Annual Report 2008

1. Annual Report 2008

2. Welcome! Its nearly Christmas – we’ve been so busy I nearly forgot to write the annual report – unheard of. Luckily I remembered and here it is. It’s been a challenging year and a time of great change in which we successfully completed the delivery of projects totalling £3 million. We achieved this with a small team and we’re sad to lose two longstanding members – our administrator Helen and Cath, for many of you, the helpful face of NCSP. Cath goes to manage the Creative Apprenticeship Programme for GNAF and Gateshead College – a brilliant outcome for her. We will miss her but look forward to working with her in her new role. Very well done Cath, and all of our thanks for your work. That leaves me (Judy) and Enis and Austin (our finance and admin team), our brilliant Board members and 2,220 of you, our members, and…an exciting new partnership, more of which later. Since our regular funding from Arts Council England has come to an end we are looking forward to 2009 and working in a more commercial way. 2008 has been a highly successful year for us, if not our best so far, as I think the following snippets show. Onward to 2009! Judy

3. Managing resources for continuing professional development 2008 was the final year in phase 3 of the ACENE led European programme through which we developed and ran five projects. The overall value was £1,211, 846 EU, but close to £3,000,000 in real value since as you probably know, all EU money has to be matched with between 55% and 62% of other funds. £339,404 was invested in skills through our continuing professional development fund and a further £96,156 was invested in business support for 273 micro businesses The bursary programmes alone supported 23,368 training hours

4. Managing resources for continuing professional development Regional Trainee Programme We managed funds on behalf of Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Alnwick Playhouse, Bright Creatives, Dance City, Isis Arts, Northumberland Theatre Company InterAct, the Sage Gateshead, Theatre Sans Frontieres, Tin Productions and the Tyneside Cinema enabling 103 trainee places to be created to a value of £316,600. Most of the traineeships lasted for 12 months

5. Supporting continuing professional development 657 new members joined NCSP We provided 111 one to one professional development planning surgeries We developed a new website. Since April 08 there have been 7,548 unique visitors and 12,547 visits We commissioned a business plan for a region wide framework for professional development planning

6. Researching and responding to gaps in provision We managed research into skills for festivals and events We researched the needs of people who provide professional development planning (PDP) services to people working in the cultural sector We teamed up with the University of Northumbria, working with Peter Beven to deliver a programme of seven seminars on different approaches to delivering PDP We worked with Peter and LiteratureTraining on the production of a resource pack based on the seminar programme – available on our website shortly

7. Researching and responding to gaps in provision We have provided informationto a number of stakeholders to support their work with the sector, for example, Era Ltd, who are researching the needs of the commercial creative sector on behalf of ONE NE, the Arts Council NE, who are researching the skills needs of artists, and we maintained our support and involvement in the Newcastle University Business School research into sustainable business models for the cultural sector – this project has initiated some fascinating discussions within the sector about for example, why artists are generally poor, and brought to our attention national and international examples of ways in which artists are getting their projects to market in the internet age.

8. Co-ordinating solutions across sub sectors Creative Apprenticeships We’ve been working with Northumberland Strategic partnership towards developing a model for creative apprenticeships that can work in a rural area and reflect the unique character of the sector in Northumberland Cultural Leadership We have been asked by the Gateshead Newcastle Arts Forum to spearhead the development of a bid to the Cultural Leadership Programme on behalf of the sector outside Tyne and Wear – we’re currently consulting with potential hosts in the sub regions in readiness to submit a bid in the New Year

9. So what next?

10. What next? With the end of the Arts Council’s European programme, and indeed their support for NCSP as an RFO, we are transforming ourselves into a more commercially driven organisation in which income generation will play an important role. This year we’ve done the business planning and now we’re ready to put our plans into action…read on

11. 09 Our three priorities will be: Business development – developing products on behalf of the whole sector across the region developing partnerships to draw down resources for the benefit of the whole sector

12. Our second priority… The value of web based resources will continue to grow. We want to investigate web 2 technology and explore the full range of interactive tools and how they might be developed to support continuing professional development in the region, and beyond. This might be the creation of on-line communities, the sharing or exchange of resources, the development of ideas emerging from new collaborations…

13. Our third priority… …is our new partnership with People into Enterprise and our joint new programme to support and grow the turnover of the region’s micro businesses. Its called Culture Works and we hope to launch it in the late spring – we’ll be posting news of this on our website, so look out for details. We’re extremely excited about the many possibilities this new partnership potentially creates and delighted to be working together on a project we believe will bring something quite uniquely special to the regions creative businesses.

14. Governance Board members 08 • Chair Jerry Hall – the Design Group • Deputy chair Iain Watson – Tyne and Wear Museums Directors • Dr Eric Cross Dean of Cultural Affairs, Newcastle University • Gillian Firth Fund raising manager, Live Theatre • Victoria Smyth Director, Aida • Anne Allen Bowman Solutions • Colin Mitchell Wansbeck District Council • Patrick Conway Individual • Rosi Lister North of England Regional Manager, The Churches Conservation Trust • Wendy Smith Head of Practitioner Development, the Sage Gateshead • Observer Patricia Stead, Arts Council North East

15. Governance 3 Directors resigned during the year – Julia Mitford from Explore Music, Katherine Zeserson, Director of Learning and Participation at the Sage Gateshead, and Patrick Conway We would like to say publicly - a huge thank you to all our Board members for their solidarity this year – without which I’m sure we would not be sailing into 2009 with quite so much confidence and belief!

16. Acknowledgements Many thanks go to Era Ltd for their work on our business plan Peter Beven at UNN for his work on our IAG/PDP programme Philippa Johnston and LiteratureTraining, and Peter Beven for the IAG/PDP resource pack Newcastle University Business School and the sustainable business models team, with whom we learned a lot Sarah Armstrong from Business Link for her valuable advice

17. Staff Alan Barber – book keeper to June 08 Cath Critchley – Outreach Worker Austin Futers - accountant Jill Laverick - part time information worker to March 08 Judy Seymour – Director Enis Smith (Admin Solutions) – book keeper and office support Helen Watson – Administrator to April 08

18. We would also like to thank… • Clare Satow (Bill Quay print shop), Michael Hirst and Cath Walshaw for a beautiful venue and divine catering for a Creative Dinner • James Rebanks and Anna Whyatt at Era Ltd for our business plan • Phil Lindsay at Presence Multimedia for our new website • Ali Johnson for facilitation • Peter Beven for the IAG seminar programme and with Philippa Johnson from LiteratureTraining, a new resource pack for IAG practitioners And finally, Jane Shaw for our new programme: Culture Works!