Curious Minds

A Summary of the Share & Debate Events

We have now collated the input gathered at our summer ‘sharing and debate’ events for the arts and cultural sector across the North West. The events gave attendees an opportunity to discuss some of the key areas of focus for arts and cultural work with children and young people today and each event had one of the following themes; engaging the disengaged; partnership and collaboration; and quality and excellence. 

In advance of our forthcoming role as Bridge Organisation for the North West from April 2012 we took the opportunity to invite stakeholders to discuss what value an effective bridge organisation would bring to their work with children and young people.

Children, young people and families

Attendees told us we should be highlighting key educational and cultural agendas, developing a regional strategy and supporting National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) to develop targeted provision in line with children and young people’s real needs that provides progression routes - we should ensure we connect directly with and listen to children and young people, their families and schools. Stakeholders were also interested in how the sector can work collectively to use arts and culture to strengthen ‘family capital’, raise aspirations and break the cycle of deprivation.

Quality and excellence, CPD and networking

Attendees were unanimous in their desire to see active, value-adding networks established that enable new relationships and partnerships to be forged, practice to be shared and challenged, advice and support to be accessed and learning to be disseminated. It was felt that these networks would drive up quality and excellence and minimise duplication of activity. Relevant training and CPD opportunities were also requested, both for staff within arts and cultural organisations and for freelance practitioners. Alongside this was a desire for a common evaluation methodology and quality assurance system to be developed that would assess the impact and value of arts and cultural programmes for children and young people in a unified manner.

Audit, information, profile raising and advocacy

Stakeholders felt that a successful bridge organisation would provide a strong and unified regional voice, raising the profile of arts and cultural learning in a strategic, co-ordinated and effective manner while also connecting with and engaging the active support of the education sector. Our audit would clearly map the arts, education and voluntary sectors in the region and establish an accessible communication network between a wide range of organisations and individuals. The audit would also identify regional areas of need, helping ensure specific resources are targeted towards these areas.

Connecting sectors and providing coherence

Stakeholders are looking to Curious Minds to facilitate a quality, coherent discourse across the arts and education sectors that will enable all parties to develop a common language, understand each other’s needs and explore solutions. Arts and cultural providers should be offered support to tailor their offer to school priorities. New partnerships will be brokered that inspire, provoke and challenge and which are based on collaboration rather than competition. Delivery will be developed in line with a regional strategy and Curious Minds will ensure a more joined up approach, identifying gaps in delivery and minimising duplication. Organisations will be able to pool and share physical resources and venue spaces and work together to prepare joint funding bids...

Offering a critical eye, inspiring change

Stakeholders felt there was a real opportunity for Curious Minds to provide support to the arts and cultural sector, both in terms of providing a regional overview that supports strategic programming and in terms of providing constructive challenge that drives up standards of quality and excellence. Attendees asked whether this was an opportunity for us to work together to radically redefine the delivery models we traditionally use to work with children and young people. What is the new big idea that will give us different results from before and ensure we are having very different conversations to these ones in five years’ time?

Kate Hobson
Curious Minds