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Robin Simpson reflects on the role local authorities can play in getting people involved in the arts.
It all started on a Friday evening 16 years ago when I was kidnapped on the way home from work and taken to Great Casterton College. Lined up in the hall with a dozen other men I was told to move my right foot forward, place my left foot out to the side, then bring my right foot across to join my left foot. We had to repeat this process over and over.

I was scared, nervous and terribly self-conscious. But as soon as the music started I was hooked and, having mastered the basic slow waltz, my kidnapper and I went on, over the next five years, to learn the quickstep, tango, rhumba, cha cha cha and many other dances. We were very proud and excited when, at the end of our second term of ballroom dancing lessons, the teacher told us our foxtrot was going to be good though we were slightly deflated when she made exactly the same statement two years later!

Finding ways to participate in the arts is not always so easy. My own experience as an amateur French horn player trying to find an orchestra or band to play in, each time I have moved from one part of the country to another, is a tale of unearthing some of the most secret of societies. On most occasions, a fair degree of perseverance, resourcefulness and lateral thinking was required to discover rehearsal times and places. It is worrying to consider how many people who have been inspired to take part in the arts have not made it through the impenetrable mazes we seem to inadvertently erect.

In 1991 national voluntary arts umbrella bodies and local authority arts officers came together, with the support of the Carnegie (UK) Trust, to create the Voluntary Arts Network (VAN) to promote practical participation in the arts and crafts and provide a single voice for the voluntary arts sector. Now, as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Arts Council England and others increasingly acknowledge the need to engage with the voluntary arts sector, VAN has become a partner in several major national initiatives to promote participation in the arts.

But in order for these initiatives to engage with the thousands of local voluntary arts groups where the majority of arts participation actually takes place, VAN needs to bring together artform umbrella bodies and local-authority arts officers, and to develop links with generic voluntary and community-sector umbrella bodies, the arts funding system, regional and national agencies, and many others in order to realise the original notion of a voluntary arts network.

VAN has been working closely with the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers (nalgao) for many years. A joint VAN/nalgao seminar The Participation Agenda: Local Authorities and the Voluntary Arts Sector at The Watershed, Bristol, on Friday 9 March 2007 has started a fresh debate about how local-authority arts officers and the voluntary arts sector can work together as an effective network in relation to the national participation agenda.

At the Bristol seminar VAN proposed a three-pronged approach to increasing and diversifying participation: The 3 Cs. The first is cognisance, or developing better understanding and appreciation of what is already happening in the voluntary arts sector. Most voluntary arts groups receive little or no public funding and can therefore slip under the radar of much research into participation.

Valuing the Voluntary Arts, a study jointly commissioned by VAN and Dorset and Somerset County Councils in 2000, found that there were at least 930 voluntary arts organisations in the two counties, providing 47,000 separate opportunities for the people of Dorset and Somerset to participate in the arts and crafts each year. Comparable research is needed across the country to establish the range and scope of existing participation and ensure that these opportunities are made widely available.

The second C is capacity building. Not all voluntary arts groups operate as secret societies but there is definitely plenty of room for improvement in relation to removing barriers to new participants. A programme of training, advice and case studies could make a major impact in helping arts groups to become more inclusive, thereby increasing and diversifying participation.

And finally, theres campaigning. An integrated national approach to public campaigning through the media and at neighbourhood level could create a sea change in levels of participation in the arts and crafts.

VAN and nalgao plan to continue the debate started in Bristol with a second seminar later this year aimed at national voluntary arts umbrella bodies. In the meantime we welcome your responses.

Robin Simpson is Chief Executive of the Voluntary Arts Network.
w: http://www.voluntaryarts.org.

This is an edited extract of his keynote speech at The Participation Agenda, a national seminar organised by nalgao on 9 March. To hear his speech in full, and also an address by Paul Kirkman, Head of Arts, DCMS, on the relationship between government and the voluntary arts sector, hear the podcast at http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk