that he, too, faced these kinds of challenges. Yes, I said, but your paycheque probably involves several more zeroes than that of most teachers, none of whom will receive a fat bonus if they do a great job. The conversation ended there.

- There is nothing as much fun as a group of switched-on, fully engaged, creative teachers. I’ve written books and produced theatre, but I can honestly say that I’ve experienced some of my liveliest, most enjoyable professional moments while playing around with ideas and possibilities with teachers who clearly love their job and like each other. 

- On the flip side of the above, some teachers should not be teaching. If you’re loudly describing children as ‘impossibly thick’, you should leave or be forced to leave. If you’re allowed to say such things openly, amongst staff, perhaps even in earshot of students, your school’s leadership needs to change. Sadly, neither seems to happen very often.

- Strong leadership makes a strong school. A head teacher who gives up his afternoon to help support a student workshop is different from one who cowers in a corner as his staff feels free to openly abuse the practitioner (both scenarios I experienced in recent weeks). Probably obvious, but seeing is believing.

- Government’s various schemes, such as academies and free schools, seem to make not a blind bit of difference to any of the above. Pushing superficial reform while cutting actual resources is even more cynical than rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. It is more like encouraging lower-deck passengers to switch cabins, even as the hatches are spun shut above them as the water floods in below.

- The discipline culture in our schools is worryingly Orwellian. So many children can’t form an independent opinion yet can mach schtum at the merest gesture of their teacher. Where will this lead?

- Teachers are hungry to be more creative in how they teach yet too often have neither enough time nor virtually any structural encouragement to do so. Given this, it’s a wonder that so many teachers are still so very creative and engaged. Thank goodness they are, because they’re the ones keeping the whole creaking, sinking ship from going under altogether.

Posted via email from gregklerkx’s posterous

 

first published in ArtsProfessional on 19 September 2011 (www.artsprofessional.co.uk)

Austerity, debt crisis, end of days…whatever. I seem to be positively inundated with job prospects of late. It must be said that these are rather particular prospects, all being opportunities of one sort or another around the business of non-profit fundraising.

In the past four days alone, I’ve received about a dozen fundraising job opps via e-mail from a single head-hunter; the previous week saw about the same number. Throw in a few phone calls (‘Might you be available…?’), note that ArtsPro and ArtsJobs are a-wash in new FR gigs, and the sensible conclusion is that it’s happy days right now for those practicing the dark art of fundraising. (Disclaimer: I was a full-time practitioner of said dark art for more than a decade, but this blog post is in no way intended as an advertisement for future work therein. Faced with the choice of returning to the biz full-time or diving into a vat of battery acid, I’d get my trunks and goggles on. Still, it’s nice to be asked.)

 

Most of the gigs I’ve seen are for new positions in small to mid-sized organisations, including many dealing in the arts and culture. This is entirely understandable. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has made much noise about “professionalising” the arts, which means finding money elsewhere. This presumably would make it easier for Government to further reduce the current trickle of public arts funding to a barely discernable moistness.

 

To loosen up those privately held purse strings, Government has deployed a £100m matching fund. There’s also been some modest tinkering with a few philanthropy-relevant tax rules. And now comes the inevitable rush to weapon-up with professionals, the better for organisations to grab all that soon-to-be-free-flowing private cash. If only it were that easy.

 

Fundraising is mainly the business of building and maintaining relationships. That takes time. Even in this recession/depression the Tyrannosaurs of the UK arts scene will wield their fearsome fundraising machines to good effect. This isn’t because their cultural ‘product’ is inherently better than yours: rather, they’ve painstakingly built strong donor networks and long ago integrated into their daily workings (and budgets) the legions of professional fundraisers needed to turn devotion into dosh. Unfortunately, less experienced organisations often view hiring a full-time fundraiser as akin to recruiting a fiscal alchemist: if you hire them, the money will simply materialise.

 

There are other ways forward. Fundraising isn’t rocket science; a good consultant can bring meaningful fundraising nous to existing staff. If traditional funding sources are tapped out or locked up—an increasing likelihood—DIY solutions like crowdsourcing may offer a better path to success. And of course, there are cross-organisation partnerships: pooling resources to hire project-based fundraising help could prove cheaper and more effective than going solo.

 

Sadly, in the current rush to hire full-time fundraisers, there’s a real possibility that dozens of organisations will burn precious resources for little gain. There’s also a broader irony. The time to build a fundraising operation isn’t when things are tough but rather when an organisation is strong. Donors can smell desperation, which is no more appealing in fundraising than it is on a blind date.

Greg Klerkx is Co-director of Nimble Fish (www.nimble-fish.co.uk)

 

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If you only have 10 minutes to spare right now, skip the rest of this blog and go straight to this article. If you have a few more minutes, stay with the blog (I’m not typing for nothing here, folks.) But I’ll keep it brief.
 
The link is to a Newsweek article published this past July (in the vast Webiverse, you never know when you’ll stumble onto things). Its premise is that the US—global engine of innovation on so many fronts—is losing its creative edge: that is, its innate, societal ability to innovate and create.
 
That might seem like potentially good news for the UK. But it is in fact very bad news because the article unpicks, lucidly and in detail, the reasons this may be happening. And many of the wrong turns it reveals are about to be taken here, not least in the proposed scaling back of ‘creativity’ and creative provision as key focus areas for our schools, not to say society in general. I’ll stop there, the better to allow you to read the article.

Ok, one last comment: this is precisely the kind of case that we need to be making right now to government, whether local or national (it’s also the kind of mainstream journalism we need, but that’s another blog). The great irony of the Newsweek piece is that it cites the UK as being among the countries doing it right, creativity and innovation-wise. There’s still time to keep it that way: if you like this piece, don’t hesitate to forward it to your local MP or if you’re feeling bolshy, to the PM or appropriate minister.

Posted via email from gregklerkx’s posterous

Well, it’s done now. Twelve short weeks of planning, devising and creating and the weekend event called re:bourne is now history. Or not…plenty of the installations and performances elicited creative, tangible feedback from audiences that is being collated and kept and may appear again in not too long, whether through exhibitions or otherwise (watch this space…) And keep an eye on the re:bourne website plus our site and that of our partners, Workers of Art, for plenty of photos and videos of the event.

Days before re:bourne happened someone asked the question, ‘Why Sittingbourne?’ As in, ‘Why put all of this energy and creativity into an event here, rather than somewhere else?’ A simple question on its surface, but there’s a subtext, isn’t there? The question is really, ‘Why put all of this energy and creativity into a community with no experience of this kind of arts experience…and which is unlikely to understand it, let alone appreciate it?’

The answer to both questions is the same: Why not Sittingbourne? Why always London or Brighton or Canterbury? What intrinsic cultural advantages do audiences in those communities have over people in and around Sittingbourne, other than more regular exposure to interesting, engaging creative work? In which case, a vicious circle ensues: if one assumes that folks in the sticks won’t ever ‘get’ ambitious arts-led events, no one will bother to offer them. If they’re never offered…

But if nothing else, we think re:bourne has proven our case, not that of the cynics. We were told again and again that re:bourne should be taken as an experiment and that we shouldn’t be disheartened if our largely local audience didn’t get it, or were even hostile to what was on offer. Kind words meant here, but for us, missing the point. As demonstrated by the following sentiment, scrawled by a re:bourne audience member as part of an interactive installation, our re:bourne audiences did ‘get it’. They engaged fully in re:bourne, whether through something wonderfully simple like underwater UV body-painting (wait for the photos!) or through more abstract film and audio installations. Did everyone get it? Probably not. But not everyone gets what they experience at the Edinburgh Fringe or other high-profile, like-themed happenings (it’s just that fewer are ready to admit it).

Thanks to everyone who helped us make re:bourne happen. There’s a huge list of people involved so we won’t bang on here, but suffice to say that along with artists, officials, funders, and production crew, the people of Sittingbourne deserve our thanks as much as anyone. They gave shape to re:bourne. It’s their triumph as much as ours.

Posted via email from rebourne2010′s posterous