Sharing and debate event: Thriving Together: Partnership and Collaboration, Royal Exchange Theatre (Manchester), 2 August 2011

What value could a regional agency add to your work with children and young people?
Audit, information and advocacy: y One voice y Add weight raise awareness y Raising the profile of arts and cultural learning y Lobby the government to keep creativity on the curriculum y Marketing work in a way that ensures the buy-in of teachers y Coordination of marketing / promotion to schools and young people Quality and excellence, CPD and networking: y Help us to meet people we otherwise wouldnt, with space to create new partnerships y Regional database of contact details for experienced creative's details of what they have done, with whom, etc. y Advice and support through networks collective wisdom y Peer review of policy development the low down y Opportunities to connect more widely with practice within the sector y Sharing learning and expertise y Share evaluation and learning so were not all reinventing the wheel y Common evaluation tools and methods to assess impacts across the board y Find a unified way of measuring the impact / value of arts on young people tracking through the years Connecting sectors, making new links: y Spot / broker working partnerships Coherence common practice, language and vision: y Coherence across: the region; art forms; different kinds of organisations NPOs, private sector, etc. y Oversee a more joined-up approach, with the potential to develop wider progression routes y Vision y Identify the gaps in current delivery and help us to fill them y Joint funding bids / coordination y Share physical resources create pool of cameras, instruments, etc. for projects across the sector y Facilitate shared venue spaces for activities to happen Offering a critical eye, inspiring change: y Advise y Lead and challenge discussions

How would a fantastic bridge organisation operate?

y y y y y
We have useful information and expertise, which we widely share Accessible We genuinely listen, consider and respond We work broadly with a range of partners We promise only what we believe we can deliver

Themed table discussions: What is our ideal future when it comes to partnership and collaboration? What skills and resources do we already have? How can we work together to achieve our goal?
What skills and resources do we have already?
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We offer a range of opportunities for young people Pathways and signposting Providing pathways to professionalism We can be inclusive access for all children and young people Evaluation Advocacy Developing case studies and rigorous evidence about the impact of the work we undertake We are strong because we are here today involved in conversation that shows a strong, inspired sector We are good at talking, listening and understanding Collaborating / Sharing Sharing information and ideas. Creating an infrastructure for that to take place within. Encouraging talking to each other We have interesting partnerships with academic partners, for research and skills development Respectful of organisations unique selling points and areas of specialism Self deprecation We are flexible We are resilient We share the same ideals talking to young people, reflective, learning and collaborating. We are hard working so we can achieve our aims and support children and young people

y y y y y y

We are great at being creative and innovative we are experts in problem solving We inspire young people to seek brighter futures We have energy and commitment We believe in what we do We are consistent in our work and focus We are innovative and forward thinking as a sector

How can we wotk together to achieve our ideal future? y Check out other models of sharing - such as COOL or LARC in Liverpool y There are already a strong network of forums for collaboration geographical
and within art forms and target groups. But can we join these separate conversations together? We already have groups of similar organisations that meet regular to share practice and develop the offer across our provision Share resources Act as a collective voice We are an ideas generation and we need to encourage that more We do and should provide creative and exciting activities We need to develop opportunities for young people to be leaders We should be consulting with children and young people Ownership - lots of youthled projects We have lots of young people-focused venues and organisations but not enough We should be engaging our communities Reaching the hard to reach - increasing participation We build partnerships with schools problem solving alongside those schools, where collaboration can be difficult because of the setting

y y y y y y y y y y y y

We must do this... y Lobby the government for cultural offers to young people y Establish a common evaluation framework to build evidence for lobbying y Create new evaluation processes/formats y A new set of values to measure success and impact y Create communication pathways y LISTEN and respond to demand y Consult with users - find the gaps y Engage in peer evaluation y Be open with our assets / resources / intelligence y Preserve existing brokerage systems y We must not undermine already effective arts in schools services y Map whats there, what the quality is and how effectively it responds to changing context Wed like to do this...

y y y y y y y y y y y

Share back office services - HR, procurement, utilities ... Be smarter with pots of funding - procurement - special purpose vehicles and consortia to unlock funding Raise the bar for commissioners, so they demand more if they are non arts Facilitate partnerships to lead to joint working and accessing commissioning opportunities Direct programming Annual gatherings to share practice experience and knowledge. Peer evaluation Drive dialogue achieve greater impact Demonstrate and communicate impact in a way thats not onerous Track young people across different orgs. Get local right consistency on how brokerage happens a nuanced approach Concentrate on quality as well as hours

Wouldnt it be great if...? y We have an awards ceremony to celebrate our achievements as organisations and young people y We didnt have to scrabble for the same pot of money - applications open to everyone y Schools understood the process through which arts and culture happens (e.g. not just parachuting us in as projects) y There was less duplication and loss of knowledge, expertise and experience. y As a city region, there was an opportunity to draw and construct a map of what is out there for children and young people. Who is doing what and to what level of quality?, sustained activity, etc. This is a timely opp ortunity which will only be available for the next year y Bridging social capital connecting young people to others elsewhere to encourage mobility and aspiration

What should Curious Minds be thinking about or doing as a bridge organisation? What challenges are we likely to face and how can we overcome them?
Persuading decision makers how are you going to do this? Establishing a shared vision and reasons for engaging Clarity in your key conversations with networks streamline these networks and avoid duplication Mapping in a changing climate gather, aggregate and communicate avoid duplication Find, map, bring together existing forums

Learning from (not duplicating) existing successes i.e. COOL , PANDA build similar models that are appropriate to each other Strike a balance between the formal and non-formal offer Get to know USP resources within organi sations and facilitate matchmaking Define clear routes in and through for children and young people Share tenders and grants across the sector and within it Regional quality commissioning framework Provide quality freelancers build new relationships Freelance networks Also to manage networks within networks Challenging people to raise the bar Peer evaluation sourcing critical friendships Signpost to provision Create a culture vultures peer support platform Open resources, including contacts for example, a list who was there at certain events Ensure you are a partner and not just the quality police Make sure you are standing within the conversation not outside of it Need to ensure Curious Minds is diverse and not uniform Ensure we all have clarity of role and relationship Ensure you are courageous Accountability set clear guides on how arts and cultural organisations are accountable to you and how you are accountable to arts and cultural organisations Create a common and inclusive language for the arts and Arts a bilingual flow, e.g. argot which has long been recognised in prison settings Define what schools are looking for match to what we as arts organisations are looking for Children and young people how do we talk about them, what do they want to be called? Cant come across as patroni sing Approach young people as consumers and maptheir journeys Manage expectations we cant do any more for less but we can do less and better More events speed dating to help build relationships and share provision . Curious Minds should be leading that collaboration Give us space within events to talk freely germinate partnerships How do we get the organisations that arent here to engage? Dont be limited to existing ne tworks make invitations clear

y y y y

y y

y y

y y

y y

Take away the inward -facing mindset Will people travel to Clitheroe , etc.? But also not fair to ask Cumbrians to travel to us. Split networks geographically, two events partnerships are more likely to be more local Perception of Curious Minds role asking for input from us now, but risk of being seen to have favourites. How to let everyone know. Cross-regional mapping and audit Commissioning sense bringing partners outside the sector to the table to enable funding Making links into other interesting sectors sports, health, business Bring art to settings that wouldnt normally have the arts Build collaboration with non-arts partners- young people, voluntary sector, youth employment, education, commercial sector Brokering relationships for the benefits of children and young people business, corporate social responsibility Look at creative industries, not just traditional art forms Similar networking events for young people forums that you can use as your most important resource Raise awareness of arts, cultural and creative industries in all schools

Acrostics and Haikus

Y outh-led O rganic U nderstanding N eeds G enerating Funds P rovision E quality O ptimistic P ro-active L eaders E volution C reative O utward Facing L istening L earning A rts B rokering O riginal R ealistic

A ctive T alking E ducating A spiration R esourceful T ransparent Appeal to people Who dont care for art that much? As well as converts Invite everyone New faces outside this room Are also curious Find and map learning Partner, people, open-minds But do less better