Organisation Development – What’s that all about then?
Helen Miah, Head of Culture
June 2009
In 2008 I supported an application to the Arts Council South West from No Added Sugar (aka Toni Robinson and Gordon Dickinson) for funding for them under the banner “organisational development”. In other words money to help them understand more about and make improvements to the way they operate as an organisation and an arts business. Lots of artists, in lots of genres and especially those who work in community arts often struggle with balancing wanting to do their own art work, with work that generates income. Most of the time they can’t afford administrators or co-ordinators and find themselves with either way too much or not enough, most often it all coming at once or not at all! In supporting Toni and Gordon I made a commitment to help share the learning and experience so that others could also benefit.
Here’s my first review and reflections…
Last Saturday morning I met Toni and Gordon in their wonderful home in Purton. A fresh pot of coffee and a packet of fags and we were set, I started by asking them “what’s it all about then, this organisational development thing?”
GD “it’s a chance for us to sort out in our heads a definite end goal, time and support to help us work out where we want to be and how we can get there”
TR “some funding to allow us to develop quality marketing materials so we can show potential funders and clients. Helping us to work closer with local media to promote our work and to understand how through the arts we deliver against a wide range of priorities. We know much more about what boxes we can tick now. It isn’t always about the final product either. Often schools get in touch cause they’ve got an idea for a mural or a sculpture but now we also promote how by working creatively we also help them with other targets maybe about personal and social learning, the environment, issues of identity or culture”
GD “it’s also been about us having an opportunity to focus on our own individual artistic practice and work out the balance between that work which is personal to us and that which is community based”
TR “yes, how to manage what we do and we don’t take on, evaluating what will really help us in moving forwards, sometimes we just take on work because it’s money, but then feel frustrated when the work isn’t stimulating or taking time away from our own personal work.
GD “I feel we’ve learnt how to embrace the lean times to find space for our own creativity”
That all sounds quite familiar does it not? Toni and Gordon have been working with Ruth Jones Consultant, she’s been quite challenging and forced the pair to look at their work from a different perspective. In typical honest style the conversation continued…
GD “I realised Toni had been taking on most of the office work, getting frustrated with her when I couldn’t focus on my work because she wanted to do another funding application. Ruth has helped me realise this and understand about full cost recovery, so I now take an active part in the applications and concequently can geer them more towards what I want to do. We now make sure that we charge for all our preparation and project management time as well as the actual time we are delivering activities.
TR “Ruth helped me understand more about the pressures that funders are under and that I need to be more succinct in proposals, expecting folk like you (pointing at me) to read pages and pages of ideas is just not realistic!” Trouble is it’s hard trying to convey visual ideas in words, I always want to say too much – our passion takes over! We’ve also learnt more about how to work with the media to PR and promote our work”
This led into an interesting discussion about our local media, the lack of critical review and the tendency to report on events after the occasion and not before. Of often berated the lack of real artistic criticism in Swindon and we discussed whether the arts community could be more critical of each other. Are we just too nice in Swindon? Certainly the visual arts sector support each other’s exhibitions and activities but do we really offer criticism and reflection on the work or just pat each other on the back? Is this helping our artistic practice?
To conclude I asked them both for their top 3 messages
1. Saying no to work and projects that don’t ft with our priorities both personal and work related.
2. Respecting our own work enough t feel comfortable to charge for time
3. Having the confidence and believe in what we are doing to really “go for it” and not rely on others and playing to our strengths!
So what next?
“We are going to produce a 3 year business plan in visual format, have got 5 funding applications in (interestingly not to Swindon Borough Council or Arts Council) Gordon has a solo exhibition at the Post Modern and work at Fresh Air 2009 and we will get our website finished!”
… and I plan to catch up with them both in a few months time to find out how they’ve got on.