News and policy brief - December
Crafts Council, news and policy briefing
10th December 2009
Section I: Policy developments, consultations and reports for Crafts Council response.
1. New creative and cultural sector apprenticeships
2. Policy developments in higher education
3. Where next for the creative industries?
4. Children and young people: education policy developments
Section II: news and publications, for information
5. Craft National Occupational Standard nears completion
6. Arts Council England policy developments
7. Jeremy Hunt on 15 years of the Lottery and other Conservative policy developments
8. Parliamentary watch
9. New code of practice for graduate interns in the creative industries
10. Do it Yourself: cultural and creative self-employment in hard times. A report by New Deal of the Mind for Arts Council England.
11. Heritage Craft Association plans for development
12. New paper on the importance of investing in research and development from Mission, Models Money: It’s not Rocket Science
1. New creative and cultural sector apprenticeships
More details have emerged about the new programme of apprenticeships to be run by the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural Skills (NSA), which was announced in October.
Writing in Arts Industry and Arts Professional magazines, Pauline Tambling, Managing Director of NSA, outlined the thinking behind the programme and explained how it will operate. Its intention, she said, is to create a structured way of bringing non-graduates into the sector, in order to give more opportunities to young people who have been inspired by arts education, and to diversify the workforce.
The programme aims to create 1,125 apprenticeship opportunities over 3 years. The six currently approved apprenticeship pathways that are relevant to the arts will be on offer (live events and promotion, music business, technical theatre, costume and wardrobe, cultural heritage venue operations and community arts), along with new pathways that are not specific to the arts but can be developed in an arts context, such as business and administration, finance, marketing and communication, customer service and IT.
The NSA will find apprenticeship opportunities, which can be shared across two or three employers if appropriate, and match them with relevant courses in an FE college.
Employers will be required to pay their apprentice the national minimum wage, but the NSA will provide support to minimise the administrative burden of hosting an apprenticeship, including help with job descriptions, training partners, payroll and qualifications.
Issues and impact for the craft sector
The format of the apprenticeships and support available should help to enable makers and craft-based businesses – who have previously found the apprenticeship model somewhat inaccessible – to get involved in the programme.
Crafts Council Actions
We are in touch with the National Skills Academy to discuss ways of ensuring that pathways into the programme are readily accessible to the craft sector.
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2. Policy developments in higher education
Debate continues on the likely impact of the government’s new strategy for higher education (HE), Higher Ambitions. Published in November, the strategy seeks to improve universities’ performance in six key areas:
1. Improving access for everyone with the ability to benefit from HE
2. Expanding universities’ contribution to economic recovery and future growth
3. Strengthening the research capacity of universities and its economic impact
4. Promoting high quality teaching
5. Strengthening universities’ role at the heart of our communities and shared intellectual life
6. Maintaining excellence under tighter funding constraints.
The rhetoric around the publication of the strategy suggests that the over-riding aim is to strengthen universities’ economic impact and to ensure that they serve the needs of business. Many academics and commentators have expressed concern that this is a narrow and reductive view of the role of universities.
Even accepting the premise that universities’ role is to train people for work, it might be argued that the strategy appears to promote a worryingly narrow concept of which subjects are useful in this respect.
This issue was explored at a Universities UK conference Creating a Higher Vision: the HE contribution to the Creative Economy, held on 25 November. Nigel Carrington, rector of the University of the Arts, London, argued that the government’s emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects was in danger of undermining the creative industries, by failing to maintain the supply of people with creative skills to work in those industries.
Siôn Simon, Minister for the Creative Industries, refuted this argument:
“One of the things that [digital and creative employers] constantly say is that they need more graduates with high-level skills in STEM subjects…It’s a misconception that creative industries need only conventionally creative backgrounds. They also need high-level maths, physics and computer skills.”
Meanwhile, the government’s review of postgraduate provision is progressing. BIS has published a list of questions on the six key themes of the review, and is inviting responses by 18 December: http://www.bis.gov.uk/postgraduate-review/emerging-key-questions. BIS has also announced the makeup of a panel of five external experts who will advise on the review and it is definitely concerning that none of the five has an arts and humanities background.
We have previously reported on the proposed changes to the way that funding for research in higher education is allocated. The Crafts Council has been involved in an initiative by the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD, the organisation that represents all institutions that provide higher education in art or design) to produce a joint response to the consultation on the new Research Excellence Framework (REF).
The Crafts Council will also produce its own response with input from partners. The main points of the Crafts Council response will be the value of practice-based research to the craft sector, and concerns around those elements of the REF which may disadvantage it in an increasingly competitive funding environment.
Issues and impact for the craft sector
The key aim for the craft sector will continue to be ensuring that the teaching of craft in higher education and postgraduate provision in craft is not further eroded.
The craft sector and the broader cultural sector need to make the argument that it is not only STEM subjects that train people for economically useful work, and serve the needs of business and industry.
Crafts Council actions
We will be conducting research to provide robust evidence of the current status of craft provision in the HE sector in 2010. In the meantime, we will prepare appropriate responses to questions emerging from the review of postgraduate provision in discussion with colleagues in the HE craft sector, and respond to the consultation on the REF as outlined above.
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3. Where next for the creative industries?
The Crafts Council keeps a close eye on policy developments around the creative industries. We warmly welcomed the recommendations of Creative Britain, a strategy document for the creative industries published in 2008 by DCMS and BERR (the then Department for Business and Regulatory Reform, now part of BIS). Creative Britain took a broad view of the creative industries. Craft and other sectors associated with making real things with real materials took their place alongside broadcasting and digital media. The report also emphasised that the creative industries are driven by expressive value: that is, by the search for meaning, as well as by the search for profit. But in recent months, much of the government’s thinking and policy around the creative industries seems to be restricted to the digital media and their concerns. This was reinforced this month in a number of fora. For example, the Technology Strategy Board webcast a live debate on innovation in the creative industries, which was entirely focused on the digital media and the annual National Creative Industries Conference, which took place at the BFI in late November, was heavily weighted towards digital content and technologies. For a full report, see: https://www.eventsforce.net/.
Issues and implications for the Craft Sector
Recognition of the importance and potential of the creative industries is growing. The craft sector needs to ensure that it retains a place on this agenda, as one of the best ways of securing recognition and support.
Crafts Council actions
The Crafts Council will take every opportunity to make this argument through relevant channels including its research and advocacy programmes. We will continue to demonstrate the value of contemporary craft –in both the physical and digital environment – through our own programme of activity.
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4. Children and young people: education policy developments
The Queen’s speech included an announcement that the Children, Schools and Families Bill will take forward the recommendations of the review of the primary curriculum by Sir Jim Rose. The Crafts Council responded to a consultation on the proposed new curriculum and strongly supported the inclusion of Understanding the Arts as one of 6 curriculum areas (with some minor concerns about matters of detail). Ed Balls reported on the findings of the consultation in a statement to parliament on 19th November. The consultation had shown support at between 70 and 80% for the main proposals, and Ed Balls stated,
‘In the light of such overwhelming support from teachers, parents and pupils, we have agreed with Sir Jim that the new primary national curriculum will be organised into six broad areas of learning, rather than the current subjects with less detailed programmes of learning to allow greater focus on strengthening literacy and numeracy skills and more time to study essential knowledge and skills in depth.’
This is good news for the craft sector, especially as it coincides with the publication of new research into how children and young people make their career choices. The research, published by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), found that children as young as 12 have clear ideas about their career direction, which correlate closely with the actual career choices they make in later life. For the full report, see: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/PO/releases/2009/november/children.aspx
Issues and implications for the Craft Sector
This research demonstrates that children begin to decide on their career direction early, so if we want young people to see craft practice as a viable career, they need exposure to making, and to the idea that people do this for a living, early on.
Crafts Council actions
The Crafts Council has developed two new initiatives as part of its learning provision – Craft Club, an initiative for teachers to set up craft clubs in schools working with a national network of volunteers, and Craft Action Network, an online networking and information exchange for teachers and educators, to increase understanding of craft in schools and raise awareness of the opportunities it presents for skills development.
Link to our Participation and Learning Section
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Section II: news and publications, for information
5. Craft National Occupational Standards near completion
Creative & Cultural Skills has completed the consultation phase of its work on developing the National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Craft. The standards are intended to help individuals, employers and training providers plan appropriate skills development, a need that was highlighted in the Craft Blueprint. The completed standards will be published in Spring 2010, as one of a suite, which now cover most business and industry sectors in the UK.
Issues and impact for the craft sector
The new standards could provide a useful framework for training in the sector. The Crafts Council was actively involved in the consultation on craft-specific modules to ensure that they are relevant to the sector.
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6. Arts Council England policy developments
Arts Council England has been maintaining a high profile in recent weeks. At the end of October, Alan Davey gave a speech at the Culture is Right conference, in which he argued the case for investment in culture, both for economic and cultural reasons. He argued that every £1 invested in the arts by the public sector levers in £2 from elsewhere. But, in what is clearly the start of a pre-election campaign to influence the next government’s cultural policy, he added:
‘I hope any government will not solely return to a Millsean view of the most efficient creation of wealth being the sole aim of any society. While I have shown how arts money works hard, and does create wealth, it has an ultimate end that Ruskin knew was important to any society – the creation of beauty, and something that goes beyond the material and straight to who we are. Don’t let’s be afraid of talking about that – because it does matter. The role of artists is to give expression and meaning to the world around us, and the role of funders is to support them in what they do best – to challenge, to thrill, to excite and to inspire us; to produce the marvellous and the beautiful. To do so is also rational, economically sound, and is essential to our quality of life.’
More recently, in a speech to the National Creative Industries conference 2009, Alan Davey argued for sustained long term investment in the arts, and for the need for closer partnerships between the arts and industry, if the sector is to realise its full potential to contribute to future economic prosperity.
Also in November, Liz Forgan, Chair of Arts Council England, gave a strong defence of the arm’s length principle in arts funding, arguing that it was good for both the arts and for politicians to have an independent funding body. And on 1 December the BBC ONE arts programme, Imagine, profiled Arts Council England’s Own Art scheme that enables people to buy contemporary work through interest free loans. Over 17% of purchases are for craft, which makes the scheme very significant to the sector. For more on this story, see: http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/about-us/press-room/view/2009/bbc-one-imagine.
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7. Jeremy Hunt on 15 years of the Lottery and other Conservative policy developments
Jeremy Hunt, Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, made a major speech on the National Lottery last month, on its fifteenth anniversary. Portraying the Lottery as a Conservative achievement, undermined by the Labour government, Hunt promised a future Conservative administration would cut down on bureaucracy and return the proceeds of the Lottery to the original four “good causes”: sport, arts, heritage and charities.
This could be good news for the craft sector, although people who know the detail of the distributors’ work may be concerned about a proposed clampdown on costs, and how much these could be further reduced without compromising the quality of their work. The Conservatives have also announced plans to free national museums from direct government control, and give them a new independent status. The Conservative Cultural team has launched a new blog and news site this month, which could be a must-read in the run up to the election:
www.culturepolitick.com.
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8. Parliamentary watch
David Drew, Labour MP for Stroud, highlighted the importance of craft to the local economy in a debate on affordable housing in rural areas on 4th November:
It is no good building houses in the countryside if we do not provide jobs to go alongside them. Again, however, it is a complete myth that there is no work in the countryside. That is what is so annoying. Those of us who live in rural areas know that there is plenty of work there—in the public services, in the care industry and providing the basic core services that we need. There is, of course, also a growing provision and need in rural areas related to crafts industries, because those industries can operate and deliver from anywhere. If we can get broadband to some of our more isolated rural communities, people can work from home.
David Taylor, Labour MP for North West Leicestershire secured an adjournment debate on 29th October on the furniture industry, and the need to provide support for small-scale manufacturers. To read the transcript, see p.66 of this document: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/chan133.pdf
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9. New code of practice for graduate interns in the creative industries
The creative industries have a long tradition of relying on unpaid work experience and internships as entry routes. While these can be useful and beneficial to both host organisation and trainee, such entry routes can exclude people who cannot afford to work for free, or who do not have access to the kind of contacts and networks that can help secure sought-after placements. There is a concern that the prevalence of unpaid entry-level work has helped to keep many areas of the creative industries the preserve of the well-connected middle class.
In response to these concerns, SkillSet (the Sector Skills Council for the Creative Media) has published a Code of Practice for Graduate Internships, working with Arts Council England and other training bodies, including Creative & Cultural Skills. The Code recommends that all internships and placement opportunities should be advertised and recruited equitably. It recommends that work experience placements, in which a student is essentially observing and assisting, but not carrying out useful work, should not be more than a month long. It suggests that people undertaking internships, which typically last longer and require the intern to perform useful work for the organisation, should be paid at least the minimum wage. There are also guidelines for those taking on trainees.
http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_14315.pdf?1
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10. Do it Yourself: cultural and creative self-employment in hard times. A report by New Deal of the Mind for Arts Council England.
Although this report was published in July, it did not receive widespread publicity. As Alan Davey referenced it in his key note speech to the Culture is Right conference (see News – Arts Council England policy developments) it seems timely to revisit it. The report found that schemes to get unemployed people back into work, notably the Future Jobs Fund, are focused on working with large employers, mostly in the public sector. There is a serious gap in funding and support to encourage unemployed people into self-employment. This potentially has a particularly damaging impact on the creative and cultural sectors, where an estimated 41% of workers are self-employed. The report contrasts the situation in the 1980s when the Enterprise Allowance Scheme supported unemployed people to begin self employment, and many people launched successful businesses as a result.
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11. Heritage Craft Association plans for development
The Heritage Craft Association (HCA), which aims to support and promote heritage crafts is planning to register as a charity to enable it to expand its activities. We are really pleased that the HCA has signed up to support our campaign, Craft Matters and thank them for their support.
Meanwhile, the BBC is developing a series, Mastercrafts, to be presented by Monty Don, which will follow the progress of students learning traditional craft skills.
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12. New paper on the importance of investing in research and development from Mission, Models Money: It’s not Rocket Science
Mission, Models, Money (MMM) has published a new discussion paper on research and experimental development (R&D) in the arts and cultural sector. The paper argues that R&D is too often seen as the preserve of the science and technology sectors, and that the arts and cultural sectors should do more to formalise their approaches to R&D, and secure public funding for R&D. The report is concerned with research that leads to innovation in practice and new forms of cultural expression or service delivery. The authors focus on large public institutions, so the report’s specific application to the craft sector is limited but the report offers an interesting perspective on innovation, which may be of interest to some people working in the sector.
