- DRAFT -
- Business Plan -
prepared for
Fatima Regeneration Board
by
CHL Consulting Company Ltd.
in association with
Charlie O’Neill
October, 2006
- Step Right Up - Implementing the Arts & Culture Strategy for Fatima Mansions- Draft Business Plan - / September, 2006
Vers1/smcm/20.09.06
CONTENTS
Page No.
Executive Summary (i)
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. FATIMA ARTS & CULTURE STRATEGY
2.1
2.2
3. COMMUNICATING THE STRATEGY
3.1
3.2
3.3
4. ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT
4.1 Key Issues
4.2 Models Elsewhere
4.3 Options for Fatima
4.4 Recommended Approach
5. FINANCIAL PLAN
6. MONITORING AND REVIEW
7. APPENDICES
Appendix One
Appendix Two
- Step Right Up - Implementing the Arts & Culture Strategy for Fatima Mansions- Draft Business Plan - / September, 2006
1. INTRODUCTION
The Social Regeneration Plan for Fatima Mansions is the essential complement to the physical redevelopment of the estate. It is a visionary plan embracing a comprehensive range of actions across eight wide-ranging social programmes. These eight programmes are intended to address the needs and potential of the community, and are closely interwoven as an integrated strategy. The programmes cover health, education, arts and culture, employment and enterprise, sports and recreation, environment, community safety and sustainability, and landmark community facilities.
This document is a business plan for the implementation of the arts and culture programme. It is concerned with the identification of practical measures necessary to give effect to the 5-Year Arts and Culture Strategy (2006-2010). The overall goal of this Strategy is ‘to create a new and sustainable model of arts provision; to be fully integrated and managed within a community framework’. (Social Regeneration Plan for Fatima Mansions.)
Fatima Regeneration Board commissioned a team comprising CHL Consulting Company, Charlie O’Neill and Holohan Architects to draft this business plan. The work on the plan was conducted during June, July and August, 2006. The work programme included:
- a detailed review of relevant documentation, plans and studies
- consultations with key stakeholders and external experts
- a review of other models of community arts provision in Ireland and overseas
- a workshop involving representatives of stakeholder organisations and the community.
In addition to drafting the business plan, the consultant team are also undertaking
- an assessment of the functions, design and fit-out of the arts spaces in the Neighbourhood Centre
- the preparation of guidelines on the content of a prospectus for promoting the Arts and Culture Strategy and the Neighbourhood Centre
- the design and printing of a document which integrates the key elements of the Arts and Culture Strategy and this business plan.
The outputs of the team’s work on these tasks are being provided to the Regeneration Board under separate cover.
The consultant team wish to acknowledge gratefully the contributions and support of the many people who supplied information and generously gave their time and energy to participate in consultations and the workshop. Particular thanks are due to John Whyte and Niall O’Baoill who provided essential guidance at all stages of the work.
2. Fatima’s Arts and Culture Strategy
2.1 INTRODUCTION
It is clear from our research, consultancies and meetings – and from the published social regeneration plan – that even as it presently exists, Fatima’s Arts and Culture strategy is a unique, pioneering and fascinating model of local arts provision. More than that, its intention to deliver real participation and integration into the everyday life of residents, makes it internationally significant.
Broadly, the development of arts and culture in Fatima can be divided into three phases. Phase 1
Before and leading into the beginning of regeneration, the arts evolved naturally – but also under the direction of a number of key individuals and organisations – and became a central means by which the community explored, described and celebrated its own identity, culture and history. This phase of provision and activity was very under-resourced, project-to-project, and was usually reactive to other circumstances and events.
Phase 2.
With the advent of the Regeneration Board and the phase of planning activities leading up to the publishing of the Social Regeneration Plan, arts and culture provision became more planned and more integrated into the rhythms of change in the community on foot of emerging structures and new resources.
Phase 3.
This report, in effect, kicks off the third and most important phase of arts and culture development. Its launch pad is the published arts and culture chapter in the Social Regeneration Plan. This Chapter provides a testing and tuning of that 5-year strategy and identifies the key criteria for success. Recommendations on an implementation strategy are detailed in Chapter 3.
2.2 OBJECTIVES AND THEMES OF THE ARTS AND CULTURE STRATEGY
The primary objective of the published strategy and therefore phase three of arts and culture provision in Fatima is:
‘to create a new and sustainable model of arts provision; to be fully integrated and managed within a community framework.’
It further sets out an ambition that the strategy will vindicate the rights of residents to have:
‘an active and enriching cultural life in which the arts are a primary source of inspiration and learning.’
It sets out 5 main themes or areas of provision:
1. Create a continuum of arts provision for children and young people.
2. Design and deliver community-based arts education and training.
3. Advance new Public Art provision and practices.
4. Establish an innovative model of community arts infrastructure.
5. Develop the community as host to arts programming and exchanges.
As the physical and social regeneration programme continues; as the Regeneration Board, its executive and sub-groups progress their work; and as Fatima continues to attract interest and involvement from external organisations and agencies, the context and potentials of these five strands change too. Since the plan was published some elements have already changed. The following is a summary updating of the intent and actions under each theme.
Theme 1: Create a continuum of arts provision for children and young people.
It is proposed to build on the extensive arts programming and expertise of both Arklink and the Rialto Youth Project to work together with other services and individuals on-site and externally to deliver high quality arts provision for children and young people. The imminent commitment by Atlantic Philanthropies has led to a negotiation between all stakeholders to design, fund and deliver a measurable, long-term, out-of-school provision for children and young people. Based on early conversations, it seems likely that this will include a significant arts component and a crossover between arts activity, education and other areas. It has been agreed with the Board that when this process has been finalised the resultant plan must be integrated into this document and strategy.
Arklink is one of the most coherent and most strongly-branded arts programmes in Fatima. It is worth looking a little deeper at this as a microcosm of the potential for the more global arts strategy for Fatima.
Children on the Arklink programme are deeply embedded on a long-term basis in artistic practice. That’s because it has been a unique, resourced, planned, long-term arts programme. It caters for children between the ages of three and fourteen and is now in its sixth year. It is currently on the point of achieving one of its main goals, that of becoming ‘community-owned and led’ after five years of support by the Ark and other funders.
Emphasising its impact, ‘The Butterfly Effect’, Arklink’s planned retrospective exhibition, presents a body of work which is of the highest quality. In this context, the work is presented not as work by children but as work by artists who happen to be children. Arklink has been a success story.
It’s worth noting that Arklink is challenging and upskilling a generation of previously excluded children to see the richness in their community’s life and be the richness in their own. This participation in arts activity is of course an enormously valuable and exciting development in itself. But successive evaluations of the Arklink programme have also found that the children who participated demonstrated many other so-called ‘non-arts’ outcomes such as imrovements in skills development, technical abilities, confidence, communication, school performance, teamwork, openess to take on other challenges, ability to make good judgements and the ability to understand and express complex ideas. These are fundamental indicators of successful social regeneration and mesh perfectly with the hoped-for outcomes of the arts and culture programme.
That the programme has had such a positive and fundamental impact in both of these areas of children’s lives – art competency and personal development – bodes well for the Arklink children themselves and for the future regeneration of their community. It proves that, though there were enormous struggles and funding crises along the way, a great, coherent idea and programme will deliver results. It has proven to be one of the major hooks in attracting Atlantic Philantropies to the table with a view to funding an ambitious expanded plan for out-of-school provision for children and young people into the longer term.
In some ways the totality of the arts planning for Fatima needs to learn lessons from the Artlink programme and then add more ambition. It should learn from its coherence; its strong identity and brand; its long-term and sustained impact; its commitment to quality and professionalism; its ability to include children of varied aptitudes, backgrounds, commitments and family circumstances; its bravery to - in effect - build a new model.
Theme 2: Design and deliver community-based arts education and training.
This identifies the need for new partnerships and pilot projects to be established to design and deliver learning opportunities and educative experiences for:
• people traditionally excluded from arts education
• arts students interested in the nature of participatory arts practices
• community and youth workers who want to drill deeper into how the arts can be used in their work and have these skills recognised and accredited
This theme would be delivered through partnerships and contracts with external players. The National College of Art and Design (NCAD), MACNAS, Dublin City Council (Arts Section), the City of Dublin Youth Service Board (CDVEC) and CityArts have been approached and some or all of these might end up playing a role in addressing these areas of need.
The published plan, 8 Great Expectations, identified the task as: ‘to correlate these relationships and work towards the establishment of a formal consortium arrangement within which the design and delivery of community based arts education and training can be more fully addressed.’
NCAD itself is restructuring its own curricula and there is a possibility that one of these courses could be located in Fatima while pathways could be cleared to ensure participation by workers and residents in the college’s on-campus part-time, evening, Diploma and Degree programmes. Meetings have been held with Macnas and they themselves are already initiating a significant performing arts faculty in conjunction with NUI Galway. There will also be a need to attract in external providers and international experts.
Importantly, current local thinking also identifies that a significant opportunity exists for linkages to be established between this area of arts educational work and that of the evolving role of the Community Digital Project and Social Economy aspects of the Social Regeneration Plan.
There appears to be a strong need to bind all these elements together into one strong central concept in order to rationalise and maximise resources, impacts and a sense of identity and ownership.
Theme 3: Advance new Public Art provision and practices.
This area is one which has seen some development and action. A funding stream of €75,000 has already been released and invested in various initiatives out of a total of €250,000 which has been allocated though the Social Development Plan. This money was secured as a community dividend from the development and not under the more usual Per Cent for Art mechanism. This allows for more flexibility and independence in terms of how the funding is utilised.
Careful agreement and co-operation around policy, implementation and facilitation of public art has been negotiated between a range of agencies and players. These include Dublin City Council’s Parks Department and their architects, the RPA/Luas, City Arts Centre, Rialto Youth Project and other on-site services.
A Public Art Team is in place to progress this agenda. The team has concerned itself with evolving a high standard of participatory arts practice and an initial phase of commissioning and evaluation has been completed. A new phase is being developed, branded, communicated and it is planned to launch this in late 2006.
From early on the Working Group felt that the Public Art offer would need to be invited and commissioned from within a community framework and that public art projects would need to be educational and collaborative in nature. They also wanted to support the existing arts and cultural practice in Fatima.
Dublin City Council shared its vision of public art when it published its preferences - and the latter correspond well with the vision of the Working Group. In summary they are that public art projects might record or comment on the transformation of the community – in particular through music, drama, literary processes and festivals. City Council wants to see imaginative projects that generate local involvement and a new kind of participation. The Council puts a particular focus on children and young people and achieving high levels of community participation in the design and long-term sustainability of the new environment.
The next phase of the Public Art process will concentrate on the present moving into the future. The Public Art team reiterates that any new thinking or Public Art provision must engage upfront with the fact that Fatima is a small community and that there is a unique intimacy to its arts and cultural processes.
The team has come up with seven action points to progress the Public Art agenda including
• a new policy statement
• a mechanism to formalise the active involvement of Dublin City Council, the developer and RPA/LUAS.
• an operational timeframe
• a contract with City Arts Centre
• a scoping of funding requirements and identification of possible sources