A State of the Region Report commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival Bridge by Festival Connect & Create

A State of the Region Report commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge). June 2012 1.

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 5 1.1

Structure of this report ............................................................................................. 5

Executive Summary ....................................................................................................... 6

Arts Council England and the Bridge organisations........................................................ 8

3.1

Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) Audit ............................................................... 9

3.2

Background to the Audit Process .......................................................................... 10

3.3

State of the Region Report ................................................................................... 11

Background information to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area ...................... 12 4.1

East of England .................................................................................................... 13

4.2

Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area .............................................................. 14

4.3

Greater Cambridge ............................................................................................... 14

4.4

Norwich ................................................................................................................ 14

4.5

Peterborough ........................................................................................................ 15

4.6

Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft ............................................................................. 15

4.7

Haven Gateway .................................................................................................... 15

4.8

North/West Norfolk and West Suffolk .................................................................... 15

4.9

Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) ..................................................................... 16

4.10 Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough ..................................................... 17 4.11

New Anglia ........................................................................................................... 18

5. Statistical data on the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area .................................... 20 5.1

Population ............................................................................................................ 20

5.2

What are the key messages from Table 2? ........................................................... 21

5.3

Poverty and unemployment .................................................................................. 21

5.4

What are the key messages from Table 3? ........................................................... 22

6. County Analysis by local authority areas ....................................................................... 24 7. Cambridgeshire ............................................................................................................. 25 7.1

Statistics ............................................................................................................... 26

7.2

Service Provision .................................................................................................. 26

7.3

Background concerns from audit interviews .......................................................... 28

7.4

Schools................................................................................................................. 31

7.5

Local authorities and their areas of responsibility .................................................. 32

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7.6

Cambridgeshire County Council ........................................................................... 33

7.7

Cambridge City Council ........................................................................................ 34

7.8

East Cambridgeshire District Council .................................................................... 35

7.9

Fenland District Council ........................................................................................ 35

7.9

Huntingdonshire District Council ........................................................................... 35

7.10

South Cambridgeshire District Council.................................................................. 36

8. Peterborough ................................................................................................................ 37 8.1

Statistics ............................................................................................................... 38

8.2

Service Provision .................................................................................................. 38

8.3

Background concerns from audit interviews .......................................................... 39

8.4

Schools................................................................................................................. 40

8.5

Local Authority and its area of responsibility ......................................................... 40

9. Norfolk .......................................................................................................................... 42 9.1

Statistics ............................................................................................................... 42

9.2

Service Provision .................................................................................................. 43

9.3

Background concerns from audit interviews .......................................................... 44

9.4

Schools................................................................................................................. 49

9.5

Local authorities and their areas of responsibility .................................................. 49

9.6

Norfolk County Council ......................................................................................... 51

9.7

Broadland District Council..................................................................................... 52

9.8

Breckland District Council ..................................................................................... 52

9.9

Great Yarmouth Borough Council ......................................................................... 53

9.10

Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council .................................................... 53

9.11

North Norfolk District Council ................................................................................ 53

9.12

Norwich City Council............................................................................................. 54

9.13

South Norfolk Council ........................................................................................... 54

10. Suffolk .......................................................................................................................... 55 10.1

Statistics ............................................................................................................... 56

10.2

Service provision .................................................................................................. 57

10.3

Background concerns from audit interviews .......................................................... 58

10.4

Schools................................................................................................................. 62

10.5

Local authorities and their areas of responsibility .................................................. 63

10.6

Suffolk County Council ......................................................................................... 64

10.7

Babergh Borough Council ..................................................................................... 65

10.8

Forest Heath District Council ................................................................................ 65

10.9

Ipswich Borough Council ...................................................................................... 65

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10.10 Mid Suffolk District Council .................................................................................. 66 10.11 St Edmundsbury Borough Council ....................................................................... 66 10.12 Suffolk Coastal District Council ............................................................................ 66 10.13 Waveney District Council ..................................................................................... 67 11. Education, Schools and Children and Young People .................................................. 68 11.1

Education ............................................................................................................ 68

11.2

Early Years .......................................................................................................... 68

11.3

Primary and secondary education........................................................................ 69

11.4

Primary schools and education 5-11 .................................................................... 70

11.5

Secondary schools and education 11-16 ............................................................. 70

11.6

Post – 16 education ............................................................................................. 70

11.7

Information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit .................................. 72

11.8

Arts and cultural education .................................................................................. 74

11.9

Henley – Music Education in England .................................................................. 74

11.10 Henley – Review of Cultural Education ................................................................ 76 11.11 Artsmark .............................................................................................................. 76 11.12 Artsmark information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit ................... 77 11.13 Arts Award ........................................................................................................... 78 11.14 Arts Award information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit ................ 79 11.15 Children and Young People ................................................................................. 80 11.16 Rural issues: information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit ............. 81 11.17 Opportunities for Children and Young People ...................................................... 83 11.18 Youth Services .................................................................................................... 83 12. Cultural sector – arts, museums and libraries.............................................................. 85 12.1

Arts Council England ........................................................................................... 85

12.2

National Portfolio Organisations and the bridge ................................................... 86

12.3

ACE Funding in the bridge area ........................................................................... 88

12.4

Arts organisations and provision evidence from audit .......................................... 91

12.5

Local authority funding ......................................................................................... 92

12.6

Local authority culture/arts development information from the audit ..................... 93

12.7

Museums and Libraries........................................................................................ 95

12.8

Museums ............................................................................................................. 96

12.9

Museums information from the audit .................................................................... 96

12.10 Libraries............................................................................................................... 97 12.11 Libraries information from the audit ...................................................................... 98

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12.12 Concerns of the cultural sector as a whole in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area ................................................................................................................... 99 12.13 Communications ................................................................................................ 100 12.14 Sustainability of activity ...................................................................................... 101 12.15 Partnerships and networks ................................................................................ 102 12.16 Training ............................................................................................................. 103 12.17 Volunteers ......................................................................................................... 105 12.18 Disability ............................................................................................................ 105 12.19 Diversity............................................................................................................. 106 12.20 Future activity, projects and delivery .................................................................. 107 12.21 Funding and commissioning .............................................................................. 108

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Introduction

This State of the Region Report has been commissioned by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge). Its purpose is to make information, related to its responsibilities, publicly available. The subjects covered include: • The cultural sector • Local authorities • Children, young people and their families • Education • Opportunities • Needs and threats • Facilities The report will support the future planning and work of the bridge and will act as a benchmark for similar reports in the future. The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) is one of ten (and four associate) bridges across England established by Arts Council England (ACE) as part of its National portfolio. The bridge organisations have been set up for an initial three years. The report was compiled during June 2012 for the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) by Catherine M Davis. Data in this report is historic (typically from 2009-2011). While the data will have changed in 2012 the report proceeds on the basis that the recent data has value, not least in setting out relative values and relationships.

1.1 Structure of this report This report is in 12 parts. Following this Introduction and the executive summary in part 2 below, the main body of the report falls into ten parts: • •

• •

Section 3 discusses the background to establishment of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) and the process by which this report was prepared; Sections 4, 5, 6,7,8 ,9 & 10 cover background information to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area, Statistical data and County Area Analysis, Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Norfolk and Suffolk respectively Section 11 deals with Education, schools and children and young people; and Section 12 discusses the Cultural sector – arts, museums and libraries.

Appendix 1 contains detailed individual responses which contain practical information, further contacts, opportunities and potential concerns. Appendix 2 contains an area analysis of background concerns in relation to children and young people and cultural opportunities or provision.

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Appendix 3 lists the names of those who contributed to the research and the organisations they represent. It also lists the organisations who were approached during the research but who were unable to contribute. Appendix 4 contains tables of schools, museums, libraries, venues and festivals across the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. It also includes information about museums outside the immediate bridge area which may be of interest to schools, and others working with children and young people, because of their proximity to some parts of the bridge area or because of their unique offer.

2. Executive Summary This State of the Region Report has been commissioned by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge). The report covers the area in which the bridge operates (Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Peterborough). The report provides information on • The cultural sector • Local authorities • Children, young people and their families • Education • Opportunities • Needs and threats • Facilities The purpose of the report is to support the future planning and work of the bridge. It will also act as a benchmark for similar reports in the future. There are ten (and four associate) bridges across England established by Arts Council England (ACE) for an initial three years. The report was compiled during June 2012 by Catherine M Davis. Data in this report is historic (typically from 2009-2011).

The main body of the report discusses the background to establishment of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) and the process by which this report was prepared; provides background information to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area, including statistical data, deals with education, schools and children and young people; and discusses the cultural sector – arts, museums and libraries Separate Appendices contains detailed individual responses which contain practical information, further contacts, opportunities and potential concerns, an area analysis of background concerns in relation to children and young people and cultural opportunities or provision, lists the names of those who contributed to the research and the organisations they represent and tables of schools and cultural venues in the bridge area and beyond. [The report is intended to provide a body of evidence: it deliberately does not seek to make recommendations.] 6|Page

The overarching themes of the evidence presented in the report are •

•

Diversity - in several senses. The area contains centres of population which are prosperous and highly educated, which have rich and varied cultural provision (and significant support), while other urban areas can present significant challenges associated with multiple deprivation. The bridge wide area also contains many rural locations. These are by no means uniform either, in terms of the social and educational challenges they face. However rural areas do typically present particular challenges in terms of isolation, poor infrastructure, widespread perceptions that provision is concentrated in urban centres, limited access to the arts, and poor public transport provision, therefore making it very difficult for children and young people to travel to where cultural opportunities are Educational aspiration and attainment can be low in significant parts the area covered by the report. While (with the exception of Peterborough) the area has a lower than English national average BME population there are still significant minority populations, and multiple education challenges. The latter was widely commented upon. The long-term sustainability of provision was also widely commented upon; and there was evidence of some scepticism about the viability of relatively short timeframe projects. Partnership working should be a major objective for the bridge. There are already significant networks whose work could be supported, and duplication should be avoided. The bridge needs to support this activity though good communications and information provision alongside the high visibility and involvement of the bridge staff. The evidence received suggested there was mixed achievement on partnership working to date – but with considerable strength and success in some areas. The risk is that poor networking activity leaves arts bodies, in particular, isolated and robs them of real opportunities to work with schools or other groups. Underpinning all of the above is the financial resources to enable work to be initiated or continued. For many interviewees their emphasis was how the bridge can help them by supporting or advising on funding applications. While for ACE, in particular, commissioning is seen as a key opportunity for the cultural sector in the long term. The reality of people’s and organisations’ experience does not match this ambition and much work may need to be done by the bridge working on partnership with local authorities and others to help the sector develop the necessary expertise to access and secure such funding.

The area contains examples of world-class quality in cultural provision and performance, but much of the region is functionally remote from that. The bridge faces major challenges in building on and spreading existing quality provision in what is likely to be a very challenging public funding environment in the foreseeable future. This report does not provide an answer to those challenges, but it does seek to provide a body of evidence about the area to help the bridge in its work going forward.

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3. Arts Council England and the Bridge organisations “Arts Council England has long supported art and arts organisations that work with children and young people in order to improve access and increase participation. In November 2010 Arts Council published its 10-year strategic framework, *Achieving Great Art for Everyone, which included the goal that ‘Every child and young person should experience the richness of the arts’. This goal has two priorities: to improve the delivery of art opportunities in a more coherent way; and to raise the standard of art being produced for, with and by children and young people”. (Arts Council England [ACE] website). ACE has funded the bridges from the 1st April 2012 to help achieve the above goal. The bridge organisations will use their ‘experience and expertise to connect children and young people, schools and communities with art and culture’. Their activity will be supported by bringing together a range of organisations including National portfolio organisations (NPOs), arts organisations, museums, libraries and other cultural partners. The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) will work in the geographic area that includes the county or unitary local authorities of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Peterborough and Suffolk. (The other half of the East of England will be covered by the Royal Opera House (Bridge)) which will work in the geographic area that includes county or unitary local authorities of Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Borough of Luton, Borough of Southend on Sea, Borough of Thurrock and parts of North Kent). The Arts Council1 has laid down the following objectives for the Bridge organisations:

•

To build on the good practice already happening but also to establish a sound evidence base. They will build and facilitate networks across the arts, culture and education to make sure that there's an ongoing dialogue.

•

To be the first point of contact for schools that are developing their arts and cultural offer. They will help schools identify and access the right arts and cultural opportunities, and help them bring their views into local cultural planning.

•

To help National portfolio organisations and other arts and cultural organisations, including museums and libraries, bring the cultural experiences that they offer to more children and young people. Bridge organisations will help them to connect with schools and to identify opportunities for new commissions.

•

To help National portfolio organisations and other arts and cultural organisations to identify investment opportunities from local authorities, local businesses, trusts and foundations, so that they can enhance the offer they make to children, young people and families.

www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/briefing_bridge_organisations_180711.pdf

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•

To develop the reach of arts and cultural experiences and the numbers of people engaging with them through Artsmark and Arts Award. They will help to balance the need for universal access to Artsmark and Arts Award with the targeted development of both schemes.

•

To support the Arts Council's ambition to raise the quality of work for by and with children and young people. Arts Council England will play a facilitation role, consulting and working through National portfolio organisations and the wider sector to develop a shared understanding of how the quality of experience for children and young people and families can be judged.

•

To support the work of the new music education hubs and National Plan for Music Education.

The Arts Council has also said that it is not “expecting bridge organisations to directly deliver arts and cultural opportunities for children and young people as part of their role. Bridge funding relates just to bridge activities. Bridge organisations also receive National portfolio funding to produce and present art. Some bridge organisations will continue to deliver arts opportunities to children and young people as part of their core business, distinct from their bridge role. Bridge organisations may help to deliver opportunities for children and young people with other agencies and organisations (for example by modelling or piloting ways of working that directly benefit other arts and cultural organisations) in order to increase the capacity and long-term sustainability of the sector”.2

3.1 Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) Audit To support the initial establishment of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge), and gain understanding of the area’s activity and needs, an audit was commissioned between March and April 2012. This research into arts and cultural provision, in relation to Children and Young People (CYP) and their families, was also to enable the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) to take forward its planning and work programme. The work was principally intended to be an intelligence gathering exercise and involved potential partners from arts organisations, local authorities, museums, library services, third sector and youth organisations from across the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. That research followed part of the model developed for the Royal Opera House (Bridge) so that the two bridge organisations, that together cover the East of England, could directly compare their findings and pattern of activity if they chose to. The audit was a confidential document that provided Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) with details of partners’ activity, resources, opportunities, concerns and ambitions to help provide the bridge staff with a starting point for their own orientation, research and planning. Opportunities and suggestions for where the early work of the bridge might focus were also contained in the report. Consultees were told that the bridge staff would use the findings as a basis for further conversations, research and joint working.

www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/our-priorities-2011-15/children-and-young-people/bridgeorganisations

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3.2 Background to the Audit Process To provide the platform for the information gathering, a questionnaire was drawn up based on the information that Nicola Peacock, Director of Participation and Engagement at Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) required. The document covered the following subjects: • People and contacts • Networks • Strategic direction • Research and consultation • Resources and commissioning • Children and young people • Outside agencies • Key messages to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) Two versions of the form were produced, one for local authorities and one for all other organisations. These were sent out to a range of contacts in the county areas of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and the unitary authority of Peterborough. These contacts included: • Local authority arts, libraries and museum services • National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) • Ex-Regularly Funded Organisations (ex-RFOs) • Independent Museums • Other professional arts organisations • Youth organisations • Cultural and Arts Trusts • Third sector organisations • University funded cultural providers Schools were not directly approached as this was beyond the scope of the research, given the time available. However, local authority colleagues provided a considerable amount of schools and education information, which was supplemented by additional information from websites and elsewhere. Information about schools and the educational picture was also provided by other respondees who work closely with them, including museums, libraries and arts organisations. In all 117 people were approached. 31 were interviewed directly and 23 submitted completed forms. In one or two cases the same person completed interviews for two different organisations. Of the remaining 63, some were people who passed the form onto more appropriate colleagues while others were too busy to respond. Appendix 1 contains publicly available versions of those interviews. People were asked for their permission to use them, once any confidential material had been removed. In some cases those interviewed did not want their information made public, nor did they wish to be quoted at any point in the State of the Region report. Since the audit brief was set, the purpose and partners of the bridges have changed significantly e.g. film and heritage have been added. Moreover at the time the audit was 10 | P a g e

undertaken, the Music Education Hubs had not been announced and the applications to Creative People and Places were being drafted.

3.3 State of the Region Report Following the completion of the audit, ACE requested that each bridge produce a State of the Region Report which would be publicly available. This State of the Region Report draws on information from the audit, but also includes additional statistical information from Arts Council Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cultural Education Profile Tool and LEP profile information produced by the Office for National Statistics. The State of the Region Report will attempt to cover the current state of play, but as the picture in the cultural and educational sectors is a constantly evolving and dynamic process at the moment, it will inevitably be something of a snapshot as well.

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Background information to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area

Unlike the other nine bridge areas which match the regional pattern, the East of England has been split into two and is covered by two organisations. The Royal Opera House (Bridge) covers the south of the region (but also includes parts of Kent) while Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) covers the northern part of the East of England region.

Source: http://www.eastex.org.uk/east/

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area includes the counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The unitary authority of Peterborough is also included, but it sits within the historical county boundary of Cambridgeshire. So effectively the area covers much of East Anglia. However it must also be recognised that organisations and individuals do not operate within strictly laid out administrative boundaries; instead they work with partners locally, across the bridge area and much further afield. Schools and other organisations, who sit on the boundary of any particular area inevitably, make use of the opportunities close to them, wherever they are. This is particularly so in the case of museums and arts organisations who have a unique or limited offer. Their interaction will take place with partners, audiences and organisations from much further afield. 12 | P a g e

4.1 East of England The East of England was described in the Regional Economic Strategy in 2004 in the following terms: “The East of England is one of the largest and most diverse regions in the United Kingdom and comprises the six counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. It is the second largest region in England with an area of 19,110 sq km. Compared with other English regions there are fewer large cities and no obvious regional capital. The region has a significant rural landscape, and is home to around a fifth of England’s market towns. On the doorstep is London, a world city. Mainland Europe is only a short journey away, and the region contains a number of important international gateways and transport corridors of national significance. As with elsewhere in the country, the demographic make-up of the region is changing with an increasingly ageing population, especially in the coastal areas. Although the region benefits from net in-migration, there is a significant out-migration in the 15-24 age groups. There is also a steady growth in the region’s black and minority ethnic population, although this population is distributed unevenly across the region and its size is below the UK average. The region has a significant concentration of internationally important businesses engaged in research and development and houses over 30 of the world’s leading research centres. In line with the trend in many western countries, there has been a clear structural change in the UK, away from employment in manufacturing and towards employment in the service sector. The growth of the knowledge economy is also associated with the emergence of a dual labour market, with knowledge jobs and lower level jobs created simultaneously. Globalisation is another major influencing factor on the future economic and social environment within which the East of England is operating. Globalisation of the labour market has a direct influence on employment in the region. The region boasts a number of important transport gateways that link the region to continental Europe and beyond. The economy of the East of England is also inextricably linked to the economies of the neighbouring regions, nationally and internationally. The region plays an important role in complementing and enhancing the position of London. There is a need to ensure that the gap between wealthy and poor neighbourhoods does not widen in the region as income inequalities between the rich and poor have tended to increase in the developed world in the last 20 years”. www.insighteast.org.uk/WebDocuments/Public/approved/user_9/full%20RES.pdf

While this description covered the whole of the East of England and was written before the economic downturn, it still largely holds true and is a useful introduction Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area.

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4.2 Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area More useful background information about the area is available in The East of England Implementation Plan, which was published in February 2010. This provides additional detail about some of the local sub-regions within the Bridge area. While this information may seem far removed from the body of the rest of this report, it serves as a useful background briefing before examining individual subject areas, such as population, employment, ethnicity, and data about children and young people (CYP), in more detail later on. Much of what is said in the East of England Implementation Plan reflects information provided by many of those interviewed. www.insighteast.org.uk/WebDocuments/Public/approved/user_9/East_of_England_Impleme ntation_Plan_WEB.pdf A full break down of the areas of need, identified in the course of the audit research, is given in Appendix 2.

4.3 Greater Cambridge The economic footprint covers parts of nine districts; Cambridge City, South Cambridgeshire, East Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Fenland, St Edmundsbury, Forest Heath (Uttlesford and North Hertfordshire which fall outside the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area). It is a centre of excellence and a world leader in higher education and research. This has led to the attraction of world-class research institutes and science bases, globally significant information and communications technologies and biotechnology clusters, corporate and/or research and development functions of multi-national corporations, and a strong presence of professional service, legal and consultancy companies and networks. Taken with the historic character and setting of Cambridge and the surrounding market towns, this provides an important basis for future development. There is likely to be focus for growth in and around the built-up area of Cambridge, the new settlement of Northstowe, market towns and other key centres.

4.4 Norwich This vibrant city has an extensive cultural, leisure, sports and heritage offer. It has the largest collection of heritage assets of any UK city outside of London and access to the Broads and the Norfolk coast. The number of people working in the Norwich area makes it the largest labour market in the East of England. Norwich is also the fifth most popular retail centre in England. The areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic strengths include a diverse economic base with existing and emerging sectoral strengths in finance and business services, a significant cluster of creative industries in the region, food processing, environment and bioscience and automotive engineering. Norwich supports more than 50 regional or national headquarters and has an international reputation for research and development and higher education. The Cities Outlook 2009 report ranked Norwich as having the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fourth highest percentage of employment in knowledge intensive businesses in the country, after Oxford, Cambridge and Reading.

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4.5 Peterborough This major regional centre and gateway has an influence that extends into the East Midlands region. It has a strategic location on the national road and rail network, allowing easy access to national and international destinations. More than 6,000 companies are located within Peterborough, including some with their regional and international headquarters based in the city. Peterborough and the city has experienced high levels of in-migration in recent years. There are plans for improvements in the urban fabric and renewal of the city centre, new housing and investment in new educational and training opportunities, including the development of a university.

4.6 Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft The area has significant strengths, including an attractive biodiversity, landscape and coastline, which provide major tourism opportunities and a unique built heritage and history. There are emerging economic catalysts in Great Yarmouth. Challenges include inadequate road and rail connectivity to other areas and a perceived poor image, which reduces the attractiveness of both towns for new business investment. There are high levels of deprivation, with average earnings below both county and regional averages, and below average percentages of the population with NVQ4 or above qualifications. Significant numbers have no formal qualifications at all.

4.7 Haven Gateway The sub-region is one of the key international gateways to the UK, containing the internationally significant Haven Ports, principally Felixstowe, Harwich and Ipswich. Its growth and infrastructure are therefore of national significance to the well-being of the regional and national economy. Ipswich is also in the Haven Gateway. The area is also defined by its market and coastal towns and its high-quality rural hinterland, which includes a series of nationally and internationally important landscape and ecological designations. Skill levels are poor. The transport infrastructure is similar to that of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

4.8 North/West Norfolk and West Suffolk This area includes the three distinct centres of King's Lynn, Thetford and Bury St Edmunds and their largely rural hinterlands, including the North Norfolk Coast. The area reflects the location of a number of smaller market towns each with a rural hinterland that share some similar challenges (although they are distinctive in their own right, for example the coastal issues faced by places like King's Lynn or Cromer). Much of the area is rural in nature and includes a number of high-quality protected landscapes and habitats. Agriculture and tourism remain important sectors, even though there is a desire to move away from a low-wage economy to higher-skilled employment. The area also has strong functional links with the neighbouring settlements of Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich and Peterborough and this presents particular opportunities and challenges. 15 | P a g e

The past designation of King’s Lynn, Thetford and Haverhill as London over-spill towns has left a legacy of concentrations of deprivation and a reliance on larger employers that have been vulnerable to global economic pressures. Provision of transport is a key priority while power supply is also a significant constraint to growth in all areas. The area has significant natural resources important for biodiversity, recreation and tourism. The Brecks, Thetford Forest, the Fens, the Wash and the North Norfolk Coast are regionally and internationally important areas for wildlife conservation. Whilst small firms are prevalent in North Norfolk, King’s Lynn has suffered from the loss of employment in larger firms.

4.9 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) “Local enterprise partnerships are led by local authorities and businesses across natural economic areas. They provide the vision, knowledge and strategic leadership needed to drive sustainable private sector growth and job creation in their area”. Source:www.bis.gov.uk/policies/economic-development/leps

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area is covered by two LEP’s, Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough and New Anglia. The bridge area borders the Hertfordshire and South East LEPS in Royal Opera House (Bridge) area, and the Greater Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and South East Midlands LEP’s outside the East of England. Table 1 Local authority LEP membership in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (bridge) area The breakdown of LEP membership is shown below: LA (District/ In multiple LEP Unitary) covered LEPs (spatially) Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough Greater Cambridge & Greater Peterborough New Anglia New Anglia New Anglia New Anglia New New New New

Anglia Anglia Anglia Anglia

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Cambridge Peterborough Huntingdonshire Fenland East Cambridgeshire Rutland South Cambridgeshire King's Lynn and West Norfolk Forest Heath North Hertfordshire St Edmundsbury Uttlesford Babergh Broadland Great Yarmouth King's Lynn and West Norfolk North Norfolk St Edmundsbury Suffolk Coastal Waveney

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0

LA (District/ Unitary) covered (spatially)

LEP

New New New New New New

Anglia Anglia Anglia Anglia Anglia Anglia

Breckland Forest Heath Ipswich Mid Suffolk South Norfolk Norwich

In multiple LEPs 0 1 0 0 0 0

1. For a LA (District/ Unitary) to be covered by a LEP either the LA (District/ Unitary) or the LA (County/ Unitary), in which the LA (District/ Unitary) sits, must be full members of the LEP. If the LA (County/ Unitary) is a full member only the LA (District/ Unitary) stated in the LEP application are included (not the necessarily the entirety of the LA (County/ Unitary)). Therefore a list of LA (District/ Unitary) covered by LEPs does not necessarily align with membership. 2. Those Local Authorities which are coloured in pink overlap with another LEP. 3. 37 local authorities (11 per cent) are covered by two LEPs and in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area these include: Forest Heath, King's Lynn and West Norfolk and St Edmundsbury. Care should be taken when trying to calculate an all LEPs total to ensure no double counting is involved. Local authorities in more than one LEP should only be included once. www.bis.gov.uk/policies/economic-development/leps/statistics

4.10 Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough This LEP is focused on helping to drive forward sustainable economic growth with local business, education providers, the third sector and the public sector working together to achieve this. The goal is to create an economy with 100,000 major businesses and create 160,000 new jobs by 2025, in an internationally significant low carbon, knowledge-based economy balanced wherever possible with advanced manufacturing and services. The strategic areas of focus are: • Skills and employment • Strategic economic vision, infrastructure, housing and planning • Economic development and support for high growth business • Funding, including EU funding, regional growth funding and private sector funding The area currently has a population of 1.3 million people, which is estimated to grow to 1.5 million by 2031. The area boasts 700,000 jobs, 60,000 enterprises and generates £30 billion per annum. However there is no mention of arts, culture, tourism, libraries, museums, schools or education on the LEP website.

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Source: www.yourlocalenterprisepartnership.co.uk

Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough includes a wide range of partners from the following sectors: • Local business including small business through to multi-national corporations • Public sector which is represented by local authorities listed above and central government departments • Education providers from both the Further and Higher education sectors • Third sector from volunteer groups through to social enterprises Unfortunately the Greater Cambridge and Greater Peterborough LEP does not list its members, so it is not possible to provide a list of those organisations in membership who might be of interest to the bridge to compare with those on the New Anglia LEP list.

4.11 New Anglia The New Anglia LEP is developing an approach to grow the Norfolk and Suffolk economy by encouraging businesses to create jobs for the future. The two counties have similar strengths and challenges. There are 60,000 enterprises in Suffolk and Norfolk and a population of 1.5 million, Tourism and Energy are just two examples of major sectors which employ significant numbers of people, bring wealth to the local economy and have the potential to grow. However, Suffolk and Norfolk have below national average skills, poor infrastructure and deprivation in urban, rural and coastal areas.

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The LEP’s priorities are tourism, energy and business support. These offer real and immediate potential for growth and job creation, especially for small and medium sized enterprises.

Source: www.newanglia.co.uk

New Anglia Members, of particular interest to the bridge, include: • Bressingham Steam Museum www.bressingham.co.uk • City College Norwich www.ccn.ac.uk • College of West Anglia www.cwa.ac.uk • DanceEast www.danceeast.co.uk • East Norfolk Sixth Form College www.enorf.ac.uk • Easton College http://www.easton-college.ac.uk • Lowestoft Sixth Form College www.l6fc.org • Norfolk & Norwich Festival www.nnfestival.org.uk • Norwich Theatre Royal www.theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk • Norwich University College of the Arts www.nuca.ac.uk • Otley College www.otleycollege.ac.uk • Paston Sixth Form College http://www.paston.ac.uk • University Campus Suffolk www.ucs.ac.uk/home.aspx • University of East Anglia www.uea.ac.uk • West Suffolk College www.westsuffolk-ac.co.uk

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Statistical data on the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area

5.1 Population Table 2 Total 0-19 male & female population and 20+ (m&f) population by area + population density + ethnicity + SEN, 2010 AREA

Cambridgeshire 74.8

70.2

455.2

600.2

24.16%

Pop Ethnicity- SEN% Dens BME @KS4% n/a 8.1 23.9

Cambridge City

13.6

13.1

92.3

119

22.44%

3089

East Cambs

10.3

9.7

62.2

82.2

24.33%

130

Fenland

10.5

10.2

68.3

23.26%

168

Huntingdonshire

21.9

19.7

126.1

167.7

24.81%

185

South Cambs

18.5

17.5

106.3

142.3

25.30%

162

Peterborough

21.9

130

174.9

25.67%

505

22.5

25.9

Norfolk

94.2

89.5

663.3

847

21.69%

n/a

5.6

21.0

Broadland

13.6

12.8

95.7

122.1

21.62%

224

Breckland

14.8

101.2

130

22.15%

100

Great Yarmouth

10.8

10.5

76.4

97.7

21.80%

559

Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lynn & West Norfolk North Norfolk

16.2

15.2

107.5

138.9

22.61%

101

9.3

81.1

100.4

19.22%

105

Norwich City

14.3

14.1

110.6

139

20.43%

3677

South Norfolk

14.5

13.6

90.8

118.9

23.63%

134

Suffolk

85.9

80.7

540.8

707.4

23.55%

n/a

5.3

19.8

Babergh

10.4

9.8

66.3

86.5

23.35%

144

Forest Heath

8.5

46.2

62.7

26.32%

170

Ipswich

15.8

14.7

95.1

125.6

24.28%

3254

Mid Suffolk

11.2

10.3

66.5

24.43%

109

St Edmundsbury

12.6

11.6

79.6

103.8

23.31%

159

Suffolk Coastal

14.2

13.6

123.8

22.46%

139

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0-19 M 0-19 F 20+ Total (,000s) (,000s) M&F (,000s)

%0-19 of total

AREA

0-19 M 0-19 F 20+ Total (,000s) (,000s) M&F (,000s)

%0-19 of total

Pop EthnicityDens BME @KS4%

Waveney

13.2

22.14%

317

12.7

91.1

117

ENGLAND

401

SEN%

17.3

21.3

Notes to Table 2 Population density = persons per square kilometre; source ONS LEP Profiles

5.2 What are the key messages from Table 2? Table 2 provides detailed population data (for males and female groups aged 0-19, all person aged 20+, and all population) for all areas. The three county areas number between 600,000 and 850,000 people (Peterborough 175,000). The highest proportion of young people (nearly 26%) is in Peterborough. North Norfolk has the lowest share of young people and anecdotally (interview evidence) this is at least partly attributed to high numbers of retirees. The population density varies very significantly. As would be expected the County ‘towns’ have high densities; all over 3,000 per sq kilometre, and Great Yarmouth and Peterborough are in an intermediary position at about 500. The whole area is otherwise marked by a low population density, substantially below the English average of 401. The lowest densities are about 100, in Breckland, King’s Lynn, North Norfolk and Mid Suffolk. Ethnicity (BME) data shows that areas across the region have substantially lower BME population shares than the English average of 17.3% (NB this is data sampled at KS4). Peterborough is a strong exception, at 22.5%. Special education needs assessment data varies marginally across the areas covered but is broadly consistent with the English average.

5.3 Poverty and unemployment Table 3 Youth unemployment + Poverty + unemployment + Index of Multiple Deprivation data + educational attainment. Area Cambridgeshire Cambridge City East Cambs Fenland Huntingdonshire South Cambs Peterborough

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Youth % Children % Index of unemployed in poverty Unemployment mult. dep.

NVQ4+ %

23.6 27.7 30.9 26.9 22.8 27.4

50.7 35.8 14.9 28.4 45.3 22.9

16.8 10.9 19.8 11.0 8.0 24.0

5.6 8.8 6.3 6.4 5.1 9.2

15.50 10.41 22.27 10.55 7.11 25.63

Area Norfolk Broadland Breckland Great Yarmouth Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lynn & West Norfolk North Norfolk Norwich City South Norfolk Suffolk Babergh Forest Heath Ipswich Mid Suffolk St Edmundsbury Suffolk Coastal Waveney England

Youth % Children % Index of unemployed in poverty Unemployment mult. dep.

NVQ4+ %

29.5 29.3 28.1 27.8

9.8 14.8 24.3 17.9

3.0 7.1 7.8 9.4

10.41 15.91 27.66 21.05

26.0 17.4 14.1 23.9

27.3 29.9 28.4

16.2 29.6 11.1

3.2 7.7 8.8

19.28 25.65 13.31

24.6 39.1 30.6

27.0 28.6 28.0 29.0 28.6 29.3 32.4 26.6

11.6 14.5 21.7 9.2 11.4 10.5 21.2 20.9

3.6 3.7 9.0 4.8 8.4 5.2 4.4 7.5

12.59 13.28 24.82 10.23 13.49 11.41 22.08 19.15

23.7 24.7 28.9 29.0 27.6 35.2 18.8 31.3

Notes to table 3 Data not shown at County level. Youth unemployment = share of JSA claimants aged 24 and under as percentage of all JSA claimants Children in poverty = under 16â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in low income households as percentage of all households NVQ4+ shows percentage of persons 16-64 with NVQ level 4 and above educational attainment. People are counted as being qualified to level 4 or above if they have achieved a first or higher degree, National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) level 4 or 5, a recognised degree-level professional qualification an Higher National Certificate(HNC)/Higher National Diploma (HND) or other higherlevel vocational or management qualification, a teaching or nursing qualification; or a diploma in Higher Education (HE).

5.4 What are the key messages from Table 3? Table 3 demonstrates the diverse challenges across the areas in terms of poverty, unemployment, deprivation and educational achievement. Outside Cambridge and South Cambs youth unemployment rates are above the English average of 26.6%. Norwich City has the highest recorded relative concentration of child poverty, but Great Yarmouth is also significantly above the national English average. Unemployment rates vary substantially across the areas covered and can be above the English average at the time of the survey, of 7.5%. Similarly the index of multiple deprivation data shows significant variations above and below the English average; Great Yarmouth is, 22 | P a g e

on this count, the most deprived area in the East of England, followed by Norwich, Peterborough, Ipswich, Fenland and Waveney. Great Yarmouth also shows the poorest educational achievement at NVQ level 4; at 14.1% under half the English average of 31%, closely followed by Fenland, Breckland and Waveney. The City of Cambridge, by contrast, along with South Cambs, do exceptionally well at 51% and 45%.

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County Analysis by local authority areas

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) will work across four top tier local authorities. These are the counties of Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk and the unitary authority of Peterborough. In addition the bridge will work with five borough or district authorities in Cambridgeshire, seven in Norfolk and seven in Suffolk. The county areas are served by two tier local authority delivery that between them provide the full range of local authority services. In the unitary authority of Peterborough, all the local authority services are provided by the city council. Increasingly what were thought of as public services in the past are now being delivered by a wide range of providers. Examples of these include trusts (delivering cultural services) and third sector organisations (youth services). At the same time many schools are becoming academies and so opting out of local education authority control. In some places free schools are being established which have no formal relationship with the local education authority. The latter was always the case for independent schools. This change in delivery providers and structures will continue, which will make partnership working, in the cultural sector and beyond, increasing complex. The pattern will accelerate over the next few years if more local authorities seek to become commissioning rather than delivery organisations. Such trends will be further encouraged by the next Comprehensive Spending Review in two years time, which is expected to see further reductions in local authority budgets. Much of this commissioned work is likely to be with non-cultural services and providers, who want to include arts or culture in their provision. They may wish to do so because of the body of evidence which points to the benefits of this type of engagement which other approaches cannot match. Working with childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s services or adult services groups is already part of the experience of many of those working in the cultural sector and has been the case a number of years. Many of the NPOs, arts organisations, libraries and museums interviewed in the bridge area discussed examples of this type of work. Between them they had experience of working with, amongst others, young offenders, young prisoners, young carers, Looked After Children and children with special needs. Localism too may offer opportunities as budgets, decision making and services are devolved to much more local levels. This is already apparent in the approach some library services are taking and in South Cambridgeshire, for example, where a Parish Council is employing a youth worker. While complicated, this picture may offer additional opportunities to cultural organisations across the spectrum of arts, libraries, museums and (although not part of the ACE remit) archive services as well. However it is likely that the greatest success will be for those who are aware of such trends and who work in partnership with a range of cultural partners both locally and possibly further afield. The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) in its strategic lead role should be well placed to support the sector to take advantage of these changes.

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7. Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire borders Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. Five District or Borough councils are included within the administrative county of Cambridgeshire. These are Cambridge City Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Huntingdonshire District Council, and South Cambridgeshire District Council. The unitary authority of Peterborough sits within the historical county boundary as well. Peterborough will be dealt with separately in a section 8.0.

Source: www.recap.co.uk/business-waste/recycling-services-directory

Cambridgeshire is a county of contrasts. It is very rich in cultural provision in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, but other areas of the county are less well served, particularly the further north one goes. The City of Cambridge is particularly rich in opportunities as six of the countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seven NPOs, as well as other high quality arts organisations, are based there alongside the Universities of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin. Cambridge University is not only a world leader in higher education and research, but offers a wealth of cultural opportunities, including eight museums, which are open to the public. These all have strong education and learning programmes associated with them.

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7.1 Statistics The split described above, which is based on audit interviews, is supported by the statistical data. For example in table 3 Cambridge, South Cambridgeshire and East Cambridgeshire have the first, second and fourth highest levels of NVQ4+ in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) at 50.7% , 45.3% and 35.8%. This is against an English average of 31.3 and perhaps not terribly surprising when one considers that the University of Cambridge, its science and research parks and associated staff and their families are in those local authority areas. However Cambridgeshire also has the second lowest figure on this measure in Fenland’s 14.9%. Huntingdonshire too is below the English average at 28.4%, although this is more in line with the majority of the bridge local authority areas. The same split can be seen in the index of multiple deprivation figures with South Cambridgeshire’s figure of 7.11 and East Cambridgeshire’s 10.55 against Fenland’s of 22.27. The English average is 19.15. Interestingly Cambridge City is 15.50 on this measure, and its ‘children in poverty’ figure of 16.8% is second only to Fenland’s, the highest in the area, at 19.8% (although both of these are below the English average of 20.9%). These figures pick up an important point and that is how people feel relatively to their local area rather than to the much wider picture. Interviewees highlighted parts of Cambridge City as areas of concern which had little on offer for CYP and their families. This was set against the richness of what Cambridge has for those who are confident or affluent enough to access it. However when compared to the lack of opportunity, infrastructure or provision elsewhere in the bridge area it does not look so bad. For an organisation which has to take a wider view trying to balance those demands will be a challenge for the bridge. Fenland also has the highest youth unemployment figure at 30.9%, the second highest in the bridge area. The figures for Cambridge City and South Cambs are 23.6% and 22.8% against an English average of 26.6%. However in terms of adult unemployment East Cambridgeshire has the highest figure of 8.8%, the fourth highest across the bridge area.

7.2 Service Provision The County Council offices in Cambridge provide a base for the County Arts Development Officer and the County Museums Development Officer. The County Music Service successfully led on the Cambridgeshire Music Hub bid. The County Library Service had been exploring the option of trust status, alongside other cultural providers. However this process was halted by the Leader of the Council. The Library Service is now exploring the option of community hubs. In the longer term, the future of some libraries may be under threat and one possibility might be that the parishes will take them over and run them with volunteers. Currently there are 45 static libraries while 244 villages, hamlets or other areas are covered by mobile library service stops. The City of Cambridge has an Arts and Events team which manages events (many of them large scale) and venues, as well as supporting arts development. South Cambridgeshire has an arts service partially based at the district council and partially in the village colleges through stART’s network of five Arts Development Manger posts. This group delivers within

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the village colleges and to the local community and their role includes arts development as well. East Cambridgeshire’s arts provision is delivered through ADEC, an independent company limited by guarantee and a registered charity with funding from East Cambridgeshire District Council. The quality of ADEC’s offer is very high, although the district suffers from some of the cultural infrastructure and other problems identified in the remainder of the county outside Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire. The remainder of Cambridgeshire is much less well served in both arts services and arts infrastructure. Fenland and Huntingdonshire districts have no arts team and apart from museums and libraries, there is little other cultural infrastructure. These two districts were identified as areas of great need by others in the county, as there are few opportunities for CYP and what exists is often not of high quality. The anecdotal evidence from the interviews is backed up for Fenland by the statistics in tables 2 and 3. There are a range of museums across the county which include 8 University museums, 10 small museums and 10 voluntary (5 of which have education officers). They all work closely with the County Museum Development Officer. The county has 27 accredited museums. There are a range of cultural networks in Cambridgeshire which include Cambridge Museums Advisory Partnership, Cultural Task Group, Cambridge Arts Network and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Arts Development Officers Group. There is also the Regional Learning Network for museums which is East of England wide. Unfortunately some of those in the arts who could benefit from being part of wider networks do not seem to be part of these. Which brings one back to the point at the beginning of the area analysis that the county is only partially joined up and cultural provision remains partial. In the well resourced areas the arts teams regard the bridge as someone to work with but find it more difficult to see what the bridge can offer that is not already provided for in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire (although they do envisage a role for the bridge in offering support and opportunities in Fenland and Huntingdonshire). There is some cross border working amongst this group notably the stART Arts Development Managers (ADMs) some of whom have links to Peterborough. ADEC works outside East Cambs (although not in the City of Cambridge) if appropriate funding is secured, but the organisation is not in the same position as the two local authority arts services to take on projects or partnership working. The lack of district arts or cultural structure to link to in some areas makes is more difficult for the County Arts Officer to work there, although of course the officer has good links with schools and education. The latter is a key driver of the County Arts Development Officer’s work. Several of the arts organisations and museums are keen to widen their remit to work with partners in Peterborough, Norfolk and Suffolk, but this is dependent on funding being secured. However there are parts of Cambridgeshire that could benefit from their expertise and high quality offer. In the long term helping these organisations embed opportunities and provision in such areas could have a very beneficial effect on sustainability of provision. Although Peterborough is a unitary authority, which sits outside Cambridgeshire, it too would benefit from a similar approach in accessing others expertise. This would both be for the city itself, which appears to need support in developing its cultural provision, and for the 27 | P a g e

residents in areas such as Fenland, as they are more likely to visit Peterborough than Cambridge. Key meetings in Cambridgeshire are: Cambridge Museums Advisory Partnership, Cultural Task Group, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Arts Development Officers Group and museums Regional Learning Network.

7.3 Background concerns from audit interviews Table 4 Lack of provision by geographic area and factors affecting CYP and their families in Cambridgeshire The table below draws together comments from interviewees about the geographic areas in Cambridgeshire where they feel there are deprivation issues or concerns about cultural provision for CYP and their families. It also lists other factors that they felt negatively affect CYP’s quality of life, including their engagement with cultural opportunities and problems affecting their educational opportunities. Area Cambridgeshire

City of Cambridge

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Geographical Areas and their challenges Places in need • Fenland both the district and the geographical area as these are both very rural. • North Huntingdonshire. • East Cambridgeshire. • Parts of Cambridge including Chesterton and Arbury. • Area to the east of north Cambridge. • Wisbech, in Fenland is one of the most deprived bits of the county. • Fens. • East Cambridge. North Cambridge. Places in need • Wards to the north of Cambridge are the most deprived. • Arbury, King’s Hedges, Chesterton have some degree of deprivation. • Cherry Hinton falls into the same category. Concerns and challenges • There is a lot of (housing and population) growth in and around Cambridge and there is a mismatch in (service)

Factors affecting CYP and their families • Need to address lack of dance provision in Fenland and South Cambridgeshire.

•

Need to help CYP and their families to feel connected to the area that they have come to live in. For young people, much provision is available in the city centre and not where they live, so they are not able to access it. Much of the predominant art or types of art forms in Cambridge are not very accessible to young people so they don’t engage with them. In Cambridge a cluster of schools

Area

East Cambridgeshire

Fenland

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Geographical Areas and their challenges provision between the new neighbourhoods and the historic centre. • Some of the council estates including some of the newer estates on the outskirts of the city and which may develop problems in the longer term as they do not have much in the way of infrastructure. • Cambridge is more than just the university and for some city residents the central area, dominated by the University of Cambridge and slightly further out by Anglia Ruskin, can make them feel ill at ease. • Community centres in the neighbourhoods are not well geared up for the arts. Places in need • North Huntingdonshire around Yaxley and Ramsey. Concerns and challenges • Rural isolation is a problem. • Local bus services have had another cut recently. • This area is very rural with little cultural provision. Places in need • Rural Fenland. • Waterlees in Wisbech is a notable area of deprivation that has had considerable resource devoted to it; however this seems to produce few results. Concerns and challenges • Lacks much high quality arts provision • There are not many professional artists and the nearest open studios are Lincolnshire and Peterborough. • Poor transport. • Low aspiration. • Poor infrastructure. • A lot of the population don’t

Factors affecting CYP and their families lack the resources to afford the educational offer of the museums.

•

There are multiple problems of access, experience, and aspiration for young people in the area.

• • •

Poor education. Rurally isolated fenland schools. There are low achieving schools, especially in Wisbech. Wisbech Grammer is an academy. Many of those who can afford to send their children to private schools. Many young people are affected by obesity especially those with nothing much else to do with their time. There is not enough on offer. There is a problem relating to quality as well as quantity. The quality of experience for CYP needs improving. If all you see is what is available on your doorstep then you aren’t seeing much. It is difficult to develop an awareness of quality, and what that means, if

•

• •

Area

Geographical Areas and their challenges work and reliance on benefits is high. • The area lacks culture and not many people appear to want it anyway. • Sparse population. • There is a large eastern European population in Wisbech.

Huntingdonshire

Places in need • Huntingdon, which has some serious indices of deprivation. • South Huntingdonshire has urban issues, although there is isolation there as well. Places in need • Long Stanton is quite industrial with a lot of young families passing through on the way to somewhere else. • The area around Melbourn, in common with much of rural Cambridgeshire, suffers from isolation where there are no trains. The bus service is poor and getting worse. Concerns and challenges • Bassingbourn, the Mordens (several local villages have Morden in the name) and into Meldreth have high Traveller populations. • Venues can be problem as they are either 244 seats in one of the village colleges or a room in a pub. • Another issue is the loss of mobile libraries locally.

South Cambridgeshire

Factors affecting CYP and their families all you see is the local and often mediocre. • The unchallenging nature of what CYP are being involved in doesn’t help them develop either their critical faculties or any skills. • Commissioning and competition are affecting the county Youth Service. • CYP would benefit from more dance opportunities.

•

• •

•

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A lot of YP are rurally isolated and have nothing to do other than hang about in their local communities due to the youth club closures. In some areas the parish councils are buying in a youth worker or supporting a local youth club. Relatively high number of split families. Some of this appears to be linked to the pressures of the recent economic problems. This affects Melbourn, Bassingbourn, Comberton and Gamlingay. Hatton Park School in Long Stanton is in special measures. There are a lot of Traveller Families in the area and in South Cambs generally. There are a lot of young carers in Papworth. The loss of the Youth Service, or its narrower targeting on vulnerable young people. One result of this narrow focus is the loss of prevention work with young people more generally. The lack of youth workers combined with rural isolation and poor transport infrastructure. Poor transport can lead to exclusion for some groups of

Area

Geographical Areas and their challenges

Factors affecting CYP and their families young people. For example even with the Guided Bus which is now operating into Cambridge a young person faces at least £5 in fares and £5 to attend an event. This excludes a lot of young people especially in the current economic climate. • Those areas in South Cambs which don’t have the Village Colleges get missed out of the cultural provision offered by stART because they are not in partnership. • There is youth disengagement.

7.4 Schools Cambridgeshire has: • 7 Local authority nursery schools • 203 Primary schools • 30 Secondary schools • 23 Further education/sixth form colleges • 9 Special Schools • 24 Independent schools Table 5 Schools by sector in Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire Nursery Primary Secondary FE/Sixth Form Cambridge City 5 26 6 3 East Cambs 0 27 4 1 Fenland 0 33 4 6 Huntingdonshire 1 60 7 8 South Cambs 1 57 7 5 Total 7 203 30 23

Special Independent Total

0 2 2 2 3 9

17 1 2 2 2 24

Source: www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/CMSWebsite/Apps/Schools/SchoolSearch.aspx

By March 2012 six primary schools, twenty four secondary schools and one special school had converted to academies. A further two primaries and four secondary’s had indicated their intention to convert to academies.

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57 35 47 80 75 294

7.5 Local authorities and their areas of responsibility Table 6 Local authority division of responsibility for cultural service delivery The table below shows the division of responsibility for delivering local authority services in a two tier structure. It also lists the names and titles of those who contributed to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit and whose information supports this report. An appendix of the interviews that contributors agreed to make public are contained in Appendix 1. Local Authority area

Local authority responsibilities and contacts from research

Cambridgeshire County Council

Education, libraries, museums development, heritage, youth service and music service Joanne Gray , County Arts Development Officer Kate Brown, County Museum Development Officer Matthew Gunn, Partnership Manager, Cambridgeshire Music Partnership Arts and events

Cambridge City Council

Elaine Midgley, Arts & Events Manager

East Cambridgeshire District Council

No arts service

Other organisations in the area and contacts from research

Michael Garvey, Chief Executive, Academy of Ancient Music Isobel Timms, Creative Learning Director, Britten Sinfonia Sarah Campbell, Education Officer, Kettleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Yard Tamsin Wimhurst, Learning Officer, Cambridge & County Folk Museum Ruth Sapsed, Director, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination Cat Moore, Producer/ General Manager, New International Encounter (NIE) The arts service is delivered by ADEC, a independent company Jane Wilson, Director, ADEC

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Local Authority area

Local authority responsibilities and contacts from research

Fenland District Council

There is no arts service.

Other organisations in the area and contacts from research Sally Austin, Education Officer, Ely Museum

Karen Harvey, Artistic Director, Atelier East Huntingdonshire District Council

No arts service. Viv Peters, Director, Natural High

South Cambridgeshire District Council

Arts Development which includes the 5 stART Arts Development Mangers based in the South Cambs Village Colleges. Museums. Andy Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hanlon, Lead Officer Arts & Culture

Kirstin Bicknell, Education Development Manager, Wysing Arts

Kirstin Bicknell, ADM Melbourn Village College Karen Thomas, ADM Swavesey Village College

7.6 Cambridgeshire County Council This is the top tier authority in Cambridgeshire and has responsibility for many of the key services that the bridge is interested in, including education, libraries, music education, museum development and arts development. www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk Cambridge Culture is the councilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s official means of working with CYP and is directed at schools. The Cambridge Culture Steering Group is keen to work with the bridge and this contact would identify, in more depth, the strategic concerns the County Council has in relation to CYP and their families. In common with other parts of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area the Youth Service, another county council service, has been cut. This was mentioned with concern by a number of other Cambridge interviewees because these service reductions will impact on arts and cultural delivery, particularly to the more deprived or targeted young people. Cambridgeshire County Council directly operates one museum, the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon. This is part of Libraries, Archives & Information rather than sitting with the Museums Development Officer. The County Museum Development Officer supports four learning officers based at St Neots, Fenland, Ely and Cambridge Folk and County museums.

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Concern about a possible loss of these posts due to funding changes, related to the demise of MLA, was expressed by a number of interviewees. Recently ACE offered libraries the chance to bid for Libraries Development Initiative funding. Cambridgeshire has been successful in its bid which was led by the countywide Cultural Task Group rather than the Library Service. Four libraries in Fenland working with local groups will have the option to say if they would like the funding spent on CYP or older people. This outcome has yet to be finally decided.

7.7 Cambridge City Council The well established Arts and Events team in the City Council is part of Arts and Recreation, the department responsible for sport, recreational and cultural services including the Corn Exchange and events in open spaces. The Arts Officer manages the Cambridge Arts Network which has a membership of 700. There are grant funding agreements with a range of organisations. www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/portal The council’s current policy is to devolve power from the centre of Cambridge to the neighbourhoods. Area committees have been established to make decisions and the system is currently being tested. Some of the work the arts team is doing reflects that strategic drive although community centres in the neighbourhoods are not well geared up for the arts and this is an aspect that might benefit from the bridge’s involvement. Several areas of the city were mentioned by interviewees as areas of deprivation, to a greater or lesser degree, and included wards to the north of Cambridge, Arbury, King’s Hedges, Chesterton and Cherry Hinton. Although the consensus was that other areas of the county were possibly in greater need, as they had little on offer and access problems. However the view was also expressed that for some CYP living outside the central city area, the dominance of the Cambridge University made them feel ill at ease and so they and their families may not access the cultural opportunities on offer. The City is home to six of the seven Cambridgeshire NPOs and these are: • Academy of Ancient Music • Britten Sinfonia • Hoipolloi Theatre Company • Junction CDC • Kettle’s Yard (part of the University of Cambridge) • New International Encounter Cambridge has eight university museums including the Fitzwilliam. This University of Cambridge Museums cluster is one of the two ACE Renaissance major partner museums in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. The other is Norfolk Archaeology and Museum Service. Both will receive three year funding. The City is also host to two universities with rich cultural provisions of their own, which the public can access. This report does not discuss university provision in detail.

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7.8 East Cambridgeshire District Council The council does not have arts service and arts development work is contracted out ADEC. www.eastcambs.gov.uk ADEC has a strong focus on working with CYP supported by a clear strategy for youth development work. The organisation works closely with the county youth service particularly the Huntingdon and East Cambridgeshire area managers. ADEC also work with independent youth services. Other partners include museums, adult and family learning and the stART team. As well as working in East Cambridgeshire, ADEC does a small amount of work in the city of Cambridge, and works in partnership with Cambridge City Council where appropriate. In addition to youth work the organisation work with a range of community groups on areas of specific interest to those groups, bringing in expertise around working with young people, Arts Award, and project management. The ADEC Director is also part of CS3 the culture and sport consortium for Cambridgeshire and Suffolk which is just about to be launched. This is a special purpose vehicle designed to enable the diverse range of culture and sport organisations in the two counties work together in relation to strategic commissioning, community budgeting and other shared services. The district is home to Ely Museum, the Stained Glass Museum in Ely and the Prickwillow Engine Museum.

7.9 Fenland District Council Fenland has no arts service and very little cultural infrastructure. Wisbech, one of the most deprived parts of the county, is in Fenland. This Fenland District Council area and the wider area of Fenland is currently the subject of a Creative People and Places bid. www.fenland.gov.uk/home The district is home to Wisbech and Fenland Museum which has one of the Learning Officer posts which may be under threat. The district borders with Peterborough and those residents living on that side of the district look towards the city. Wisbech is only thirty miles from Cambridge but poor transport and a host of other factors mean there is little contact for many residents so they are unable to access the range of opportunities the city might offer them. There are two art organisations in the district, Fenland Arts and Atelier East who are trying to develop work in the area for CYP but on tiny resources. There is a history in Fenland (a cause of complaint across the whole Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area) of short term projects which lack sustainability.

7.9 Huntingdonshire District Council There is no arts service as the previous arts officer was made redundant (Viv Peters, who held the post, now works for Natural High). www.huntingdonshire.gov.uk/Pages/Home.aspx The area was identified by a number of contacts in Cambridgeshire as one that lacked cultural provision and where activity was sparse.

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There are a number of museums in the district, including St Neots Museum which has the fourth of the Learning Officer posts that could be vulnerable to museum funding changes.

7.10 South Cambridgeshire District Council Arts development is well supported in South Cambridgeshire through the Lead Officer Arts & Culture and the stART team of Arts Development Managers. www.scambs.gov.uk/default.htm The ADM posts are partly supported by the council and partially by the five individual Village Colleges in which they are based. Other village colleges in the district do not have such posts as they do not contribute financial support. However like many arts development posts, the ADMs are vulnerable to budget changes or reductions. The ADMs fill a role both within the schools and as arts development officers. They have small ADM development grants which help to start and support the development of arts projects in the community. Much of their work focuses around CYP. They would be able to inform and support some of the bridgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aims, especially in Peterborough and on other partnership projects within the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. The district council supports the Farmland Museum and Denny Abbey. The Imperial War Museum Duxford is also in South Cambridgeshire. The district is home to Wysing Arts, one of the seven Cambridgeshire NPOs.

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Peterborough

Peterborough borders Lincolnshire to the North, Northamptonshire to the west and Cambridgeshire to the east and south. The City of Peterborough is a unitary authority and is divided up into neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood committees are made up of elected city council members, representatives from parish councils, the police authority, fire authority members of local community groups and ordinary members of the public. As well as a means of consultation and discussion, the neighbourhood committees offer the chance for committee members and residents to put forward their views on how funding could be used to help shape what happens in the neighbourhood. www.peterborough.gov.uk

Source: www.cambs-pa.gov.uk/consultation_district-detail.cfm?sectorid=42

The 2008 Sustainable Communities Strategy highlights that many of the city’s challenges are about inequalities. “There is a continuing gap between life expectancy rates at the local level and nationally and lower than average attainment at schools and skills levels in the workforce. There has been some progress in increasing the qualifications of children leaving Peterborough’s schools but there is still a need for improvement. The skills levels of the working age population, which lag considerably behind the national and regional level need improving. The city also needs to recognise and accommodate the changes to Peterborough’s demography brought about by inward migration and by the changing age profile of the population. At least 100 separate languages are spoken and 93 different nationalities live in Peterborough. The age profile of Peterborough will change significantly, with a projected 21 per cent increase in children aged 0 to 14 and a 57 per cent increase in those aged over 65”. Source: www.gpp-peterborough.org.uk/documents/SustainableCommunityStrategy_002.pdf

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8.1 Statistics This above view of Peterborough was supported in Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) research. Peterborough was described by one interviewee as a ‘city of need’. One thing which particularly stood out on the statistics in table 2 in section 5 of this report is the percentage of BME young people which is nearly three times higher than the next highest figure for Cambridgeshire at 8.1%. At 22.5% Peterborough is higher than the English average of 17.3%. The proportion of 0-19s is the highest in the bridge area but this is not hugely out of line with the other figures. Table 3 shows Peterborough is third only to Norwich City and Great Yarmouth for percentage of children in poverty and is second to Great Yarmouth on the index of multiple deprivation. While youth unemployment is broadly similar across the bridge area, there are much greater variations is adult unemployment, with Peterborough showing the highest figure on this measure i.e. at 9.2%, that is around three times higher than some other areas such as Broadland in Norfolk or Babergh in Suffolk. Other information obtained about Peterborough seems to agree with that interviewee’s analysis and, like Great Yarmouth; Peterborough has been a focus of ACE’s attentions for some years. Interestingly their approach seems to be paying off in some respects as a number of NPOs and other arts organisations mentioned working in the city, notably Britten Sinfonia and New International Encounter. However there still seems a lot more to be done and it is likely that the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) will be heavily involved in supporting and brokering some of the cultural development in the city.

8.2 Service Provision Cultural services in Peterborough are delivered by Vivacity an independent, not-for-profit organisation with charitable status that manages many of Peterborough’s culture and leisure facilities on behalf of Peterborough City Council. Arts, heritage, learning and sport form the mainstay of the services and have the specific purpose of helping people. The Arts Services Manager recently led on a Creative People and Places bid for Peterborough. Peterborough City Council Music Education Hub was awarded funding in May 2012. This is being delivered by the city council and is not part of Vivacity. The City Council is also responsible for youth services. The Museum service has three sites: Peterborough Museum, Flag Fen Archaeology Park and Longthorpe Tower. Peterborough Museum has just re-opened after an eighteen month closure. However, throughout the closure period, the Museum Learning Officer was involved in a range of learning and community projects. The museum’s schools market covers primary, secondary, special and independent. As well as Peterborough schools, the museum attracts schools from south Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and north Cambridgeshire. The museum also contains a gallery which will be programmed by the Vivacity arts team. The city has three accredited museums.

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The Library Service has ten static libraries across the city and has a 103 mobile library stops. It offers a wide range of services and activities to CYP and their families as well as working with schools. There are no NPOs in Peterborough. Key meetings for Peterborough include Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Arts Development Officers Group and the museums Regional Learning Network.

8.3 Background concerns from audit interviews Table 7 Lack of provision by geographic area and factors affecting CYP and their families in Peterborough The table below draws together comments from interviewees about the geographic areas in Peterborough where they feel there are deprivation issues or concerns about cultural provision for CYP and their families. It also lists other factors that they felt negatively affect CYP’s quality of life, including their engagement with cultural opportunities and problems affecting their educational opportunities. Area Peterborough

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Geographical areas and their challenges Places in need • Hampton ward has lack of facilities for CYP. • A number of areas of deprivation including Central Ward, Dogsthorpe. • Peterborough City has significant areas of deprivation and lack of cultural activity. Concerns and challenges • The ethnicity of the city is very mixed including substantial Asian, Eastern European and Traveller communities. • Community projects have been successful but the work needs sustaining. • Although things are happening in Peterborough there is not really the quality of cultural opportunity and experience that one might expect in a city. For example the theatre has a lot of tribute band type events but these are not balanced with high quality music or performance.

Factors affecting CYP and their families • The city is one of the lowest achieving areas in England in education. • There are high second language needs in many of the schools and can be 40-90% in some schools. • Low aspiration. • Low numbers progress to higher education. • Poor language skills in both English and other languages. • The primary schools are fantastic.

8.4 Schools Peterborough has: • 7 Local authority nursery schools • 56 Primary schools • 11 Secondary schools • 1 Further education/sixth form colleges • 10 Special Schools and Pupil referral Units • 2 Independent schools. (Most privately educated CYP go to schools in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire) Table 8 Schools by sector in Peterborough Peterborough

Total

Nursery Primary Secondary FE/Sixth Special Independent Total Form 7 56 11 1 10 2 87 7 56 11 1 10 2 87

Cambridgeshire Cambridge City East Cambs Fenland Huntingdonshire South Cambs Total

5 0 0 1 1 7

26 27 33 60 57 203

6 4 4 7 7 30

3 1 6 8 5 23

0 2 2 2 3 9

18 1 1 2 2 24

58 35 46 80 75 294

Source: www.peterborough.gov.uk/children_and_families/schools.aspx

8.5 Local Authority and its area of responsibility Table 9 Division of responsibility for cultural service delivery in Peterborough The table below shows the division of responsibility for delivering cultural services in Peterborough, a unitary authority which has contracted out much of the cultural delivery to a trust. It lists the names and titles of those who contributed to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit and whose information supports this report. An appendix of the interviews that contributors agreed to make public are contained in Appendix 1.

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Local Authority area

Local authority responsibilities and contacts from research

Peterborough City Council

Education, Youth Service, Music Education Hub. John Green, Music Adviser, Peterborough City Council Music Education Hub

Other organisations in the area and contacts from research Cultural services are delivered by a Trust, Vivacity.

Greer Roberts, Arts Services Manager, Vivacity Pam Russell, Museum Learning Officer, Vivacity Heather Walton, Library and Customer Services Manager, Vivacity

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9. Norfolk Norfolk borders Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the east. Seven District or Borough councils are included within the administrative county of Norfolk. These are Breckland District Council, Broadland District Council, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council, North Norfolk District Council, Norwich City Council and South Norfolk Council. Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Breckland District Council were due to share services. This would have affected officers but not councillors. However, since the May 2012 elections, when there was a change of administration, this plan has been halted. Breckland already shares services with South Holland District Council in Lincolnshire and will explore additional other options.

Source: http://www.jbsv.co.uk/links.htm

The county gives the impression of having a very well joined up arts infrastructure which has a clear view of what the problems are facing the county both generally and in relation to CYP. Many of those working in the county have been there for a long time and are highly experienced both professionally and in the way that Norfolk functions. There are also a range of challenges that were universally identified by interviewees. These included rural isolation, poor transport, poor education, low aspiration and isolated communities. In addition deprivation was mentioned in relation to urban settlements including Norwich and Great Yarmouth. This anecdotal evidence is backed up by the statistical evidence in tables 2 and 3 in section 5 of this report. .

9.1 Statistics In terms of population density, Table 2, in section 5, shows that some areas in Norfolk are amongst the lowest in the bridge area. Breckland is the lowest at 100 persons per square kilometre, followed by King’s Lynn and West Norfolk on 101. In contrast Great Yarmouth’s

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figure on this measure is 559 and Norwich City’s is 3677, the highest in the bridge area. The English average is 401. On the ethnicity measure Norfolk and Suffolk are broadly comparable at 5.6% and 5.3% respectively which contrast sharply with that of Peterborough at 22.5%. However this lack of diversity was not something that was often referred to directly in the interviews, although lack of wider influences and opportunities for many young people was. Table 3 shows that the two highest areas on the index of multiple deprivation for the bridge area are in Norfolk. These are Great Yarmouth on 27.66 and Norwich City on 25.65. However King’s Lynn and West Norfolk is not far behind on 21.05. The English average is 19.15. All contrast markedly with South Cambridgeshire on 7.11 and Mid Suffolk on 10.23. Interestingly while Breckland has the lowest population density its unemployment rate at 7.1% is close to the English average of 7.5%. However it is third lowest at 17.4% for the percentage of NVQ4+, behind Great Yarmouth and Fenland in Cambridgeshire, whose figures are 14.1% and 14.9%. This is in marked contrast to Norwich City on 39.1%, third only to Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire on 50.7% and 45.3% respectively. Broadland has the lowest rate of adult unemployment in the bridge area at 3.0%, but its youth unemployment is the third highest at 29.5% after Fenland on 30.9% and Norwich City on 29.9%. The English average for youth unemployment was 26.6% and adult unemployment was 7.5%.

9.2 Service Provision Norwich is the focus of much cultural provision and opportunity. The County Council is based in the city and it is here that the county arts and events service, museum and archaeology service, library service (including Schools Library Service), music service and children’s services are all based. The music service led on the successful application for Music Education Hub status. The city is home to the University of East Anglia, including the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and the Norwich University College of the Arts. The city is home to all five of Norfolk’s NPOs: • British Centre for Literary Translation • Norfolk and Norwich Festival • Norwich Arts Centre • Tilted Productions • Writer’s Centre Norwich In addition there are a number of other high quality arts providers including the Norwich Theatre Royal and The Garage. Norfolk Dance is also based in Norwich at The Garage. The concentration of offer and opportunity in Norwich contrasts with the rest of the county. This raises a point which a number of interviewees mentioned, that there are levels of resentment towards Norwich by the rest of Norfolk. In particular it was reported by a number 43 | P a g e

of people that the West Norfolk area often feels that it receives little resource in comparison to Norwich. However the city is not without its problems as the statistics relating to the City of Norwich demonstrate. Much of the Breckland’s arts officer’s work is with older people or communities, as the district has a lot of rural isolation and older people affected by this are a focus for the council’s attention. There is much less focus on CYP and their families. Broadland, like Breckland and North Norfolk does not have a large amount of cultural infrastructure. However the authority runs a Tots2Teens programme and works with local schools. North Norfolk has a high concentration of professional artists and a thriving festival offer. The latter is one way the arts officer is able to develop and support opportunities for CYP and their families. There are varying degrees of engagement with the arts by schools but it was a cause of concern to many Norfolk interviewees that the schools often failed to take up opportunities or that the quality of some of what they offered in terms of arts was poor or dated. Great Yarmouth, Norwich City and South Norfolk do not have arts services. King’s Lynn Arts Centre (KLAC) became a trust (replacing the local authority provision) on the 1st April 2012. KLAC works closely with some local schools and its community and provides a high quality offer in an area with considerable challenges. In Great Yarmouth, Seachange Arts works closely with schools and local communities. Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service, manages museums across the county, is one of the two ACE Renaissance major partner museums in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. The other is the University of Cambridge Museums. In the city itself are a number of museums including Norwich Castle. Most of the museums in the county have an education or learning offer for CYP and schools. The county has 32 accredited museums. The Library Service has 46 static libraries and 610 villages, hamlets and areas are served by mobile libraries. There is also a Schools Library Service. There was widespread concern about the loss of the county youth service which is being replaced by Youth Action Boards at district level. It seemed to be unclear, at the moment, how these were going to work. Key meetings in Norfolk are: Regional Learning Network for museums and Norfolk Arts Forum. There are a number of other specialist groups such as Norfolk Youth Arts Consortium and Cultural Communities Consortium.

9.3 Background concerns from audit interviews Table 10 Lack of provision by geographic area and factors affecting CYP and their families in Norfolk The table below draws together comments from interviewees about the geographic areas in Norfolk where they feel there are deprivation issues or concerns about cultural provision for CYP and their families. It also lists other factors that they felt negatively affect CYP’s quality

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of life, including their engagement with cultural opportunities and problems affecting their educational opportunities. Area Norfolk

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Geographical Areas and their challenges Places in need • All parts of the county need focussing on, but for different reasons. • Greater Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn all have deprived wards. • South and North Norfolk are affected by rural isolation, poor services that come with a high cost, coastal areas affected by isolation and seasonal employment. • North Norfolk is very rural. • Many urban areas, especially in King’s Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth, are seriously deprived. • West Norfolk especially, an area in a ring around Derehem. • South Breckland. • An arch from Great Yarmouth to King’s Lynn and Thetford with only small pockets of activity in this area. Concerns and challenges • There are now 77 languages spoken in Norfolk which is partly due to the numbers of overseas rural migrant workers. Included are the new communities from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia amongst others. • The central area of the county has very little cultural offer. • The transport infrastructure is poor and there are no motorways in the county. • There is a need for more artist training to freshen those who have worked in the county for a long time. • There is also a need for some new young practitioners. However there is difficulty in

Factors affecting CYP and their families • Public transport is a big issue for young people in Norfolk and especially in the rural areas. • Transport and communications are a real concern for many young people. There is little public transport and for those on lower incomes it is difficult to afford. One way round this is to make sure opportunities are more easily accessed by those in the rural areas. • In some isolated rural areas such as north Norfolk, young people have access to cultural outreach opportunities delivered by organisations such as Sheringham Little Theatre. • Gap in cultural provision for young people outside school. • Need to offer young people the opportunity to access provision outside their communities. As well as the actual participation opportunities, young people meet a wider range of people which helps build confidence. However there are costs associated with this approach which the Bridge will need to consider when thinking about benefits versus costs. • It can often take time to find the right place and venue and get participants to travel there. • The library service has put in some extra support put in around teenagers. Three temporary posts have been created which will run until March 2013 and the post holders will develop engagement and the offer for teenagers in four areas; Thetford, King’s Lynn, Wymondham and Norwich (Millennium Library). • The worker at the Millennium Library came about as a result of

Area

Geographical Areas and their challenges recruiting people to come and work in the county because it is seen as rural and slightly cut off. • Rural counties have specific problems of transport and communication and these are particularly pronounced in Breckland and West Norfolk. • There are no NPOs in great swathes of Norfolk. • Need for investment to get into this hinterland to extend opportunities to those places currently lacking many. • Local authority boundaries do not matter to the public so new work should not duplicate current provision but add to a greater offer overall. • Working in rural areas is not the same as working in larger towns. There can be a suspicion or dislike of outsiders who appear to come in, create a brief flare of activity and then disappear.

Breckland

Places in need • Thetford is an area of concern. Concerns and challenges • The district is geographically large with five towns and 108 parishes. • Much of the arts work is done with older people or communities. • Breckland is quite a working class district with a lot of rural isolation which affects many groups, including older people. • Rural deprivation. • High illiteracy levels. • Transport is very difficult. • Lowest council tax take in the county. • Very few venues. • Sparse resources. • Disparate district. • The area lacks much in the

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Factors affecting CYP and their families consultation because the library is very popular with CYP, especially at weekends. • South Norfolk has a lot of small rural schools with low aspirations and poor financial resources. • The low level of aspiration and sameness of what is on offer in some of the rural areas. • There is low engagement in CPD because people are not being pushed or challenged. In turn this leads to a lack of energy. • Over the years a range of really good projects have been implemented. However it has become increasingly apparent that sustainability of provision is a real concern. Things happen for a short time, because much activity is based on up to three year funding which can’t then be repeated. This pattern can be harmful as young people are conscious that their needs attract funding which can understandably lead to youthful cynicism. •

•

• •

Opportunities for young people are a concern as they are not used to having anything much provided for them. The loss of the Youth Service has also meant the loss of contact with young people on a close or one to one basis. Poor means of communication with Young People. Holiday activities are not targeted enough so consequently they don’t always reach those who need the activity most. Due to the size of the district the money is spread equally, but thinly, so there isn’t a great deal of depth for anyone.

Area

Broadland

Great Yarmouth

King’s Lynn and West Norfolk

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Geographical Areas and their challenges way of arts organisation or infrastructure. Places in need • No information. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • There are incredibly deprived areas of Great Yarmouth (South and Central wards) which still do not have regular access to high quality arts provision. Concerns and challenges • ACE ‘Cold Spots’ mapping shows Great Yarmouth in the lowest 20% of Local authorities in terms of percentage of the population not engaging with the arts (the lowest in Norfolk). • Residents perception studies highlight desire for arts activities generally and for and young people specifically. • The variety of different nationalities (a significant proportion of south and central Yarmouth are migrant communities, especially Portuguese). Places in need • King’s Lynn Concerns and challenges • Large number of migrant workers, many of whom are Eastern European. • High unemployment. • Pockets of multiple deprivation • 25% fewer professionals than elsewhere in Norfolk. • A number of retired professionals who come to the area. • West Norfolk, apart from King’s Lynn is very rural and transport is poor, particularly inland. • West Norfolk has no NPO but

Factors affecting CYP and their families

•

There are high levels of nonschool attendance in parts of the borough and it is important to work with youth agencies in addition to schools.

•

Low educational aspirations and attainments. There is a need for more outreach work and working offsite which needs more resources to do effectively. There is little opportunity for YPs who want to work in the cultural or creative industries.

•

Area

North Norfolk

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Geographical Areas and their challenges has a population of 200,000. • West Norfolk can be very marginalised in the Norfolk cultural offer overall. Places in need • Towns of Stalham, Wells and Fakenham. • Fakenham has a lack of venues for and the community centre is old and very booked up. • There are 150 rural villages. • Some of the most deprived include Mundesley and Melton Constable. • Opportunities are patchy in Sheringham and Cromer despite having more provision than in other areas because there are more partners available to work with. Concerns and challenges • Deprivation and access to opportunities is limited and patchy across the district. • Access to arts is often quite limited. North Norfolk has 7 market towns and 150 villages so provision is patchy and access to public transport very limited. • Rurality and the associated lack of opportunities are a big problem. There is also an issue of hidden poverty related to the rurality of the district. • Transport is causes considerable problems. The bus service is poor or nonexistent away from the coast. Trains are very limited and only stop at three towns. • Apart from issues around CYP the area attracts a lot of early retirees. On the positive side this means there are a lot of people who want to become involved in voluntary work so that drama and choral societies particularly flourish.

Factors affecting CYP and their families

•

Fakenham School has proved difficult to work with, even when arts opportunities were offered. However a new head teacher has since been appointed. There are a lot of festivals in the North Norfolk area which do offer CYP some opportunities. Wells-next-the-Sea suffers from limited opportunities for CYP, due to the geography and small size of the community. As does Stalham and surrounding villages.

Area

Norwich City

Geographical Areas and their challenges However on the other side this population can become increasingly resource heavy over time and dementia is a noticeable issue. Places in need • Norwich. Concerns and challenges • No information.

Factors affecting CYP and their families

•

Norwich has one of the lowest GCSE achievement rates in the country (bottom 10% for last 10 rd years, 3 from bottom nationally

in 2010/11). •

South Norfolk

Most Norwich-based arts organisations provide outreach opportunities but not necessarily year round.

Places in need • No Information. Concerns and challenges • No information.

9.4 Schools Norfolk has: • 3 Local authority nursery schools • 359 Primary schools • 35 Secondary schools • 9 Further education/sixth form colleges • 11 Special Schools • 1 all-through school • 1 short stay school • 28 Independent schools Source: www.norfolk.gov.uk/Childrens_services/Schools/index.htm

It was not possible to provide a further breakdown as no easy to access list appears to be available. The list of schools on the county council website is only accessible by postcode and there is no district breakdown available. There are 17 academies (6 phase one and 11 converters) and 1 free school.

9.5 Local authorities and their areas of responsibility Table 11 Local authority division of responsibility for cultural service delivery The table below shows the division of responsibility for delivering local authority services in a two tier structure. It also lists the names and titles of those who contributed to the Norfolk & 49 | P a g e

Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit and whose information supports this report. An appendix of the interviews that contributors agreed to make public are contained in Appendix 1. Local Authority area

Local authority responsibilities and contacts from research

Norfolk County Council

Education, libraries, museums development, heritage and music service. The staff in local authority museums across Norfolk are part of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service (NMAS) run by Norfolk CC. Mary Muir, Arts Officer

Breckland District Council

Broadland District Council

Great Yarmouth Borough Council

Other organisations in the area and contacts from research

Anna McCarthy, Creative Projects Officer Hazel Courtley, Museum Development Projects Manager Jo Warr, Programme Manager (NMAS) Katrina Siliprandi, Head of Learning Development Lorna Payne, Assistant Head of Service â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Development (Libraries) Kirsten Francis, Manager for Schools and Young People's Services (Libraries) Maureen Hanke, Head of Music Service/Music Advisor Arts officer Sam Dawson, Arts Development Officer Arts officer Nicola Pye, Leisure Services Coordinator No arts service Joe Mackintosh, Chief Executive, Seachange Arts Wendy Ellis, Youth Work Manager, MAP

King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council

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No arts service

Liz Falconbridge, Director, Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lynn Arts Centre Trust North Norfolk District Council

Arts service Brenda Seymour, Arts Officer

Norwich City Council

South Norfolk Council

Culture and events but no arts officer Helen Selleck, Culture and Events Manager

Mitchell Albert, Programme Director, Norwich Writers Centre Derek Purnell, General Manager, Tilted Productions Derek Purnell, Director, Norfolk Dance Darren Grice, Executive Director , The Garage Veronica Sekules, Deputy Director and Head of Education and Research, Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts Peter Wilson MBE, Chief Executive, Theatre Royal Wendy Ellis, Youth Work Manager , MAP Kaja Holloway, Manager, NEAD (Norfolk Education & Action for Development) Marcus Patteson, Director & In Harmony Norwich Director, NORCA (Norwich & Norfolk Community Arts)

No arts officer.

9.6 Norfolk County Council The County Council, and top tier authority, is well resourced with experienced cultural staff and a good reputation for innovation. The authority has responsibility for many of the key services that the bridge is interested in including education, libraries (including schools library service), music education, museum development and arts development. However the county council has divested itself of youth service delivery which is now the responsibility of the newly established Youth Action Boards (YAB). These have not begun to fully function in all areas and both the future working of the YABs and changes to youth services were of considerable concern to many interviewees. www.norfolk.gov.uk

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The Norfolk Arts Forum which is administered by Mary Muir, Arts Officer, is a model of good practice. The Arts Officer and the Creative Projects Officer sit in different, geographically separated departments. Mary Muir, Arts Officer is part of Community Services while Anna McCarthy, Creative Projects Officer is part of Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Services. There seems to be good cross working involving arts, libraries and museums both internally and externally. The Music Service and Archives also work in partnership with a range of cultural colleagues across the council. The Music Service led on the successful Music Hub bid for Norfolk. Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service is unique in bridge area in that it runs a countywide museum service. It is one of the two ACE Renaissance major partner museums in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. The county council financially supports nineteen arts organisations, including three of the NPOs, and through them direct work with communities. Norfolk School Libraries Better Libraries Project supports schools to make a difference to the reading environment in their school. The scheme offers school libraries the chance to do more than upgrade the physical aspect of a library or its stock, by providing an opportunity to combine such work with an arts or cultural dimension as well.

9.7 Broadland District Council Provision for CYP falls into three areas; Tots2Teens holiday activities for children aged five years upwards, workshops in schools and training courses at Broadland Council Training Services. The latter incorporates Arts Award at the Foundation stage. The council offers small grants. www.broadland.gov.uk Many of the arts organisations working in Broadland are based in Norwich. Like Breckland the area seems to have a poor cultural infrastructure. However there are still a range of ESCOs (Extended school coordinators) working in the area. There are also some festivals which offer arts and cultural provision

9.8 Breckland District Council The arts officer currently sits in the Communities department which is being restructured, but the arts post is included in the new structure. The district is geographically large with five towns and 108 parishes. Breckland currently shares services with South Holland District Council in Lincolnshire. Much of the arts officerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus is older people. www.breckland.gov.uk The area lacks much in the way of arts organisation or cultural infrastructure. However the library service is a good partner and supports the annual Breckland Book Festival. Due to poor financial resources for the arts there is little opportunity to develop partnerships or bring in freelancers to run activities. Opportunities for young people are a concern to the arts officer because historically young people are not used to having much provision available to them. Moreover what resource there is for CYP is spread thinly over the whole district which is sparsely populated. The sense of a large, rather empty area is borne out in statistics.

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9.9 Great Yarmouth Borough Council Great Yarmouth has a Culture, Leisure and Sport Manager but unfortunately they were not able to contribute to the report. Looking at the council’s website it seems to direct the enquirer to non council sources for museums and arts and is otherwise unclear about how the council supports culture. The arts contact link is Seachange Arts who have responded to the research and have led on a Creative People and Places bid recently. www.greatyarmouth.gov.uk/culture-leisure/arts-and-culture.htm Great Yarmouth has considerable deprivation and has been a focus of ACE’s attention for some years. The need for this focus is backed both by the statistics in tables 2 and 3 in section 5 of this report and the residents’ surveys. Like many other parts of Norfolk, outside Norwich, there are few arts organisations locally. Seachange Arts is a major presence and the St Georges Theatre is due to re-open later in 2012. The library service recently completed a lottery funded refurbishment of Great Yarmouth Library which involved considerable community engagement and some of the lessons learnt here are being applied elsewhere in the county. The town is home to the Time and Tide Museum which is part of NMAS. It is supported by NMAS Learning Team who offers learning opportunities in museums and schools.

9.10 King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council King’s Lynn and West Norfolk no longer has an arts service, having transferred it to a trust structure from the 1st April 2012. www.west-norfolk.gov.uk The King’s Lynn Arts Centre Trust includes the Arts Centre, a cinema and a theatre and has three years of diminishing funding. Liz Falconbridge the Trust Director (and previously managed arts development in the council) hopes to pull together the heritage and cultural sectors to work as one. The KLAC works with local schools and a range of young people. It can be difficult to persuade some local schools to engage, or appreciate the quality of the centre’s offer. Most of the work is with primary heads who want to help improve their pupils’ confidence and self-esteem. West Norfolk has no NPO and few other arts or cultural organisations, but has a population of 200,000. It is one of the areas that many other Norfolk respondees highlighted as needing additional resource, both to support the good work already happening, as well as additional provision. Several of those who expressed a view said this needed to be a long term commitment, as short term projects can do more harm than good.

9.11 North Norfolk District Council A new administration was elected in May 2011 which saw the council change from Liberal Democrat control to Conservative. There were 22 new councillors out of a total of 48. Currently they are keen to retain existing services. The Arts and Heritage strategy is due to be refreshed as it was last endorsed in 2010. www.northnorfolk.org

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North Norfolk, although affected by many of the rural problems which are common in much of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area, is better served than many of the other districts. There is a large community of professional artists and a strong voluntary sector. The Arts Officer is part time and the department she sits in is currently being restructured. Unlike some of the other district councils, North Norfolk is providing financial sources to support arts organisations. There are SLA’s with Sheringham Little Theatre, Creative Arts East, Community Music East), Norfolk Dance, North Norfolk Exhibition Project, Belfry Arts Centre and Orchestras Live. The remainder of the budget of is used as project partnership funding and promotion. Despite this positive picture, access to the arts is often quite patchy and affects CYP and their families. One way of providing opportunities to CYP is through the festival programme of which there are 20 in the district.

9.12 Norwich City Council There is no arts officer at Norwich City Council, the post having been deleted in 2011. www.norwich.gov.uk/Pages/Home.aspx One problem identified about the City by another interviewee was that Norwich City Council has relatively low revenues because the richer parts of Norwich sit in other districts. It is an area which is high in child poverty, and on multiple deprivation index. It was unclear how much partnership working the council is involved in, but the bridge will not be short of partners in Norwich as it is rich in arts organisations, libraries, museums and higher education. The City is home to all five of Norfolk’s NPOs: • British Centre for Literary Translation • Norfolk and Norwich Festival • Norwich Arts Centre • Tilted Productions • Writer’s Centre Norwich

9.13 South Norfolk Council There is no arts service. The council website has a number of references to the arts and a public art policy is available. However the officer mentioned in that document left the council about two years ago and some of the other arts references look to date from that time. www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/index.asp

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10. Suffolk Suffolk borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. Seven District or Borough councils are included within the administrative county of Suffolk. These are Babergh District Council, Forest Heath District Council, Ipswich Borough Council, Mid Suffolk District Council, St Edmundsbury Borough Council, Suffolk Coastal District Council and Waveney District Council. Forest Heath District Council and St Edmundsbury are due to share services in the near future. This will affect officers rather than councillors, and it is currently unclear how this will affect the two councils’ services that cover arts and heritage.

Source: www.csduk.com/CSD/Contact+details+for+other+district+and+borough+councils+in+Suffolk.htm

Suffolk, compared to Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, is historically under resourced. Ipswich is the closest place to being a cultural centre which has an intensive amount of provision. However much of this is a more recent development and has been something of a conscious effort in order to provide the sort of focus that exists in other county towns and elsewhere within the bridge area. This strategy includes the development of the Ipswich Waterfront which houses DanceEast’s new home and the main centre of University Campus Suffolk. Ipswich is also home to four of seven Suffolk’s NPOs which are: • Dance East • Eastern Angles • Gecko Theatre • New Wolsey Theatre

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Colchester and Ipswich Museums had been a Renaissance Hub museum but failed to gain ACE Renaissance major partner museum funding so their immediate future is unclear at the moment. Nevertheless there is excellent work in Suffolk and those that are there work well in partnership. However a combination of some key organisations not being able to contribute to the audit research and some strong individuals and organisations that have, gives the impression of hotspots of innovation and provision set against a more hazy background.

10.1 Statistics Ipswich, as well as being the county town of Suffolk, is the place with the third highest score on index of multiple deprivation in the bridge area. The figure is 24.82 after Peterborough’s 25.63 and Norwich’s 25.65. Cambridge by contrast is 15.50. The next worst district in Suffolk is Waveney with 22.08 while the rest of the districts are all under 13.50 against an English average of 19.15. Ipswich is also notable for its population density of 3254 per sq. Km. in a county where the next highest figure is Waveney on 317 and the rest of the districts are 170 or lower against an English average of 401. Waveney contains Lowestoft and anecdotally it is likely that it is this town which will have a concentration of problems, rather than the district as a whole. The lowest population density in Suffolk is 109 per square kilometre in Mid Suffolk, which is the fourth lowest in the bridge area. So like much of the rest of the bridge area, Suffolk has scattered populations which makes identifying places to concentrate the arts and cultural offer difficult. As a result Ipswich is the one place where a critical mass of activity has been built, which the bridge could build on. However for those outside the immediate area transport and its associated cost provides a barrier to access as it does across much of the bridge area, something which will particularly affect CYP and their families. Ipswich and Waveney both score highly in the bridge area on the percentage of children in poverty at 21.7 and 21.2 respectively. This follows Norwich on 29.6 and Peterborough on 24.0 against the average for England of 20.9. So the Suffolk figures while high for the bridge area are only just above the English average. There was a lot of comment in the interviews about the poor standard of CYP’s education and results in Suffolk but this does not show up at NVQ4+ in quite the same dramatic way that it does in some parts of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. The worst area is Waveney on 18.8%, the fourth worst. The rest of the districts all fall into the 23.7 – 29.0 range (with the exception of Suffolk Coastal on 35.2) against an English average of 31.3. Youth unemployment in the bridge area ranges from 22.8 – 32.4 against an average for England of 26.6. However Waveney is the highest, followed by Fenland in Cambridgeshire on 30.9. However while Ipswich has the highest adult unemployment figure of 9%, the next highest is St Edmundsbury on 8.4% against an English average of 7.5%. Waveney on this measure has a score of 4.4%, but without further research it is unclear if this is concentrated in Lowestoft or spread across the district more widely.

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Information from the interviews supports the statistical picture above and the picture that emerged was that Suffolk, like parts of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, is affected by rural issues, poor transport, low aspiration and poor progression to training and higher education in many parts of the county. Like Norfolk it suffers from complacency because it is regarded as a nice place to live and the average is acceptable. For more information and an excellent insight into the challenges facing Suffolk it is worth reading the Hidden Needs report commissioned from University of Cambridge. www.suffolkfoundation.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75:needsassessment&catid=6:latest-news

10.2 Service provision Suffolk is akin to Cambridgeshire in terms of the quantity of cultural resource at county level. Both the Arts Development Manager and the Museums Development Manager work closely with related colleagues across Suffolk and these partnerships seem strong. Some of the arts organisations such as Dance East, Aldeburgh and Eastern Angles have a remit to work outside the county boundary and would like to do more cross border working. The Suffolk CC Arts Development Manager works closely with the countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arts organisations and provides funding to a number of them including several of the seven NPOs. The Museums Development Manager works closely with the museums, many of which are volunteer run to a very high standard. The Library Service was unavailable to contribute to the research as the service is currently in the final stages of becoming an independent cooperative organisation. However there currently 47 static libraries and 200 villages and hamlets served by mobile libraries. There is also a Schools Library Service. The Music Service successfully led on the Suffolk Music Education Hub bid. Suffolk County Council has closed about 17 youth clubs out of 40, but many of these had not offered a good service as only very small numbers of young people were being served. The service is now targeted to NEETS, or other deprived and underachieving young people. Some youth workers will work in a community centred way, while others while be based on the ground in areas where inclusion is a concern. While the service has been quite severely cut, those who remain are beginning to find their feet again. The number of arts officers is small, with only three of the possible contacts really focussing on arts development work. There are a number of other officers who have arts in their titles but their roles may be more limited in relation to the bridge. One of the noticeable, and perhaps surprising, features of Suffolk is the high levels of poor education. This had partly been tackled at a higher education level by the creation several years ago of the University Campus Suffolk (UCS). There are six UCS centres; Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Otley and Suffolk New College This institution will see its first graduates in 2012; however it is currently difficult to tell what the long term impact may be. www.ucs.ac.uk/About/Abouthomepage.aspx Education is poor at KS2, so school improvement has been an overriding issue for Suffolk County Council since the time of the Labour Government. Suffolkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attainment at KS2 is poor; it is third from the bottom in England. This has had a knock on effect on curriculum 57 | P a g e

areas and other subjects which are not related to literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy levels are not as high as they ought to be and the related GCSE results are accordingly lower than they should be. Currently the LEA is not interested in anything which doesn’t relate to driving those standards up. The Advisory Team has been severely restructured, but those who are left have been working very closely with the Arts Development Manager. Networks for teachers are much weaker than they used to be. Key meetings for Suffolk are: Suffolk Creative Learning Collaborative, Arts Development Officers, Association of Suffolk Museums and the museums’ Regional Learning Forum.

10.3 Background concerns from audit interviews Table 12 Lack of provision by geographic area and factors affecting CYP and their families in Norfolk The table below draws together comments from interviewees about the geographic areas in Suffolk where they feel there are deprivation issues or concerns about cultural provision for CYP and their families. It also lists other factors that they felt negatively affect CYP’s quality of life, including their engagement with cultural opportunities and problems affecting their educational opportunities. Area Suffolk Some of the information came from Suffolk Hidden Needs www.suffolkfoundat ion.org.uk/index.ph p?option=com_con tent&view=article&i d=75:needsassessment&catid =6:latest-news

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Geographical Areas and their challenges Places in need • Lowestoft, Mildenhall, Newmarket, Brandon and parts of Ipswich are all areas for concern in terms of deprivation. Concerns and challenges • Nearly 78,000 people in the county live in income deprivation at the most minimal living standard provided by welfare benefits, and well below the ‘poverty line’. This number represents 11 per cent of the total population, and includes 19,000 children aged under 16. • Having a job does not always raise household income much above the poverty threshold. There is evidence of in-work poverty and under-counting of deprivation by standard measures in some parts of the

Factors affecting CYP and their families • Income deprivation affecting children is particularly concentrated in the larger towns in Suffolk. • Across the county, less than half of five year-olds have reached a ‘good’ level of development. This is one of the worst outcomes in England, and is comparable to highly deprived urban areas. • Childhood poverty affects educational attainment: only 43% of low-income pupils claiming free school meals achieved 5 GCSEs at grades A*-C, compared to 69% of pupils overall. • More than 7 per cent of young people aged 16 to 18 in Suffolk are not in education, training or employment. This is higher than the national average, and one of the highest rates for rural areas in England. • The recession has hit youth

Area

Geographical Areas and their challenges county, particularly Forest Heath. • Much of the county remains highly rural, and access to key services has steadily worsened in rural areas over the past two decades. The distances that residents of many parts of the county must travel to buy groceries, see a GP or post a parcel are amongst the highest in England. • Poverty of aspiration. • The issues associated with the rural nature of the county are massive.

Babergh

Places in need • No information. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • Newmarket is poor and is surrounded by Cambridgeshire. The town

Forest Heath

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Factors affecting CYP and their families employment hard, and recovery is slow. Many parts of Suffolk have limited opportunities for young people. Demand and supply of employment opportunities do not always match geographically. In Waveney, for example, there are seven job-seekers for every vacancy advertised in Job Centres. • There are 364 schools in Suffolk and education is poor at KS2. Literacy and numeracy levels are not as high as they should be and GCSE are lower than they should be as well. • The numbers going into higher education are low against national figures. • The new University of Suffolk will see its first graduates in 2012 but it is too early to say what long term effect this establishment will have on higher education aspiration in the county. • Isolated children. • NEETS. • Lack of aspiration is a big problem. • Many Suffolk schools suffer from a lack of engagement with the wider world and are reluctant to take their pupils out of the school environment or engage with external providers. • There are concerns about under achievement in Suffolk but some schools and groups have the view that they don’t want people coming into rural Suffolk telling them what to do.

• •

There are poor education standards across the district. Young people do not, on the

Area

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Geographical Areas and their challenges lacks a middle class which has an impact on the demand for provision. This may change as more middle earners are moving in as Cambridgeshire becomes too expensive. • Mildenhall. The population includes a lot of London overspill. The Americans on the Air Base don’t leave it very much. • Brandon. Concerns and challenges • Forest Heath is on the margins of Suffolk . • Newmarket has a number of East European workers, mostly Poles and a Muslim Arabic population associated with the horse racing industry. Brandon also has a Polish community. • The district has the highest percentage of unskilled workforce members in the east of England and is amongst some of the lowest qualified nationally. • No professional arts organisations. • Very few visual artists. • No cinema. • No arts centre. • No recognised venues. • The village halls, of which Mildenhall has a larger one, are old fashioned and poorly equipped. • A Creative People and Places application to cover Fenland and Forest Heath has been submitted. • A successful bid would make a huge difference to Forest Heath on the arts side while both heritage and arts would benefit in Fenland. • It would also support more strategic planning as Forest

Factors affecting CYP and their families whole, reach their potential as there are narrow life choices available to them. • The district has some of the lowest educational achievement nationally. Newmarket College has a 38% A*- C rate. • Suffolk is not high on the deprivation indices but it does have poor education in the state schools. They also have low aspirations for their pupils and are affected by the rurality of the area. One contributory problem is that many staff are still recruited locally and they are used to the history of low standards. • Educational standards suffer from complacency linked to Suffolk being regarded as a nice place to live. • There are high levels of free school meals which point to hidden deprivation. • Even the best schools when advising their pupils about university applications do not push them towards the top universities or the Russell Group. • The best schools are the catholic ones. • On the positive side both upper schools in Forest Heath now have new head teachers and positive changes are beginning to become apparent.

Area

Ipswich

Mid Suffolk

St Edmundsbury

Suffolk Coastal

Waveney

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Geographical Areas and their challenges Heath requires more provision and opportunities in the poorer areas. • Ultimately more money is needed to make a difference as the district is starting from a low base of infrastructure and provision. Places in need • Parts of Ipswich. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • Stowmarket is often quoted as an area for concern however provision is improving there. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • Although there are pockets of identified deprivation in West Suffolk (Haverhill, Forest Heath) the rural isolation can be as difficult to overcome as financial isolation. • There are a couple of areas within Bury. • Two estates in Haverhill have the highest need. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • No information. Concerns and challenges • No information. Places in need • Lowestoft has areas of deprivation. • Waveney. Concerns and challenges • The rural areas of the district are better off and the deprivation is not so high. Those in rural areas will travel to events and activities but not vice versa so people from Beccles will travel to Lowestoft but not the other way. • Halesworth and surrounding

Factors affecting CYP and their families

• •

•

Transport is one of the biggest problems for young people. The role of dance delivery is currently being re-examined.

Active Waveney and its programmes are the result of a lot of consultation. Obesity, health and well being were identified as needs. The outcomes include a lot of voluntary young people’s programmes that work with schools. Dance is part of this mix, including dance days run by Dance East. Distance and lack of engagement make these challenging and costly areas in which to deliver work.

Area

Geographical Areas and their challenges areas has very few opportunities to work with professional practitioners, particularly in relation to new writing and work.

Factors affecting CYP and their families

10.4 Schools

Source: www.suffolk.gov.uk/education-and-careers/schools-and-support-in-education/applying-for-a-school-place#A6

Suffolk schools are divided into three areas: western, northern and southern. Education is delivered on a primary, middle, upper model, in different parts of the county, so educationally Suffolk is different from other parts of the bridge area. In 2006 Suffolk County Council began a review of its school system. This review found that children in the three-tier system made less progress than similar children in the two-tier system. The review recommended that the Council began a review of school organisation in Suffolk with a preferred option of a two- tier system of Primary and Secondary School education. This was approved by the County Council in 2007 and the county schools are moving towards converting to a two tier education system. It is difficult to give a precise figure for the number of Suffolk schools because due to the structural changes schools numbers are in a state of flux. In the course of the interviews a figure of 364 was quoted. However looking at the admissions material for 2011-2012 the figures seemed to be as follows: â&#x20AC;˘ 1 Local authority nursery schools â&#x20AC;˘ 254 Primary schools 62 | P a g e

• • • • •

28 Middle schools 43 Upper/high schools 8 Special Schools 13 Pupil Referral Units (PRU) 31 Independent schools

Table 13 Schools by sector in Suffolk Suffolk Northern Southern Western Countywide Total

Nursery Primary 74 1 88 92 1

254

Middle 6 0 22 28

Upper/High 12 17 14 43

Special 2 3 3 8

PRU 3 5 5 13

Ind.

31 31

Total 97 114 136 31 378

10.5 Local authorities and their areas of responsibility Table 14 Local authority division of responsibility for cultural service delivery The table below shows the division of responsibility for delivering local authority services in a two tier structure. It also lists the names and titles of those who contributed to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit and whose information supports this report. An appendix of the interviews that contributors agreed to make public are contained in Appendix 1. Local Authority area

Local authority responsibilities and contacts from research

Suffolk County Council

Education, libraries, museums development, heritage, youth services and music service. Jayne Knight, Arts Development Manager Lyn Gash, Museum Development Manager Arts Service

Babergh District Council Forest Heath District Council

Ipswich Borough Council

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Arts and Heritage Lizzi Cocker, Arts & Heritage Officer Cultural development but does not include an arts officer. The Museums service is run by Colchester and Ipswich Museums.

Other organisations in the area and contacts from research

Lucy Bayliss, Head of Learning & Participation, Dance East Michael Linge, Assistant Producer, Red Rose Chain Mid Suffolk District Council St Edmundsbury Borough Council

Suffolk Coastal District Council

Arts officer No arts officer but runs a venue (the apex) and a festival. Museums. Nick Wells, Festival, Arts & Entertainment Manager

Lynn Whitehead, Head of Creative Learning, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds

No arts officer Phillipa Reive, Head of Education, Aldeburgh Music

Waveney District Council

Service Manager - Sports & Arts. Museums Claire Henwood, Service Manager - Sports & Arts

Philippa Wilkinson, Projects Producer, High Tide Festival Theatre Alex Casey, Co-Director, Suffolk Artlink

10.6 Suffolk County Council There is little more to say specifically about Suffolk County Council, the top tier authority in the county, which hasn’t already been highlighted in the section about the county as a whole. One other interesting aspect of the county council is that it was an early and leading advocate of localism and the ‘Big Society’ approach. Until about a year ago was moving towards becoming an enabling authority. This would have meant most services being delivered through a commissioning arrangement and in time a very small staff of about 500 would have been left, mostly of commissioners. After a change of council leadership, the CEO left, and these plans were halted. However there is a strong likelihood that much of this approach will continue, but more slowly. One service that will change fairly soon is the library service. The original plans for the change in the management and delivery of libraries were so well advanced that these will continue. In future the library service will be delivered through an independent cooperative structure. www.suffolk.gov.uk

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10.7 Babergh Borough Council Babergh has two officers who job share the community/arts post, however neither had time to contribute to the audit research. The council website states “The Arts and Community development service is aimed at encouraging and nurturing the arts in the Babergh area and recognises the value that cultural activity can have on communities, individuals and businesses”. www.babergh.gov.uk/Babergh/Home/Leisure+-+Be+Active+-+Tourism++Arts/Arts+and+Culture/Arts+Welcome+Page.htm

10.8 Forest Heath District Council The Arts & Heritage Officer sits in a very strong community services team that works closely together and has done so for a long time. Services in future will be shared with St Edmundsbury Council although the councillors will not be affected by this change, only officers. There is concern about how the two council’s cultural services teams will fit together as the services sit in different departments and have different approaches and responsibilities. www.forest-heath.gov.uk The Arts & Heritage Officer is the sole officer covering both arts and heritage but with the emphasis mostly on the heritage side. Her current work is heavily involved with the three museums in the district, National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket, the redevelopment of Mildenhall Museum and Brandon Heritage Centre. Her heritage role includes supporting the museums and heritage open days so that the value of the museums is clear to the community and to visitors. The Cultural Services team work closely together using a cross disciplinary approach. Examples of this include the Equalities team working with Suffolk County Council on an Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) funded Young Roots project and Health Improvement staff cooking in schools.

10.9 Ipswich Borough Council There is no Arts Development Officer in Ipswich although the town is culturally rich and has four of the seven Suffolk NPOs, as well as many other arts organisations. www.ipswich.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents.php?categoryID=200006 . The museum service is part of Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service. This Essex/Suffolk cross border museum service was a Museum Hub but failed to obtain funding in the latest ACE managed round of funding. Unfortunately there was no response from the museum service to a request for information. www.cimuseums.org.uk/home.html Ipswich is home to four of Suffolk’s NPOs and these are: • Dance East • Eastern Angles • Gecko Theatre • New Wolsey Theatre The University Campus Suffolk has a large campus development in Ipswich. 65 | P a g e

10.10 Mid Suffolk District Council Mid Suffolk has an Arts Service which appears, from the Rural Arts Suffolk website, to work in partnership with Babergh Arts and Suffolk Coastal. There is an Arts Officer but they were not able to respond to the request for information during the audit. www.ruralartssuffolk.org.uk

10.11 St Edmundsbury Borough Council The Festival, Arts & Entertainment Manager, manages the Festival (which has run for 27 years) and programmes the apex, a new concert hall and music venue. The Festival is an eleven day music event in May which has national and international links and includes a wide range of music which encompasses classical, jazz, world and folk. Community engagement work is done through projects and discussions have recently been taking place with Aldeburgh about possible collaborations. The council also supports Moyse’s Hall Museum and West Stow Anglo Saxon Village. Both of these offer sessions for schools and events for CYP and their families. The council does not have an arts development office, so no arts development work is undertaken across the district. St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath District Council are due to share services, the impact of which is not yet known. www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk Bury St Edmunds is home to the Theatre Royal one of Suffolk’s seven NPOs. The theatre has a strong learning offer and is keen to develop this further develop including skills development and experience for those leaving school. A key organisational aim is to ensure that both participation and professional work reaches the rural community. Smith’s Row, an ex- RFO, is also in the town. Elsewhere in the district is an arts centre at Haverhill which serves that town.

10.12 Suffolk Coastal District Council There is no arts officer in Suffolk Coastal although the district is one of the partners on the Rural Arts Suffolk website. www.suffolkcoastal.gov.uk and www.ruralartssuffolk.org.uk . The district is home to Aldeburgh Music, one of the seven Suffolk NPOs. Aldeburgh is a lead partner with Suffolk County Music Service on the Suffolk Music Education Hub. It is also quoted as a delivery partner in the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Music Education Hub applications. The Suffolk County Council brief for Aldeburgh includes running large projects. One of these is the schools festival which is aimed at all the county’s state schools. In over 25 years only two or three schools have not taken part, so this has a widespread effect in the county. Amongst a range of very interesting work for CYP is their Arts Award work with young prisoners at the nearby prison, HMYOI Warren Hill, and with young people with complex needs.

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10.13 Waveney District Council The council has a strong involvement with sport and museums. Lowestoft, a notable area of deprivation for the bridge, is in this district and a focus of much council supported sporting activity, including dance. There are quite a number of museums in the area which are financially supported by the council, as they are seen to add to the economic/tourism offer. Lowestoft has six museums, however only three of these are accredited. The arts are missing from this picture because the council was given a very strong steer, by the local arts community, that they did not want the council to lead in this area of cultural provision. There is a strong local play partnership which is very active. www.waveney.gov.uk The arts are managed locally by Waveney & Blyth Arts. Waveney is home to one of seven Suffolk NPOs, the High Tide Festival Theatre. The organisation runs an annual festival theatre and helps discover and develop new playwrights. It already works with schools and this work will develop further. Suffolk Artlink is a participatory arts charity delivering high quality creative activities to a range of people including young people, people with learning disabilities, children in hospitals and older people. Suffolk Artlink also plays a developmental role in the county by creating partnerships with other organisations in order to deliver innovative projects. One major aim, running though all the projects, is to add sustainability so they can deliver long term high quality activities, rather than always having to buy expertise in.

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11. Education, Schools and Children and Young People The national and bridge area educational context continues to rapidly evolve but the arts and cultural sector is well placed to respond, having built up considerable expertise over the years, despite the sometimes frustrating experience of trying to engage with schools. There is plenty of evidence of the benefits to schools of working with museums, libraries and the arts. However the difficulty of communicating with schools, often with those who would most benefit, due to the multiple challenges they face, cannot be underestimated. Engagement with such schools, as well as the rest of the education sector, at a time of rapid change, will be major challenge for the bridge and its partners.

11.1 Education There is currently a considerable rate of change affecting all stages of education from early years through to higher education. This will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. The following paragraphs highlight some of these developments but they are not comprehensive and may look dated in a short time as new initiatives and developments emerge in the coming months.

11.2 Early Years The Early Years Foundation Stage is defined as 0-5 in the 2006 Childcare Act. This area of provision has recently been the subject of a review led by Dame Clare Tickell and the recommendations, published on the 30th March 2012 were: • Significantly reducing the number of early learning goals children are assessed against at age five from 69 to 17. • Parents to get a summary of their child’s development, alongside the health visitor check at age two, to help identify any early problems or special educational needs. • A new focus on three prime areas which are the foundations for children’s ability to learn and develop healthily: personal, social and emotional development; communication and language; and physical development. • Beneath these should be four areas of learning where these skills are applied: literacy, mathematics, expressive arts and design and understanding the world. • With the three new prime areas of learning, a greater emphasis on making sure children have the basic social, emotional communication and language skills they need to learn and thrive at school – things like being able to make friends and listen effectively. There should also be a stronger link between the EYFS and what is expected of children in KS1. • Freeing the workforce from unnecessary bureaucracy so they can spend more time interacting with children – including scrapping written risk assessments for nursery trips and outings. • All early years practitioners to have at least a level 3 qualification (which is equivalent to A level) and the Government should consider applying the ‘teaching schools’ model to the early years. • Ofsted should be clearer on what is required of settings when they are inspected to help reduce high levels of paperwork. 68 | P a g e

•

Independent schools should be allowed to apply to opt out of the learning and development part of the EYFS, and the exemptions process should be made easier.

Source www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/earlylearningandchildcare/a0076193/early-years-foundationstage-to-be-radically-slimmed-down

The government plans to respond to the recommendations in the summer of 2012. Any changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage will begin in September 2012 at the earliest. At the same time the Early Years training and qualifications of the associated work force has been reviewed by Professor Cathy Nutbrown. Her interim recommendations published on the 13th March 2012 were: • •

•

An effective qualifications structure that motivates people working in the early years and tells employers what skills and knowledge they have. Courses that prepare people for working in the early years, raise the standards of those choosing to enter the profession, give them the right skills in literacy and numeracy and include the latest cutting edge detail about child development. The case for expanding the role of teachers in the early years, creating new teaching pathways with an early years specialism, linking more closely the education worlds of the school and the early years.

Source: www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00205061/nutbrowninterim

For those working in the cultural sectors two of the areas of learning ‘expressive arts and design’ and ‘understanding the world’ should hopefully provide some promising opportunities to work with this education sector. The final report of the Nutbrown Review is expected in the summer of 2012.

11.3 Primary and secondary education These sectors both face a number of common challenges, quite apart from those that they face separately. These include: • The increasing likelihood of schools converting to academy status. Among other things this will mean independence from the local education authority and control, by a school, of all its budgets. • The new OFSTED inspection regime which is due to be tougher than the current model. • The introduction of Teaching Schools, a network of schools funded to lead on training, sharing good practise and research. • The Pupil Premium which is allocated to schools for pupils who are on free school meals. This money is intended to ‘narrow the gap’ between this group and their better off peers. This is an ambition that those in the cultural sector could practically help to deliver. • The potential competition for resources with Free Schools. • Concern over budgets and the effect reducing these will have on school provision. The latter is of particular concern to those from the cultural sector working with schools, as there is already evidence that this is the type of provision is being lost due to reduced budgets.

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•

The schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, sets out a radical reform programme for the schools system, with schools freed from the constraints of central Government direction and teachers placed firmly at the heart of school improvement. Amongst other things it includes powers for teachers to improve discipline; a vision for a transformed school curriculum; changes to school performance tables, Ofsted inspections; and governance and school-led school improvement replacing top-down initiatives. Source: www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/schoolswhitepaper/b0068570/theimportance-of-teaching/

•

Henley reviews of music education and cultural education in England

11.4 Primary schools and education 5-11 In addition to the joint factors identified above, there are others which only affect this sector: • Review of the National Curriculum. A full consultation on English, maths and science will begin late 2012. • The recent suggestion by the Secretary of State for Education concerning primary age children learning another language, other than English, from age 7.

11.5 Secondary schools and education 11-16 In addition to the joint factors identified above, there are others which only affect this sector: • The move to the English Baccalaureate which is made up of English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language. There has been concern at how this will impact on arts subjects and whether numbers taking them will reduce. There were some early indications that this might indeed be the case amongst some of those interviewed. • Changes to the National Curriculum which will be introduced in 2013. • Changes to GCSE’s from September 2012 which was already due to happen. However this development may be overtaken by their possible abolition and replacement by a new exam as announced to the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Education on the 21st June 2012. • The review of ‘A’ levels which, although it will affect post 16 education, may have an effect on the curriculum or teaching for this younger age group as well. • Raising of the Participation in Education to 17 in 2013 and 18 by 2015.

11.6 Post – 16 education Factors to be noted in this area of education and learning include • Review of ‘A’ levels. • Changes to the school leaving age which will go up to 18 by 2015. • Increase in university tuition fees to £9,000 a year which may have an effect on the choices of this younger age group. • Wolf Review of Vocational Education. • Apprenticeships. The Wolf Review of Vocational Education was asked to consider how vocational education for 14 to 19 year-olds can be improved in order to promote successful progression into the 70 | P a g e

labour market and into higher level education and training routes. Key recommendations in the report include: • Incentivising young people to take the most valuable vocational qualifications pre-16, while removing incentives to take large numbers of vocational qualifications to the detriment of core academic study. • Introducing principles to guide study programmes for young people on vocational routes post-16 to ensure they are gaining skills which will lead to progression into a variety of jobs or further learning, in particular, to ensure that those who have not secured a good pass in English and mathematics GCSE continue to study those subjects. • Evaluating the delivery structure and content of apprenticeships to ensure they deliver the right skills for the workplace. • Removing the requirement that all qualifications offered to 14 to 19 year-olds fit within the Qualifications and Credit Framework. • Enabling FE lecturers and professionals to teach in schools, ensuring young people are being taught by those best suited. In response, the government will take action on all the individual recommendations and will deliver on three key themes: • “Ensure that all young people study and achieve in English and mathematics, ideally to GCSE A*-C, by the age of 19. For those young people who are not immediately able to achieve these qualifications, we will identify high quality English and maths qualifications that will enable them to progress to GCSE later. We will also reform GCSE to ensure that they are a more reliable indicator of achievement in the basics, in particular by ensuring that GCSEs are reformed alongside our current review of the National Curriculum. • Reform performance tables and funding rules to remove the perverse incentives which have served only to devalue vocational education, while pushing young people into qualification routes that do not allow them to move into work or further learning. Those vocational qualifications that attract performance points will be the very best for young people – in terms of their content, assessment and progression. • Look at the experience of other countries to simplify Apprenticeships, remove bureaucracy and make them easier for employers to offer.” Source: www.education.gov.uk/16to19/qualificationsandlearning/a0074953/review-of-vocational-education-the-wolf-report

Apprenticeships are also seen as of key importance to young people to acquire the training and skills they need to enter and progress in work, move into higher-level skills development and build fulfilling careers. Apprenticeships provide new opportunities and life chances for young people and adults. Source www.education.gov.uk/a0064398/increasing-and-improving-apprenticeshipsopportunities

The sector skills council, Creative and Cultural Skills works through the National Skills Academy to develop progression routes into creative careers. The National Skills Academy is a membership network of 20 colleges and 220 theatre and live music employers nationwide. The organisation recognises, develops and improves skills opportunities to provide pathways into the creative and cultural industries. City College Norwich is a member of the NSA and the only one in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. Source: http://nsa-ccskills.co.uk/

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11.7 Information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit Although education and schools were beyond the direct scope of the audit research and report due to time constraints, a considerable amount of information was obtained about schools and their networks. All three disciplines, arts, libraries and museums work with schools and in education. As CYP are at the core of Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge)â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission, developing successful partnerships with schools and education will be one of three key relationships alongside those with the cultural sector and local authorities. This focus on working with schools is needed. Those interviewed will welcome it as there was widespread concern about the education offer and extracurricular activities provision across much of the area. Added to this were concerns about the current speed of change in education and the ability of other sectors, which have a stake in working with CYP and schools, to keep up with them. For example museums in the east of England did a lot of work on engaging with schools through learning how to develop a relationship with the Local Education Authority (LEA). However as the academy programme accelerates and the LEAs become less important, in the much more fragmented picture that is emerging, museums will need to find ways of establishing new relationships. Such work takes time and it can feel like the long term investments of energy are lost very quickly. While there is excellent provision in some parts of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area, such as South Cambridgeshire, the overall impression is of a sector that is underachieving. The same evidence came up often; complacency, low aspiration, poor exam results and schools that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t encourage their pupils to participate in experiences outside the immediate area. In Norfolk and Suffolk there is difficulty in recruiting staff from outside the county so the problems remain entrenched. In Suffolk the LEA has been experiencing difficulties. Added to what is already a worrying picture, is the concern that schools are becoming worse off financially and are increasingly unable to afford the trips or activities that could help counteract some of these problems. Many of those working in the arts (both local authority officers and arts organisations) have considerable experience of working with education. Libraries and museums are usually good at identifying the problems affecting young people in their area and developing work to try and counteract these. What is also interesting about this is the local nature of the solutions, which, in the case of museums, is often based on the local collection or heritage. However these solutions can also be adapted by others for use in their own local circumstances. Museums, in particular, benefitted from MLA funded posts that supported cross regional projects to test ideas and approaches. Libraries, too, develop such projects, but being large, usually countywide authorities, their aim is to develop an approach that can be adapted across the whole service area. In both cases however, such work may be delivered by staff or volunteers who do not have a particular learning or CYP remit, or experience. This not a criticism because the work is often of a very high standard, more a note of advice to those not so well acquainted with those sectors. Concern was expressed several times that schools do not realise what is on offer to them locally nor do they realise the quality of the offer. Many schools still look to London or opportunities outside their county or regional area. This is not because arts and museums, in particular, are not communicating their offer. Two or three interviewees mentioned 72 | P a g e

contacting local schools to offer, free or at low cost, an opportunity involving performances or workshops for which the take up was low or non-existent. However this touches on a whole other area of concern about how schools can be communicated and worked with. This is a long standing problem but with the current changes in education, and in poorer times, it appears to be getting worse. This is something the bridge needs to be fully aware of both for its own programme involving schools, as well as being the strategic lead for work in this field. None of the people interviewed, with the exception of the Arts Development Managers in South Cambridgeshire, work in schools. The views expressed below are from people who work with schools or who are working with those who are having particular problems with schools and the educational sector. As direct consultation with schools was not part of the brief for the audit research, Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) may want to consider how it can contact those working in schools and education directly to establish their views and needs. The information and networks already suggested in this report could act as a basis for planning further engagement with the education and schools sector. Comments included: • Less available money for school trips. • In Cambridge there is a cluster of schools that lack the resources to afford the educational offer of the museums. • Teachers also need to have the confidence to value what there is in their communities and locally rather than feeling the need to go elsewhere to provide high quality opportunities for their CYP. • In the districts there is a strong network in secondary and primary schools (dance related). • There is no dance teachers’ network. Norfolk Dance and the Theatre Royal are trying to revive a network following the loss of the Schools’ Coordinator post. • There are high levels of non-school attendance in parts of Yarmouth and it is important to work with youth agencies in addition to schools. • One concern is that the Borough Council has not fully embraced the value of the arts and this attitude can be picked up by others, including the local schools. • It is hard to engage with the high schools due to curriculum restrictions and several of these including King’s Lynn and West Norfolk are dealing with social challenges. • Norwich has one of the lowest GCSE achievement rates in the country (bottom 10% for last 10 years, third from bottom nationally in 2010/11). • South Norfolk has a lot of small rural schools with low aspirations and poor financial resources • Often the low level of aspiration and sameness of what is on offer in some of the rural areas. The ‘not very exciting’ isn’t challenged and many of those running sessions have become stale. There is low engagement in CPD because people are not being pushed or challenged. In turn this leads to a lack of energy. • In education, Peterborough is one of the lowest achieving areas in England. • Low aspiration with low numbers progress to higher education. • Poor language skills in both English and other languages.

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•

• • • • • • • • • • •

At a recent celebration of music for schools at Snape Maltings a school from Stowmarket would not attend because it regarded the 23 mile journey as too far away. There are problems related to teacher CPD in that schools will not release teachers due to the cost of cover and associated disruption. The Music Service offered free Sing Up training in schools but teachers were not released to attend. In other cases attendance by teachers hasn’t happened because the costs of engaging were regarded as too high. Schools are losing the access to activities as funding begins to disappear; for example it is increasingly uneconomical to bring in a TIE organisation. In Suffolk school improvement has been a big issue since the time of the Labour Government. KS2 (7-11) is third from the bottom in England. Poverty of aspiration. The numbers going into higher education are low against national figures. London is still important for school visits, which means Suffolk organisations are competing with those in London. There is also a tendency amongst the local schools not to be very interested in the cultural offer. There are poor education standards across the district. Young people do not, on the whole, reach their potential as there are narrow life choices available to them. The district has some of the lowest educational achievement nationally. Newmarket College has a 38% A*- C rate. Suffolk is not high on the deprivation indices but it does have poor education in the state schools. They also have low aspirations for their pupils and are affected by the rurality of the area. One contributory problem is that many staff are still recruited locally and they are used to the history of low standards. Educational standards suffer from complacency linked to Suffolk being regarded as a nice place to live.

11.8 Arts and cultural education There are several arts and cultural initiatives that affect both education and the future of Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge). These are the two Henley reviews, Artsmark and Arts Award.

11.9 Henley – Music Education in England The Music Education in England report by Darren Henley, published in 2011, has already had an important outcome with the setting up of the Music Education Hubs. These will be overseen by ACE and will be expected to work closely with the bridge. The summary of the report concluded that: • Many children in England benefit from excellent music teaching from excellent teachers. In some parts of the country, the opportunities for children to take part in musical activities are immense. However, some children in England do not currently receive an adequate, let alone good, Music Education.

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•

The Review lays down recommendations for minimum expectations of what any child going through the English school system should receive in terms of an education in music. It also outlines a national plan, which describes the expectations of how Music Education should develop over the coming years - this section of recommendations is designed to ensure that patchiness is replaced by consistency, so that children are able to enjoy the same level of Music Education, no matter where in England they happen to live. Source: www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/AllPublications/Page11/DFE-00011-2011

This review was followed by the ‘The Importance of Music’, the first national plan for music education. It sets out the Government’s vision for music education; to enable children from all backgrounds and every part of England to have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument; to make music with others; to learn to sing; and to have the opportunity to progress to the next level of excellence. This is part of the Government’s aim to ensure that all pupils have rich cultural opportunities alongside their academic and vocational studies. Amongst other things the plan will: • Provide a new national funding formula to make sure all parts of the country get fair funding for music on a per pupil basis, with a weighting for deprivation. • A new music teaching module will be developed for trainee primary teachers, to give them extra skills to teach music. • Continued funding of £500,000 per year to the National Youth Music Organisations fund, matched by the Arts Council England currently via Youth Music. • Continued support for the internationally recognised Music and Dance Scheme – which provides money for exceptionally gifted young people to attend the highly specialist music and dance schools. • Continued funding for In Harmony, Sistema England, augmented by matched funding from Arts Council England so that the programme can expand. From August 2012, music education hubs will be funded to bring together local authorities and local music organisations, like orchestras, choirs and other music groups. They will work in partnership to make sure every child has a high quality music education, including the opportunity to learn to sing, to play an instrument and to make music with others. The hubs will be fully operational from September 2012. The hubs, which will be held accountable for their effectiveness, will also help improve the consistency around the country and make sure all pupils receive a high quality music education. Source: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/a00200352/national-plan-for-music-education

Four Music Education Hubs have been announced in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. These are Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Norfolk and Suffolk. In Peterborough the service is new and based around the Hub bid. In the other three areas the bids were led by the county music services but involved a range of partners including Aldeburgh Music and Britten Sinfonia, two of the NPOs in the bridge area. All will be working closely with the bridge.

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11.10 Henley – Review of Cultural Education In 2011, the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, asked Darren Henley to carry out a review of cultural education. The review was published in February 2012 and among the recommendations are: • •

•

• • • •

There should be a minimum level of Cultural Education that a child should expect to receive during his or her schooling as a whole. The government should develop a single National Cultural Education Plan. This document should set out its ambitions for children and young people in this area, while ensuring the development of a framework that enables these ambitions to be delivered. Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the British Film Institute, the Big Lottery Fund and English Heritage should work together to ensure that their individual strategies/plans in the area of Cultural Education cohere in a way that adds up to a single over-arching strategy in line with the government’s stated ambitions. By coming together as a new Cultural Education Partnership Group (CEPG), this could ultimately result in a single strategic commissioning fund for Cultural Education money in England. The CEPG should consider establishing a new Cultural Education Passport scheme for children between the ages of five and nineteen, which records all of their in-school and out of school cultural activities, enabling parents, carers and teachers to understand what each child has achieved and to plug any gaps in knowledge and experience. Consideration should be given to rolling a structure out across the rest of the Cultural Education spectrum, to enable meaningful partnerships on the ground across different art forms and using all of the expertise and venues that are available in a given area. This could be achieved through the further development of Arts Council England’s Bridge Organisations, which currently focus on the arts, to include other cultural areas. Greater priority should be given to the importance of Design as a curriculum subject within schools. Consideration should be given to promoting Dance and Drama to subject areas in their own right, rather than being seen as junior partners to P.E. and English. Most children and young people should be encouraged to take part in the Arts Award and Junior Arts Award, which should be regarded as a valuable qualification. The scope of the Artsmark Award should be widened to include all areas of cultural education covered by this Review.

Source: http://www.dcms.gov.uk/publications/8875.aspx

The government responded positively to the report and the review endorses the role of the bridge to help support or establish networks for arts, libraries, heritage, museums and film with schools.

11.11 Artsmark Artsmark is the national programme that enables schools, further education colleges and youth justice settings to evaluate, celebrate and strengthen a quality arts offer. The new

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focus of Artsmark is to support Arts Council England’s strategic framework for the arts, ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’. It delivers this by, amongst other things, providing: • A kitemark for quality in provision of the arts • Rigorous criteria against which applicants can benchmark their provision • The creation of a network of organisations committed to high quality, broad and sustainable arts provision. Source: http://www.artsmark.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/how%20to%20apply_0.pdf

Along with Arts Award which is discussed below, Artsmark will provide key KPIs for the bridge.

11.12 Artsmark information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit Due to the importance of this scheme to the bridge, those interviewed during the audit process were asked for their views. As far as Artsmark was concerned the most common response when asked about it was ‘no idea’. Arts officers and some museums, which work with schools, were able to give a much clearer picture of their local schools’ involvement. Some felt that the bridge could help Artsmark expansion by flagging up the cultural organisations that can help support schools to achieve the award. There was also considerable concern that lack of knowledge of the award meant teachers and parents don’t really understand the importance of it, even though the award is acknowledged by Ofsted. At a time of pressure on budgets and time, Artsmark needs to have a much clearer identity or schools will withdraw from the scheme. Comments included: • There is a concern about schools being pushed towards academy status and the benefit of Artsmark is not clear. • As school budgets are tight the benefits of the scheme need to be made clear as currently Artsmark is not top of anyone’s agenda but instead it becomes lost among other competing demands. • Ofsted is now recognising Artsmark which needs shouting about so its value is realised by those who are sceptical. • The current deadlines are much too tight and if there are future awkward changes, more schools will withdraw from the scheme. • The public understanding of the scheme is poor and it could do with some profile raising. Again emphasising the Ofsted angle would help. • Profile raising for Artsmark as there is a lot of work needed on this. • Beginning to see the impact of the EBac, and its lack of arts inclusion, on the school. For schools the EBac subjects are the priority so if Artsmark is to improve or have a higher profile how can it compete against this priority? Is there a way that it can be included in the EBac process? • Schools are not approaching Kettles Yard, NPOs or other cultural providers over Artsmark. Equally those organisations need more encouragement, and possibly training, to support them to approach schools about involving them in the Artsmark process. 77 | P a g e

â&#x20AC;˘

One positive sign recently was the high attendance by schools at Artsmark training days which saw 33 schools represented, including three head teachers. (Suffolk)

This lack of knowledge or interest is borne out in the statistics below Table 15 Number of Artsmark Awards by Level in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area (2010) Round

Current

Historic al

Segment Artsmark Artsmark Silver Artsmark Gold Total Artsmark Awards Artsmark Artsmark Silver Artsmark Gold Total Artsmark Awards

Norfolk CC 34 28 21

Cambridgeshire CC 7 8 13

Suffolk CC 6 8 9

Peterborou gh 4 5 5

79 39 78

25 33 30

24 32 29

9 10 11

196

Source: Arts Council England, Year: 2010 Measure: Number of Artsmark awards achieved by schools

As can be seen in the last round of the award in 2010, less than half the number of awards were made compared to historical levels. Currently 148 institutions have Artsmark in the bridge area as compared to 399 historically. Even if one just thinks of this in terms of schools rather than FE or youth justice settings the number is small compared to the 1121 schools across the bridge area, excluding independent schools. The current holders represent about 13% of the total number of schools. This would suggest that the bridge and it partners will have quite a challenge to raise the numbers although, widening the scope to include all areas of cultural education as recommended in Henley, may possibly help once the partnerships across the cultural spectrum are in place.

11.13 Arts Award Arts Award is a national qualification that supports young people who want to deepen their engagement with the arts, helping them to develop as artists and arts leaders. It is open to 7â&#x20AC;&#x201C;25 year olds and managed by Trinity College London in association with Arts Council England. Since its launch in 2005, the award has grown quickly and is now flourishing in arts centres, colleges and schools, community projects, libraries, galleries, local authorities, theatres, youth clubs and youth justice settings. Source: www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/arts-council-initiatives/arts-award/

The award can be achieved at five levels, four accredited qualifications and an introductory award. These are Discovery, Explore, Bronze silver and Gold. Participants explore any of art forms including performing arts, visual arts, literature, media and multimedia. The award 78 | P a g e

builds confidence, helps young people to enjoy cultural activities, and prepares them for further education or employment. Source: www.artsaward.org.uk/site/?id=0

11.14 Arts Award information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit Amongst those interviewed, Arts Award has a high profile and has been offered by a wide range of arts organisations, schools, arts teams and museums. The latter sector ran a scheme, supported by MLA funding, for five museums across the East of England to have their staff trained as Arts Award Advisers to deliver the Bronze Award. The work is being reviewed but the initial outcomes were very positive. There was considerable interest in knowing more about the scheme from some interviewees. Others were happy to revisit it, having been put off previously by the expense or complexity. One other common comment was that people had been trained in Arts Award but then had too few opportunities to put their training into practice. There were also some objections to the scheme, partly because it was felt the Children’s Universities in Suffolk and Norfolk offered better, more appropriate, possibilities to libraries and museums. While other objections were on the grounds of the consistency of the offer or pressure on CYP’s time to be take part in assessed activities. There was some enthusiasm for the new Discover and Explore strand of Arts Award. Comments included: • Would like to discuss Arts Award welcome for families and the potential Artsmark offer for schools as part of Wysing offer. • There are some young people who are disaffected with Arts Award as there is a lack of consistency of how it is delivered. Organisations need to know how they can be confident in the quality of the delivery and assessment. They also need to be clear about the rigour of the assessors’ training. • There has been a lack of opportunity in some rural areas for people to be able to apply their Arts Award training. They need support to able to apply this in their own communities. • Arts Award is an area we shall be keen to work with the bridge to develop. • King’s Lynn Arts Centre ran one of the national Arts Award 7 – 11 pilots via a Saturday Art Club model and will be championing this following final training when it launches. • The bridge could help by flagging up to schools, which are planning Arts Award, what high quality resources exist locally. This would also help build local awareness and sustainability. .

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Table 16 Number of Young Persons with Arts Award (New Awards) (2010-11) The statistics relating to Arts Award for the bridge area show the following picture

Time Period October 2010 March 2011 April 2011 September 2011

Segment Bronze Silver Gold Total Arts Awards Bronze Silver Gold Total Arts Awards

Norfolk CC 123 3 0

Cambridgeshire CC 86 15 0

Suffolk CC 57 10 0

Peterboroug h 0 0 0

126

101

126 5 2

108 14 0

105 10 1

9 3 0

133

122

116

Source: Arts Award data from Trinity College London, Year: 2011 Measure: Number of new Arts Awards achieved by young people

Unlike Artsmark, the figures for Arts Award show the numbers of young people achieving the award increasing, particularly for Bronze awards. This rise is only marginal in Norfolk but is more substantial in Cambridgeshire but Suffolk. However the total numbers involved are very small overall. As the percentage of the total number of young people those achieving Arts Award is 0.19% in Cambridgeshire, 0.04% in Peterborough, 0.17% in Norfolk and 0.15% in Suffolk. On the current picture it looks as though considerable work will have to be done to raise these figures to even 1%.

11.15 Children and Young People Children and Young People of all ages, and the need, or wish, to offer them high quality cultural and learning opportunities are at the heart of why the bridge exists. One is conscious that in this report they, and their views, are only represented by adult individuals and organisations that work with them in so many different ways across the cultural sector. What those interviewees said is a good starting point for providing some information but, just as schools and educational representatives need to be consulted in due course, so will children and young people. The bridge is in a fortunate position to be able to do this, as there is a good range of ways to consult with young people across the bridge area. These opportunities range include formal youth councils, organisationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; youth representatives, mailing lists, virtual groups and groups of CYP with an activity or organisation in common. There was also a lot of willingness by interviewees to help with such work. Despite this major omission it should be noted that there is some excellent work going on in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. Through examples of CYPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities and work and associated evaluations, the bridge has been provided with a good starting point.

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Reading the attached interviews in Appendix 1 is the only way to gain a full flavour of the provision and ambition to do more. Right across the bridge area there is outstanding provision and many of those doing it were kind enough to contribute to the audit research. Although, as was evident in section four of this report, the bridge area faces challenges linked to geography, infrastructure, resources and low density of population it does have allies and expertise to draw on, so that through partnerships and networks the offer to CYP can be broadened and improved. One thing that this report cannot demonstrate is how young people, and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent children, feel about cultural activity and whether that is how they want to spend their free time. In due course the bridge may want to investigate whether all CYP see such provision as a good thing or not. If some disagree then this too will need further investigation to see why it so and how it might impact on future planning? Inextricably linked to education in the audit research were rural issues and opportunities for children and young people. In many ways the problems created by the rural nature of the bridge area is an overarching concern and it has already been discussed, perhaps more obliquely, earlier in the report. However it seems to fit appropriately into this section so it can be contemplated from the point of view of CYP.

11.16 Rural issues: information from Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) audit Along with education and opportunities for CYP and their families, the rural nature of the area with its scattered populations, isolation, poor public transport and communications is a major issue which affects virtually the whole of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area, with the exception of the more urban areas such as Peterborough, Norwich, Cambridge, Ipswich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. However if transport difficulties or expense that create barriers to participation are considered; then the CYP in the urban areas are often no better off than their rural counterparts. This view is supported by the figures relating to children in poverty referred to earlier in the report in section five. There is little point having more opportunities on your doorstep if you or your family cannot afford to access them either directly, or because the cost of transport bars you from doing so. How the bridge can ameliorate these problems will no doubt form a major part if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future planning and discussion with partners and others. The challenge of overcoming this is not to be underestimated, as it goes to the heart of what the bridge will be able to achieve. Ways need to be found of offering high quality sustainable opportunities to CYP and their families in all circumstances. Another side of this picture is that CYP, in particular, need opportunities to be able to engage with cultural activity away from their local area to expand their horizons and help them experience more of the world at large to support their learning and development. One final point is that in many of the rural areas there are considerable opportunities for seasonal agricultural work which attract a wide range of migrant workers, many of them from Eastern Europe. While in one sense this might seem to offer the positive chance of more 81 | P a g e

diversity and a less local view in rural areas, this does not always seem to be the case. This is another aspect of the modern nature of rural living that the bridge may need to note. Another hint of the area’s increasing diversity is the 77 languages that are now spoken in Norfolk schools and the diverse make up of Peterborough’s population. While this has long been the case in London and the south east, not to mention cities and towns in northern England it is a much more recent development in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. Comments included: Negative • Rural isolation is a problem and the local bus services have had another cut recently. • The area around Melbourn, in common with much of rural Cambridgeshire, suffers from isolation where there are no trains. The bus service is poor and getting worse. • Transport and young people (although transport is very difficult for everyone in relation to what is a regional facility). If the transport was better more young people could access Wysing and its facilities. • Most young people that Wysing work with are too young to drive so are otherwise dependent on their parents to reach Wysing. This can lead to exclusion for some groups of young people. • The rural schools and part of the county often resent Norwich because there is a perception that everything happens there. So there may need to be an emphasis on the rural support the bridge offers. • Access to arts is often quite limited. North Norfolk has 7 market towns and 150 villages so provision is patchy and access to public transport very limited. • Rurality and the associated lack of opportunities are a big problem. There is also an issue of hidden poverty related to the rurality of the district. • Transport is causing considerable problems. The bus service is poor or non-existent away from the coast. Trains are very limited and only stop at three towns. • Transport and communications are a real concern for many young people. There is little public transport and for those on lower incomes it is difficult to afford. • Working in rural areas is not the same as working in larger towns. There can be a suspicion or dislike of outsiders who appear to come in, create a brief flare of activity and then disappear. • Public transport is a big issue for young people in Norfolk and especially in the rural areas. • Rural counties have specific problems of transport and communication and these are particularly pronounced in Breckland and West Norfolk. Positive • In such a rural and dispersed area the more that can be done by the community the better, but they need skills and resources to achieve this. • As in many other parts of the bridge area, the rural nature of the area means that particular ways of working have been built up over time. The isolation, small communities, poor infrastructure and narrow range of opportunities have meant organisations have developed a way of working which is successful. This means a gradual approach and a long term commitment to the communities and young people within in them. 82 | P a g e

•

Work in local communities to help they take ownership so that in ten years time culture is embedded at a local level across the county.

11.17 Opportunities for Children and Young People This section complements those on formal learning and rural issues. The challenges have already been laid out in the local authority areas of need information. This section provides a clear indication of the commitment by those who have worked in the bridge area over a long time and are dedicated to trying to find solutions to improve the choices and lives of CYP. Comments include: • Young Promoters in which young people are trained to run their own events e.g. Death Metal event in March (Cambs). • CYP provision should be informed by listening to and working democratically with children and families, rather than being designed and created by outside adults. • I would like to see opportunities created for CYP to access and experience high impact, high quality arts events (especially within the Visual Arts and Cross Art Forms) which local voluntary sector isn’t able to provide. • The bridge could play an important role by bringing in high quality top notch opportunities and services for CYP. These need to have long term networking inherent in them as well. The bridge needs to support the current infrastructure, but also look at ways of making it stronger and to raise the profile of this work. • Young People need opportunities to travel elsewhere to take part in the arts. Geographic need is a real issue and the company would like to work further afield, especially towards the west. • Suffolk will have My Place Centre in Stowmarket called The Mix which is due to open in January 2013. This is the only My Place in a rural market town. The original aim had been for a slant towards sport and activity but the young people consulted wanted to do creative things.

11.18 Youth Services Finally in this section is a brief note about youth services across the bridge area. This is not because the subject is unimportant, but more a reflection of the current state of the sector. Youth Services are in disarray, due to cuts, all over the bridge area which meant it was very difficult to find many contacts available to talk about such work. Disquiet about the effects of these cuts was widely expressed across all three sectors of museums, libraries and arts. Suffolk appears to be settling down after the changes there, Youth Advisory Boards are being set up in Norfolk at district level and in Cambridgeshire the picture was unclear but cuts were referred to by non county council contacts. One other aspect that emerged, and may need monitoring, is the possible future involvement of parish councils or third sector providers in youth service provision. Parish Council provision is happening in one place in South Cambridgeshire and the Norfolk Youth Advisory Board providers were tendered for.

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The bridge will need to monitor developments and the effect they may be having on cultural access and provision for young people. This may be an area where the Bridge needs to develop some strategic leadership so that it can make representation about the role that youth services play in helping deprived young people and others to have access to ‘high quality artistic and creative experiences’. Comments included: • In some areas the parish councils are buying in a youth worker or supporting a local youth club. • One project related to the scheme involved training officers, who work with young people, in Arts Award as well as with artists to train them to work with young people. This initiative was partly as response to the loss of the Youth Service or its narrower targeting on vulnerable young people. One of the results of this narrow focus is the loss of prevention work with young people more generally. • The Youth Service has been heavily cut by Norfolk County Council. In North Norfolk Holt Youth Project is now a major facility following the demise of the Youth Service. • The Youth Advisory Board is being organised by West Norfolk although the delivery organisation is unclear at the moment. • As in other parts of Norfolk the Youth Service has been replaced by a Youth Advisory Board. In Breckland this is due to be run by the Benjamin Foundation, although there are few details as yet. • MAP is managing the Youth Advisory Boards (which are replacing the Norfolk CC Youth Service) in Great Yarmouth and Norwich. • The loss of the Youth Service is affecting project work because without their support it is difficult to get some of young people, in most need, to the sessions. • Suffolk CC has closed about 17 youth clubs out of 40, but many of these had served small numbers of young people. The service is now targeted to NEETS, or other deprived and underachieving young people.

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12. Cultural sector – arts, museums and libraries The Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) has a considerable range of cultural partners and provision to call on, and work with, across its area. However this provision is patchy and one challenge will be how to balance the very different needs of various areas for support or partnership. In areas where provision is excellent the bridge may be viewed as having little role to play. However it still will need to develop relationships, so such areas do not feel ignored (and therefore cut off from a major ACE supported initiative). Moreover those areas which have a strong cultural infrastructure may be able to work with the bridge to improve the offer in places which are poorly provided for. Such partnerships may also help lever in more funding. The bridge will have to identify how such areas or organisations might have a role in the places that lack cultural infrastructure or provision and what would be the most appropriate way to develop these. In some places, without high levels of provision or resource, the challenge is going to be finding ways in to work with the locality, particularly as this dearth often coincides with patches of poorer, or less forward looking education, or local authority support. However in other comparable places good provision and hard working, innovative individuals exist, but they may need additional support and resource to increase the impact of their work. This is made more necessary if where they are working is in the face of local indifference or an unhelpful local administration. New sources of funding also need to be identified, as the traditional patterns of delivery and funding support change. There will also be a challenge around helping arts organisations and museums key into relevant local authority commissioning opportunities, including health. This aspect of the bridge’s work will, as always, need to be considered in the light of sustainability, something that was universally raised across the bridge area in all the audit interviews.

12.1 Arts Council England Arts Council England is the Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) which ‘champions, develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people's lives’. Since taking over responsibility for libraries and museums from the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in 2011, the organisation supports ‘a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries, from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections’. ‘Achieving great art for everyone’, is Arts Council England’s strategic framework for the arts over the next 10 years. This plan lays out five goals to be achieved by 2021. These are: • Goal 1: Talent and artistic excellence are thriving and celebrated • Goal 2: More people experience and are inspired by the arts • Goal 3: The arts are sustainable, resilient and innovative • Goal 4: The arts leadership and workforce are diverse and highly skilled • Goal 5: Every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts 85 | P a g e

While all these goals will impact on the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) it is Goal 5 which is a particular driver for an organisation established to work with children and young people and their families. The two aims of Goal 5 are: • Improving the delivery of arts opportunities for children and young people. • Raising the standard of art being produced for, with and by children and young people. Source: www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/our-priorities-2011-15/

Since ‘Achieving great art for everyone was published’, ACE has taken over the lead responsibility for museums and libraries. To support this work ACE has published ‘Culture, knowledge and understanding: great museums and libraries for everyone’ to integrate museums and libraries into their framework. This will be touched on again in the section below that deals with museums and libraries

12.2 National Portfolio Organisations and the bridge From April 2012 ACE is funding nineteen National Portfolio Organisations in the bridge area for the next three years. Table 17 NPOs in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area arranged by local authority area Area

NPO

Place

Artform

Cambridgeshire

7 NPOs Academy Of Ancient Music

Cambridge

Music

Britten Sinfonia

Cambridge

Music

Hoipolloi Theatre Company

Cambridge

Theatre

Junction CDC Limited

Cambridge

Combined arts

Kettle's Yard Gallery

Cambridge

Visual arts

New International Encounter

Cambridge

Theatre

Wysing Arts Centre

Wysing

Visual arts

Norwich

Literature

Cambridge City

East Cambridgeshire Fenland Huntingdonshire South Cambridgeshire Peterborough

0 NPOs

Norfolk

5 NPOs

Breckland Broadland Great Yarmouth King’s Lynn & West Norfolk North Norfolk Norwich City British Centre For Literary Translation

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Area

NPO

Place

Artform

Norfolk & Norwich Festival

Norwich

Combined arts

Norwich Arts Centre

Norwich

Combined arts

Tilted Productions

Norwich

Dance

Writers' Centre Norwich

Norwich

Literature

DanceEast

Ipswich

Dance

Eastern Angles Theatre Company Gecko Theatre Ltd

Ipswich

Theatre

Ipswich

Theatre

New Wolsey Theatre

Ipswich

Theatre

Theatre Royal

Bury St Edmunds

Theatre

Aldeburgh Music

Aldeburgh

Music

HighTide Festival Theatre

Halesworth

Theatre

South Norfolk Suffolk

7 NPOs

Babergh Forest Heath Ipswich

Mid Suffolk St Edmundsbury Suffolk Coastal Waveney

As can be seen from the above table, the location of the NPOs tends to reflect the pattern in provision already discussed previously in the report and there are large parts of the bridge area without arts provision at this level. Of course this is not the whole picture of provision, as the majority of arts organisations and providers sit outside the directly funded ACE sector. The table also shows the clustering which occurs in the county towns of Cambridge, Norwich and Ipswich that between them account for 15 out of 19 NPOs. There are advantages to an area of such clusters of provision, or activity, because the whole is usually greater than the sum of the parts. Clusters of any sort tend to attract other associated providers so they become a focus for people to access a wide range of options in a relatively small geographic area. However this may be of little consolation to those for whom access is difficult due to transport barriers or other types of difficulties that have already been highlighted. One way the bridge could help NPOs and others, is through providing brokering or support for their work with places and organisations outside their immediate locality. Many cultural organisations are already working across borders and plan an expansion of such work. Set against the paucity of cultural provision in some parts of the bridge area, such support seems a worthwhile approach. This type of working is already happening in Peterborough, a unitary authority without an NPO currently. Britten Sinfonia, New International Encounter and Wysing all discussed their

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work in the city. Metal, a Southend on Sea based NPO, will soon be expanding its organisation by moving into Chauffeurs Cottage, new artspace in Peterborough.

12.3 ACE Funding in the bridge area In 2011-12 ACE provided £5,806,543 to the Regularly Funded Organisations (RFO) in the bridge area. (This system of funding predated the NPO approach, although some RFOs became NPOs in the new arrangement). In the first year of NPO (2012/13) funding this figure will rise to £8,148,995. At the end of the three year funding, which coincides with the term of the current Comprehensive Spending Review, that annual figure will be £8,335,417. Under their agreements with ACE, NPOs will not be able to apply for Grants for the arts. In addition to the NPOs, ACE also funds a range of arts activity through Grants for the arts and Lottery investment. Table 18 Grant awards by Arts Council England East in 2010/11 in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area The table below is for the year 2010/11 shows the direct RPO funding. Some of the Grants for the arts funding and the lottery investment may also have been made to RFOs in addition to this. Total Grant Amount (£k) by each programme in 2010/11 Funding Type / Body Norfolk CC Cambridgeshire CC RFO Funding £990.8 £1,542.9 Grants for the arts £4,000.0 £1,100.0 Lottery Investment £1,737.1 £1,077.3

Suffolk CC £3,345.8 £0.0 £1,118.2

Peterborough £0.0 £0.0 £75.7

Sources: RFO Funding - Arts Council; Grants for the arts - Arts Council; Lottery Investment - DCMS; LA Investment (incl. Assets) - DCLG; Youth Music - Youth Music Year: 2010/11, Measure: Total Grant amount (£k) under each programme

Table 19 Distribution of Grants for the arts awards by local authority area In the period January 2011 – 13th March 2012 there were 77 Grants for the arts awards in the Norfolk & Norwich (Bridge) area. Six of these awards refer to working with children and young people in some form. Others may have included this group in their planned activity, but this was not specified in the project summary. Area

Grants for the arts /Nos

Artform

Cambridgeshire

Cambridge City 23

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• • •

12 Theatre 3 Dance 6 Visual Arts

Area

Grants for the arts /Nos

Artform

•

2 Music

East Cambridgeshire Fenland Huntingdonshire

•

1 Literature

South Cambridgeshire

• •

2 Theatre 1 Visual Arts

• •

1 Theatre 1 Combined Arts

•

1 Literature

• •

3 Theatre 1 Combined Arts

•

2 Visual Arts

• • • • • •

5 Combined Arts 1 Theatre 2 Literature 2 Music 1 Visual Arts 1 Not art form specific

•

1 Theatre

• • •

1 Dance 5 Theatre 1 Combined Arts

•

1 Music

Peterborough

Norfolk

Breckland Broadland Great Yarmouth

King’s Lynn & West Norfolk North Norfolk Norwich City

South Norfolk Suffolk

Babergh Forest Heath Ipswich

Mid Suffolk

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Area

St Edmundsbury

Grants for the arts /Nos

Artform

• •

2 Visual Arts 1 Theatre

• • •

1 Dance 2 Combined Arts 2 Music

• • • • •

1 Visual Arts 6 Theatre 1 Literature 1 Music 1 Combined Arts

Suffolk Coastal

Waveney

Some of the above awards were to RFOs, while others were to range of other organisations including: • Oblique Arts (filmmaking opportunities to young adults which aimed to take a group of participants through the Arts Awards scheme). • Gomito Productions (research and development of a new piece of theatre for 2-4 year olds). • Garlic Theatre (develop and tour a performance for younger audiences that will initially tour 11 schools in the region, 6 theatres and a residential home). • Suffolk Artlink (work with young adult family carers, looked after children and young people in Suffolk, bringing them together with the highest quality artists). This table again highlights areas where there is no ACE funded activity currently. Affected districts include East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Breckland, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, Babergh and Forest Heath. Many of these areas have already been highlighted as places that could benefit from more cultural activity allied to poor indicators across a number of measures. The bridge may want to focus some of its attention on helping such places to develop projects and secure funding in pursuit of its principle aims connected to CYP and their families. Although funding will be covered in a later section it is worth saying that all those interviewed in such areas were very keen to work with the bridge to achieve more resources and a richer offer for the CYP in their area. Table 19 also shows that those areas that are rich in provision come out top in this table as well. Once again this demonstrates how a cluster of provision can support the breadth and depth of the cultural offer. Cambridge and Norwich are first and second, with Ipswich in third place. The odd one out in this table is Waveney, which scored badly compared to some areas, in other parts of the statistical analysis. However the district is home to High Tide Festival Theatre (three awards) as well as the Poetry Trust, Suffolk Artlink, Beccles Music Festival, Lombik, Utter and Waveney and Blyth Arts. Not all of these work with CYP and their families, but it may be that a cluster of a different sort is developing here as well which might offer the bridge some useful partnership development opportunities. 90 | P a g e

12.4 Arts organisations and provision evidence from audit In addition to the NPOs and ex-RFOs consulted during the research, there are a vast range of arts organisations doing very interesting work with CYP across the whole bridge area. A flavour of this diversity is apparent throughout the response forms, all of whom mention contacts that are worth exploring further. It was not possible within the timeframe of this research to do more than provide these additional organisations’ website or contact details, but many merit further investigation. Another striking feature was the range of national and international arts organisations the bridge might have access to through the NPOs and others such as Norwich Theatre Royal . Orchestras Live, in particular, seem to work with majority of local authorities in the bridge area. Arts organisations were very clear about the possibilities that they thought the bridge offered them and individual artists working in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area. They saw the bridge as a strategic lead, the possible means to helping publicise and place their work, a potential project partner, an advisor on funding bids and the route to training provision. They were also interested in the opportunities offered by Arts Award and Artsmark and the chance to work with CYP and schools, although the latter was acknowledged as being quite problematic at times and something the bridge could help make easier. Comments included: • Support is needed for artists and community arts organisations including looking at the way artists work, and how that might relate to the bridge’s aims and future provision. • There is little arts/cultural activity outside the amateur scene. • There are not enough young artists and the county needs a fresh injection of new talent. For example those involved in whole peer group learning involving the under 25s need artist of their age that they can relate to. The arts could benefit from more youth and its associated vitality. • It will be useful for all the appropriate arts organisations to know how to secure work with schools and how that work might be bought in by schools, particularly in the current state of change. • There are 22 professional arts organisations in Norfolk, but in addition there are lots of other organisations. The bridge needs to be aware of this delivery picture and that it represents a very diverse and organic sector. • There is also a need for some new young practitioners. However there is difficulty in recruiting people to come and work in the county because it is seen as rural and slightly cut off. • Quite a number of the NPOs bring external organisations into Suffolk through their relationships. For example Aldeburgh has a relationship with the Guildhall and the New Wolsey has one with Punch Drunk. • Arts organisations build relationships with a few schools, how can this be widened? Schools are not always connected with the best of the arts but it can be very difficult to get schools to engage.

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• •

With very few NPOs delivering dance in the region there is a concern that provision and access to good quality activity will become ever patchier. We have a strong network of professional practitioners, writers and creatives across the country who are all keen to work with us in the region

12.5 Local authority funding The other key player supporting art and cultural provision through direct grants, or Service Level Agreements, has traditionally been local authorities. The amount of funding provided has always more or less equalled that of the Arts Council nationally, although local levels of investment vary enormously. In the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area both Norfolk and Suffolk support a range of organisations. Some smaller authorities such as Cambridge City and North Norfolk also provide good support. In many cases local authorities use their money to support the major professional arts organisations in their area, in partnership with the Arts Council. This is so that local people benefit from such organisations being resident locally. However local authorities also support other organisations that they feel produces high quality work, or benefits the residents and locality. For example Suffolk County Council supports five NPOs and three other organisations: • Aldeburgh Music • DanceEast • Eastern Angles • New Wolsey Theatre • Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. • Gainsborough's House • Smiths Row • Suffolk Artlink Norfolk County Council supports 19 organisations of which three are NPOs: • Norfolk & Norwich Festival. • Norwich Arts Centre. • Writers’ Centre Norwich. • Cinema Plus, a film based education programme operating across the county. • Community Music East, an organisation that develops music resources for the community. • Creative Arts East, the arts development agency for the Norfolk area. • The Garage focuses on providing creative opportunities for young people, particularly those with fewest opportunities. • Kings Lynn Arts Centre Trust. • King's Lynn Festival. • The Maddermarket Theatre which stages a year-long programme by British and European playwrights, created and staged by and for community members from across the region. • Norfolk Dance, the development agency for dance in the county. • Norwich Playhouse. • Norwich Puppet Theatre. 92 | P a g e

•

• •

SeaChange Arts, a charitable organisation set up to contribute to the social, economic and cultural regeneration of the Borough of Great Yarmouth through use of the Arts and Creative Technology. Sheringham Little Theatre. Thalia, a 'user' led Theatre Company for disabled adults and young people with physical and sensory impairments and learning difficulties in particular but not exclusively. Norwich Theatre Royal. Westacre River Studios which is committed to widening access to high quality drama and creative activities for the whole community of West Anglia and especially for young people. Writers’ Centre Norwich. Wymondham Music Festival.

In contrast North Norfolk District Council supports, through SLAs: • Sheringham Little Theatre • Creative Arts East • Community Music East • Norfolk Dance • North Norfolk Exhibition Project • Belfry Arts Centre Elsewhere in areas such South Cambridgeshire, the Arts Development Manager have relatively modest sums to support smaller scale community arts development. Local Government has also played a vital role instigating or supporting arts development in their area and without this the picture of provision would be much bleaker. However this role is likely to change in the future because of a number of factors including reduced budgets, deleted arts services or alternative service delivery.

12.6 Local authority culture/arts development information from the audit The major concern expressed by many arts development contacts was the loss of, or cuts to, posts, budgets and services and the fact that this trend is likely to continue for at least two more years. On a positive note though, in a couple of districts, which are currently undergoing restructuring, the arts posts have been retained. In two areas of Norfolk and Suffolk, councils are sharing of services across local authority boundaries. What effect this will have on arts or cultural provision is currently unclear. In three places, East Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk the arts development provision is delivered by non local authority organisations. During this research arts officers were often the route to other contacts within their own authority, as well as to external arts organisations, schools or others with a relevant interest in CYP work. Where arts officers were not in post, finding contacts to approach was much more difficult. Looking at the contact list, it is clear that a number of districts do not have arts

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development officers, while others have officers with arts in their title but that is one responsibility among several. Table 20 Distribution of arts services by local authority area Area

Arts Service/officer

Cambridgeshire

Cambridge City

East Cambridgeshire

Fenland Huntingdonshire South Cambridgeshire

Peterborough

Norfolk

Breckland

Broadland

Great Yarmouth Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lynn & West Norfolk

North Norfolk Norwich City South Norfolk Suffolk

Babergh

Forest Heath

Ipswich Mid Suffolk

St Edmundsbury

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Area

Arts Service/officer

Suffolk Coastal Waveney

Note: *The St Edmundsbury and Waveney contacts (both of whom were very helpful and contributed to the research) have their main work focus outside arts development. Arts officers are very good at working creatively and in partnership. Such skills are often honed by having a small amount of resource to support their work. Partnership working offers a way of both increasing resources and, for solo officers, the chance to work as part of a project team. This group should offer the bridge staff good partnership development opportunities. They may also welcome the chance to work in cross area groups if the opportunities arise. Such groups could also help raise the profile of the bridge’s work as it would also help increase Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge)’s capacity and visibility. Comments included: • There will be a corporate restructure in the next two years and there are likely to be cuts in future as a result of this. • Big savings will need to be found in the next three years. • There is no local authority Arts Service (I know because it had been me and I was made redundant in July 2010!). • Suffolk only has three officers who fall into the category of Arts Development Officers out of seven local authorities. • Ultimately more money is needed to make a difference as the district is starting from a low base of infrastructure and provision. • The ADO post was abolished and I originally covered some of that work, however this is no longer the case and my current responsibilities means that I focus on Bury rather than the district as a whole.

12.7 Museums and Libraries Arts Council England took over national lead responsibility for museums and libraries from the MLA in 2011. Since then they have produced ‘Culture, knowledge and understanding: great museums and libraries for everyone: a companion document to Achieving great art for everyone’. This document states: “In the long-term, we expect that Arts Council England will not have separate strategies for museums, libraries and the arts. We will use the same framework to drive all of our programmes and inform all of our funding decisions. We will evaluate our success using common goals for museums, libraries and the arts, and will establish a robust evidence base that can inform our policy-making and demonstrate public value in what we fund. In the short-term, however, we believe that we must first reflect on the diversity of our extended remit to understand fully the specific challenges and opportunities facing museums and libraries.” 95 | P a g e

Source: www.artscouncil.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/browse-advice-and-guidance/developing-great-museums-and-

12.8 Museums Arts Council England now represents museums, having assumed some of the functions of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), on 1 October 2011. The principle museums responsibilities assumed by the Arts Council are: • The Renaissance in the Regions programme for regional museums, including completing the re-design of its content and operation • Regional museums improvement and development agenda, including the Accreditation Standard and the Designation Scheme and projects relating to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad The effect of this in the bridge area is the establishment of two ACE Renaissance major partner museums in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area: Cambridge University Museums and Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service. There will be additional outcomes once the Regional museums improvement and development decisions are clearer.

12.9 Museums information from the audit This sector gave the impression of feeling vulnerable due to the change from the MLA to ACE leadership. Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) staff will need to develop an understanding of the different types of museum across their area and which can include national, local authority, university, independent and volunteer museums. They will also need to develop an understanding of the museums accreditation scheme. In addition to the museums themselves, some local authorities support Museum Development Officers (MDO) whose role is not dissimilar to that of Arts Development Officers. In Norfolk, uniquely, there is a countywide museums and archaeology service run by Norfolk County Council. Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) is fortunate that the two Hub Museum Services in Cambridge and Norwich received funding from ACE. One of the services in the Royal Opera House (Bridge) area, Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service, failed to win ACE Renaissance major partner museum funding. This will impact to a degree on the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area because that was the Hub that the Suffolk museums worked most closely with. A major fear of the museum sector is that that ACE does not really understand or know very much about it and that somehow they will be expected to become more ‘arty’. Some early contact with ACE has left the museums with the perception that there is little knowledge about the work of museums, including their Arts Award work. In fact the museums sector offers the bridge some really fruitful opportunities. Museums are very well linked up across the east, as well as across the bridge area which, in part, is due to previous MLA support which encouraged this type of working. They are used to working with 96 | P a g e

schools, including the museums in the voluntary sector, and many of the middle sized and bigger museum services have learning staff. Museums often work closely with the arts, libraries and archives as well as arts organisations. A number of museums are either being redeveloped or have plans to be. These include Newmarket National Horse Racing Museum and Mildenhall Museum. Museums offer the potential to provide a range of venues based in local communities (often in areas which have little such provision otherwise). This might be helpful to future bridge plans. However due to the complex nature of museums it would be advisable to work with the MDO’s or bigger museum services, in the first instance, to help broker relationships across the museums sector. Like their arts colleagues, museum staff also noted the time it takes to establish projects and the need to consider sustainability is paramount. Comments included: • Don’t overlook the SHARE network and all the important development and work that supports. • While keen to work with partners, including the bridge, it always has to be remembered that the museum is a small independent and a charity, which only receives a small grant from the City Council. The rest of the funding has to be generated so any partnership working has to take this into account. • The changes to the museum sector brought about by the loss of the MLA and the shift of responsibility to ACE. • The effects on the ex Hub Museum services in the region i.e. Luton and Colchester and Ipswich of the loss of the hub status and funding. • What will happen to museum development work in the longer term? The current application to support museum development work is only for three years of funding. • How will national initiatives be responded to? What will be the response to Henley 2? Did a very good project with King’s Lynn Museum which was led by Kings Lynn Arts Centre. This was an education project aimed at all ages and based on domestic objects. Artists responded to these and worked in a flat in a very deprived part of King’s Lynn as well as at the museum and the centre. • There are increasing pressures possibly around charging fees. This hasn’t been done in the past but there will always be the need for activities and to work in schools. • Archives are good partners.

12.10 Libraries As with museums Arts Council England took over responsibility for libraries in October 2011. “While we will not be responsible for providing or funding library services, we will play a significant role in supporting and developing the libraries sector. Continuing discussions with the libraries sector, new in-house expertise and a national overview will enable us to draw an accurate picture of the challenges and opportunities for libraries, and be in a unique position to help drive national cultural policy.

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The Arts Council's vision for libraries is that they inspire and empower people to lead active lives, enriched through cultural experience. The Arts Council would like to work with libraries to explore a vision for arts and culture working together. The essential first stage in this work will be the Libraries Development Initiative which intends to build on the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) Future Libraries Programme to look at new approaches to library service deliveryâ&#x20AC;?. Source: www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/supporting-libraries/

12.11 Libraries information from the audit Two library services, Norfolk and Peterborough, responded to the request for information and both were keen to work with the bridge. The other two county services in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk are both undergoing reviews so were unavailable. Quite a number of other interviewees across the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area mentioned working with library services or the wish to do so. Most library services in the bridge area are still local authority managed, however this will change. Libraries in Peterborough are part of the Vivacity Trust. In Suffolk an independent cooperative is due to manage the library service in the very near future. Cambridgeshire is exploring other forms of management after a move to a cultural trust was halted. The option of community hubs is now being explored. Changes to library services may be something that the bridge needs to monitor as they may have implications for how the bridge works with library services in the longer term. The bridge needs to be aware that Norfolk and Suffolk county councils provide a Schools Library Service (although nationally many of these services are under threat or have been disbanded). Those services that exist have generally worked on a traded basis for some time, but like many organisations related to education the future is uncertain because of the change to academies and other educational developments. Some schools may have school librarians, most usually in secondary schools, and this may be another group that the bridge will want work with in future to develop opportunities for CYP. Public library services can be quite self sufficient and this may be because in local authority cultural service terms, they tend to be by far the biggest service and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always have the same need to work in partnership that other sectors do. However the two library services who contributed to the audit were keen to work in partnership with others in the cultural sector. Individual libraries tend to see themselves as a service with an individual community focus so a public library service is both a local and universal service within any local authority area. Libraries will not rely on ACE for funding in the way the arts or museums will because the bulk of their funding normally comes from a local authority budget. For all these reasons working with libraries may be very different from working with other cultural partners. Like museums, static libraries are based in communities and offer apparently readymade venues. The bridge may want to take advantage of these to connect with communities at a local level to help build sustainable activity. However as a note of caution, although library services seem well resourced with staff and buildings, compared to other services, their work tends to be tied to ensuring that libraries are kept open, often from early in the morning until 98 | P a g e

mid evening. The smaller libraries may have very limited opening hours and staffing; sometimes this will be one person on their own. In addition all the library services in the bridge area run mobile library services which reach out to those who live too far from a static library. However these stops are often very limited in time and frequency of visit. Nationally the numbers of CYP Development and Reader Development Librarians have fallen, along with staff numbers generally, however these are the sort of contacts that the bridge will want to develop relations with as they are more project, CYP or community focussed. These tend to be the library staff that organise outreach activities and run (or manage the volunteers that run) arts events, reading groups, literary festivals or the annual Summer Reading Challenge. The librarians who responded were keen to talk to the bridge and they see the organisation as way to develop more partnership working. However while local projects are developed for individual libraries, library services are often looking for a scheme that can be applied across a number of service points, if not the whole service. This too makes libraries different from some other parts of the cultural sector. Comments included: • The Library Service’s core mission and purpose is supporting reading, learning and information for all. The service to CYP is a reflection of that. There is still a universal service but this is light touch and the targeted work (involving programmed staff time) is to CYP who don’t read. • One of the challenges is for the library service to identify niches where it can make a difference. • Libraries have a gateway role for the community and provide a safe public space which sees them used by many sections of a community. • It is worth acknowledging by those who work with libraries, that much of the resource is used in keeping the libraries open and the service functioning. • Works with the Library Service who is a good partner. (An arts officer). • Interested in more opportunities to involve young people in developing the offer to suit their ideas and needs. • There is no joint work with the Library Service at the moment although they are keen to explore this option and are supportive. (an arts officer)

12.12 Concerns of the cultural sector as a whole in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area As well as the individual concerns of the libraries, arts and museums sectors there were, as one would expect, a number of themes and areas of discussion (apart from the bridge itself) which came through strongly from all three groups. The evidence presented below results from the information and views expressed in audit interviews. These common areas of discussion were: • Communications • Sustainability of activity • Partnerships and networks • Training 99 | P a g e

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Volunteers Disability Diversity Future activity and projects Funding and Commissioning

12.13 Communications This seems to be a key role for the bridge and was something that was mentioned by a number of respondents. People wanted to know more about what was going on in their sector elsewhere in the bridge area. There was perhaps less curiosity, especially from the arts, about what was happening in museums and libraries, but that may be because their attention has not been drawn to work with or in those sectors before, unless they already had direct involvement and experience of such partnership working. There is a lot of very interesting work going on across the bridge which is perhaps only apparent after doing this type of research exercise. In particular there are a lot of small organisations working very locally, which in some cases are making the only provision for CYP at a very local level. They would benefit from being joined up to the much bigger picture. This would also help with the problem that was identified in some rural areas of organisations coming into the area to work for a short time without connecting to those who are already there. Only a few people stated the need for information sharing and an information lead role across the bridge area. This potential strand of activity for the bridge was not as clearly defined as in the Royal Opera House (Bridge) area where it came out very strongly. Although a number of people did express the wish for a readily accessible and up to date source of information on recommended artists or other creative providers. Another area that people would like support with is in advertising or raising the profile of their work. Despite the lack of a clear call for Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) to lead on this provision the bridge may still want consider the importance of this role? It could help improve communications and the likelihood is that if it was well done, colleagues in the cultural sector across the bridge area would find it very helpful over time. This provision should be given serious consideration, especially in light of the near universal comment on poor transport and communications across the Norfolk & Norwich (Bridge) area. The museums sector is very good at sharing knowledge and experience across the east through the SHARE network for example. A Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) website would provide an easy way to provide links for everyone to sites like the SHARE network. It could also create links to the Royal Opera House (Bridge) information. This would be helpful to organisations based in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area but who are close to the Royal Opera House (Bridge) border. It may be that for some of those a connection to the Royal Opera House (Bridge) may be easier and more convenient and could help provide cultural resource more easily than from within the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area.

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Comments included: • It is an odd region that Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) is going to cover, as the communications are poor. • There used to be a BENCHES database of artists that the Arts Education Officers had worked with and recommended. This is no longer functioning because of the resource that was needed to maintain it but if the bridge was able to institute something similar it would be very helpful for the sector. • Marketing and getting the word out about provision and events is hard work in Great Yarmouth and sometimes results in low recruitment. • There’s a great deal of waste currently from individual organisations communicating directly with schools. • One problem identified was the council’s lack of engagement with social media. So for example the officer is not able to use Facebook, although Youth Engagement has limited access to it. School assemblies are not an effective alternative. • Helping us to offer quality arts provision, and/or sign posts to quality arts provision for vulnerable young people. • One area that the bridge could offer support and information is to compile a list of artists regionally that could be made use of across the bridge area. • We would love support marketing the HighTide Academy as it’s still very much in its infancy. Particularly to Norfolk where we’d like to grow our participants. • An advocacy conference for heads, policy makers, and curriculum leads to be run for those across the bridge area.

12.14 Sustainability of activity Alongside education and schools, rural issues and opportunities for CYP the thorny issue of sustainability came up in every discussion, almost without exception. Again due to the nature of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area and the length of experience many people have, this factor will need to be seriously considered by the bridge in its planning. If it is seen, or perceived, not to be happening, it may damage the long term credibility of the bridge organisation. Comments included: • However it has become increasingly apparent that sustainability of provision is a real concern. Things happen for a short time, because much activity is based on up to three year funding which can’t then be repeated. This pattern can be harmful as young people are conscious that their needs attract funding which can understandably lead to youthful cynicism. • One of the problems of working in rural Norfolk is the need for a much longer 5 -10 year view rather than the 3 year cycle which leaves nothing behind. • There is continuing need in Norfolk particularly in the arch from Great Yarmouth to King’s Lynn and Thetford with only small pockets of activity in this area. Work takes time there and it doesn’t happen quickly. Four or five years are needed on average and those working there have to be in for the long haul. Grants for the arts is not sufficient as the three year time available does not support long term commitment. • Support and work needs to be long term as otherwise short term projects can do more harm than good. 101 | P a g e

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Community projects have been successful, but the work needs sustaining. A lot of strategic things in the past have been put in place but there are no resources to keep them going.

12.15 Partnerships and networks Linked to communications, partnerships and networks were another key area of discussion. There was a very clear view that the bridge should be involved with and support the existing networks before trying to set up any new ones. This was both so that the bridge staff could use them to meet and work with potential partners, but also so that resource was not wasted on unnecessary duplication. Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk seemed to have good networks. The picture in Cambridge and Suffolk may reflect that there is much less resource, particularly at county level than in Norfolk, and their networks help provide the support to ensure partnership work has sufficient density and resource to achieve jointly what cannot be done alone. However some of those who would benefit from attending meetings of their peers, and so link into these partnership opportunities, were not able to due to time and/or transport issues. Much of the resource in Norfolk is focussed in Norwich and there seemed to be very good knowledge amongst those working there of what else was going on locally in their sector. Norfolk as a whole has the benefit of the Norfolk Arts Forum but it cannot make up for where there is little provision to join up with. It was unclear what the networks were like in Peterborough. It must also be said that some of the networks have begun to suffer as local authority posts are lost or staff are unable to travel because of spending restrictions. For many smaller arts and cultural organisations attending networking meetings has been problematic for a long time due to cost or limited staff resources. It is unlikely that these factors will improve across the cultural sector in the foreseeable future and this should be another aspect to consider in the bridge’s communication role. The network pattern within school and education wasn’t clear. Very few people mentioned Extended School, Heads meeting or specialist subject meetings. The isolation of drama teachers was mentioned in Suffolk and the loss of the county dance teachers meeting in Norfolk. Some cross border working is due to happen as councils come together to share services but the picture relating to this is unclear as yet. On the whole the people keenest to work in other parts of the area away from where they were based, were arts organisations, both NPOs and others. Museums are used to be being part of a much bigger partnership especially through the Regional Learning Network and through the MLA work which supported pilot projects across the east such as trial of Arts Award in a range of museums. Libraries have their own internal networks. All three sectors of arts, museums and libraries are well linked into national networks. 102 | P a g e

Young people too seemed to have access to a range of consultation and decision making bodies including youth councils or as part of individual organisations. A number of people expressed enthusiasm for cross border working and this might be a good place for the bridge to try an initial project, particularly where networking or partnership is weak. This approach offers focussed a reason for discussion with a number of organisations and will help develop a sense of the wider locality. There was also an acknowledgement in some of the discussions that there is likely to be an increase in the number of shared local authority services and the bridge may have a role in being involved or supporting such developments. A lack of networking can also affect arts organisations by leaving them isolated, probably more so than equivalent museums. If there is no network there is no chance to meet partners from other parts of a locality, district or county. This lack of contact may mean missing opportunities in helping to find partners and secure funding. Comments included: • Would generally like help in making connections to strengthen bids. • Opportunities to share how we work with those from a different field would be useful. • Time pressures, but would like to work more in partnership, however money is a key consideration to all that is done. • Norfolk arts activity is well connected. It links a little to Suffolk and has good communications with Cambridgeshire. • Joint working with Peterborough would benefit from a concentrated approach by the bridge and others. • There are fewer networks than there used to be for example the Children’s Trust partnership arrangements have gone. • There are a lot of cross sector partners and the Norfolk Arts Forum includes business and health representatives amongst others. • Professional networks in the county are weak and teachers are not brought together. For example drama teachers across the county don’t know one another and the subject is not a core subject. • In the past the Suffolk arts officers had good links and worked well together however with the loss and change in many posts this has become fractured although there is still some good communication taking place.

12.16 Training Training was seen as another key way in which the bridge could lead and support. Training for teachers, artists, council staff, arts organisations, young people, volunteers and museums were all raised by various interviewees. People were also looking for new models of training to be developed that they could take advantage of. As with communications the bridge is uniquely set up to help do this both by its remit and its area wide view. Comments included: General 103 | P a g e

Henley 2. If schools are to offer training I would be keen to be involved in this and if any funding is available it would be helpful to know about it. • Cancellation of the CPD take up which is happening all over the county and is mostly money related. • It would be useful for the arts and education sectors to pool more resources, offer coordinated CPD arts programmes etc. • Arts provision is being offered to children and young people who are at risk/vulnerable, by expert arts facilitators, but who lack specialist knowledge of the holistic support these young people needs. • Each event was a whole day’s training so culture/arts/bridge needs to be able to find out or identify what is important enough to them for them to participate. (This was about Artsmark, but applies more widely). • Something for practitioners which involves quality collective training and information exchange. A new training model is needed as coming out for a day is becoming increasingly difficult for many. How can this be done at a local level and involve practitioners working with teachers? Is this something the bridge can help to develop? Young People • Would like to build up local knowledge and offer training to young people in the arts. Would there be resources to support this? • Can the bridge do anything to help more YP have the opportunity to work through the cultural venues? • The Youth Service changes are impacting in other ways as well. There is a real need for properly qualified youth workers to support arts projects involving vulnerable young people. We hadn’t anticipated that their loss would be the problem that it has turned out to be. An artist’s responsibilities are different to that of a youth worker in such a situation and the loss of youth workers is having a real effect. • We’re interested in developing a kind of ‘foundation programme’ as a gap year preparation/reality check for people interested in drama school. This foundation course would be the beginnings of ‘Creative TRAIN’ where we hope to offer performance experience across the range of our work. Volunteers • It would be good to develop opportunities and training for volunteers in libraries to add value and increase provision which the resources don’t otherwise exist. This could include reading groups led by young people for other groups of young people. • A programme of volunteer training would be beneficial. Artists • Many artists have become complacent and need challenging effectively over the effectiveness of the learning they offer. More questioning of quality is required. • There is a need to support artists and internships to increase employability. • There is a need for more artist training to freshen those who have worked in the county for a long time. •

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12.17 Volunteers All the cultural sectors, museums, libraries, arts and youth services have considerable experience over a number of years of working with volunteers across a very wide span of activity. These range from individuals giving time to arts organisations to museums being managed and run on a volunteer basis. This contribution, alongside developments such as the future direction of some services such as libraries, may raise the profile and involvement of volunteers in delivery to CYP and their families still further. Some of the interviewees mentioned a need for training, communications and networking in relation to volunteers. It was also noted that volunteers come with responsibilities for the host organisations and that volunteers need to gain something from their relationship as well. However this in turn can increase the demands on the host organisation’s resources. In a nutshell volunteers do not come for free and the implications for training and resources need to be considered. All three disciplines, museums, libraries and arts want to increase the opportunities and training for young volunteers in particular. Comments included: • There is a post to coordinate volunteers at Cambridge Folk Museum which is funded by the HLF which also works at the Cambridge Museum of Technology. • Young people need further support to develop their Arts Award portfolio of activities. This may mean using more volunteers, as there is a limit to the amount of activity that the museum staff can run. • Volunteering is a notable aspect of library service work. A scheme has been developed to offer opportunities to young people including as Summer Reading Challenge young champions. Could this development support engagement with Arts Award? • A lot of volunteers are involved in Vivacity and there is a lead person on volunteering. So there are training needs that need examining. In addition the volunteers need to get something out of their involvement. • What progression paths are there for those who volunteer and is this something that the bridge could explore so that people can get a cross cultural experience if they want one. Is this applicable to other organisations or groups of organisations in the bridge area?

12.18 Disability A number of arts organisations and third sector groups listed in the responses work with disabled CYP and their families, while others run integrated provision. There are some excellent examples of this work in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) area and it is probably something that could benefit from a higher profile. Although not a concern of the bridge, a number of respondees mentioned working with older people and the problems that they faced in terms of accessibility to provision. Some of this mirrors similar concerns in relation to CYP. Intergenerational provision was an area raised 105 | P a g e

by a number of interviewees as something they would like to develop or improve and this might help the needs that were identified at both end of the age spectrum. Comments included: • There are a lot of young carers in Papworth. • SCOPE runs two schools for those with complex disabilities in the Melbourn area. Both are very keen to work with the community and took part in the Canal Art project. • The school cluster project working on the family counselling reflects the high mental health needs of the area linked to the relatively high number of split families. Some of this appears to be linked to the pressures of the recent economic problems. This affects Melbourn, Bassingbourn, Comberton and Gamlingay. • Norfolk Arts and Events Service is currently working with Children’s Services and Adult Services to develop a three year initiative to develop pilot activity which demonstrates the role and value of using the arts in health and social care contexts and also to build the capacity of the sector with regard to commissioning in health and social care. • It worth being aware of the Foundation Degree in Arts and Well Being offered by City College Norwich. The degree brings together health, social care and arts practitioners and is the only one of its type. • There are issues around transport for those with disabilities being able to travel to take part in things. The aim is to deliver in the rural locations if possible. (This comment was about older people, but may apply equally to disabled CYP and their families).

12.19 Diversity Diversity, like disability was not specifically included in the research but was mentioned often by those who responded. Some of this comment was around working with Traveller Education colleagues. There were some good examples of projects, that involved diverse groups, mentioned in the interviews and which could provide a good basis for further development and discussion Others mentioned the increased number of nationalities and languages represented in their area. This was often linked to rural employment and eastern European populations were mentioned in Peterborough, Fenland and Norfolk in particular. As was seen earlier in the report the high levels of BME at KS4 in Peterborough is an indicator of the diversity of that city. The final point was around how isolated many rural young people were from external cultural influences and conversely the positive effects these had on their aspirations and enjoyment when they had such opportunities. When they had taken part in activity with an international flavour the positive and longer term impact this tended to have on them was noticeable. Comments included: • Traveller population locally (South Cambs).

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There is currently no diversity focus to the work however a project involving CYP working with a Caribbean company is still being spoken about several years after the event. (Dance organisation). Residents perception studies highlight desires in terms of arts activities and young people and also the variety of different nationalities (a significant proportion of south and central Yarmouth are migrant communities, especially Portuguese). We should like to work with Platforma arts and the Refugees network next year. There are now 77 languages spoken in Norfolk which is partly due to the numbers of overseas rural migrant workers. Included are the new communities from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia amongst others. Engaging with children in new immigrant families / non English speaking parents is a challenge.

12.20 Future activity, projects and delivery As one would expect, when carrying out research that involves the cultural sector, the scale of ambitions and plans was impressive and inspiring. Despite the difficult economic circumstances everyone (despite some concerns) had a positive view about future work they would like to do in order to have a positive impact on the lives, learning and creativity of children and young people. Much more specific detail can be gained from reading the individual responses in the Appendix 1, but there is plenty that the bridge could consider supporting both now, to help achieve some immediate results, or strategically in the longer term. Some of the comments relate to help with identifying to securing funding, but many are more complex than that and could provide good partnership opportunities over time. The range of suggestions came equally from libraries, museums and arts and there is potential contained in these for cross sectoral working as well as cross local authority boundary working. There are also a range of comments which highlight the need for the bridge to take a lead in either carrying out research to help increase the knowledge of the sector or to support research by others to achieve the same result. If the bridge wanted to draw up a list of possible research to support over the next three years the interview responses provide a good starting point. Comments included: • Literature opportunities are underdeveloped in Cambridge. • Expand the range of networks that Britten Sinfonia is involved in. • We would like to build up long term involvement in Suffolk – a Cambridgeshire based organisation. • Wysing has a regional remit and it would be good to support the wide Norfolk audience for education work as well. • Subject to funding, we hope to work with the Princes Trust on a stained glass project involving three schools near Ramsey. (A museum) • Kettle’s Yard would like help reaching communities that do not otherwise engage with the arts including young people’s / children services, community support. 107 | P a g e

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Would like to work with artists more although some imaginative work has been done. (Museum comment) The museum does a lot of reminiscence work but would like to develop this towards more inter-generational work. Coming from my arts admin background, I would love the opportunity to develop a really exciting, challenging and long-term arts project for the young people of Huntingdon. They could do with one! The Artlandish Programme at Houghton Hall (Norfolk) which includes craft, art and training. The scheme could do with being much more heavily used and there is even a free minibus which can be used by schools to bring CYP in form areas with poor transport. Working together to build links between the Garage’s emerging music inclusion role and the bridge could release value for money and match funding in both directions. There may be a useful piece of work to be done in identifying the youth theatres across the bridge area. Would like to see the bridge help support regional artist’s development. We are sure there will be partnership projects through the Youth Worker programme across the county for which Norfolk & Norwich Festival (Bridge) can help us identify partners, arts practitioners and potential funding sources. Work with the third sector to improve services for those with autism. We would like to work with the bridge on using the Norfolk & Norwich Festival as a platform for performance, possibly as part of our partnership with Britten Sinfonia. We are keen to use new technologies and live literature (performance) in our work wherever possible. Writers Centre Norwich has a sustainable programme of schools and libraries work that we are seeking to extend and develop over the next few years. The Breckland Book Festival takes place annually in October/November. It includes local and national authors, children’s authors and creative writing in its programme. There is a Grants for the arts application currently awaiting a decision which would provide a further two year funding for the event. Help by the bridge to identify ways of getting secondary school teachers to use the museum would be very welcome. We are interested in exploring ways of sharing models of work. A lot of how we work is by testing ideas in a particular setting then developing and rolling out model to other settings/locations. This could work across county borders. Costume Creators for young adults with mild-moderate learning disabilities. It’s well loved but un-funded. The Costume Creators has great funding potential. It would be brilliant to talk funding on a longer term. We plan to launch a new writing based schools programme in the autumn; support here would also be useful as we need to develop stronger links and relationships with local schools.

12.21 Funding and commissioning Underpinning all the whole report and discussion above is the funding and resources that are required to support the cultural sector in its continuing work with children and young people and their families. At the beginning of this section, information about the current ACE 108 | P a g e

and local authority provision and patterns was highlighted. However in common with so much else this well established pattern is likely to change as public spending reduces and the delivery of public services changes. The possibility of accessing financial resources for arts and other cultural organisations through commissioning has been a concern and ambition of the Arts Council for several years. The attractions are obvious in that the contracts are often for three years, at a minimum. This approach also offers funding possibilities which stretch further into the future than some of the traditional models that the sector has been used to. Moreover by delivering in areas that have a higher profile with politicians, senior officers and the non-arts or cultural sector; arts, museums and libraries can raise their profile, demonstrate their effectiveness with measurable outcomes, and provide a long term positive impact for those they work with. All of which would help provide a more secure sustainable future for the sector. There are some very good examples in the bridge area of such funded work, particularly in the arts and youth sectors including with Looked After Children and young offenders. However much of the cultural work is still being funded through grants or with lottery support, rather than through commissioning. In the case of Aldeburgh Music the money they are awarded to deliver to work with young prisoners requires match funding that has to be raised from elsewhere to make the work financially viable. A number of individuals and organisations do have experience of commissioning. Once such individuals or organisations learn how to secure funding support via commissioning they tend to be good at winning further work of this type. However despite funding and commissioning being one of the subjectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; interviewees, and others, were asked about in the audit research, not a great deal of information was forthcoming. Commissioning, in particular, was not really mentioned and there seemed to be little general knowledge or experience of it. This was apparent both amongst those who work in, or for, local authorities as well as cultural organisations. Another aspect of this gap, which has been noted elsewhere, is that because few of those outside local authorities have much knowledge of commissioning it means generally people will be unaware of the opportunities that might be being advertised which they could take advantage of. This effect is compounded by the local authority officersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ignorance of commissioning opportunities which in turn means they are not alerting cultural organisations or helping them take advantage of such opportunities. Many arts officers have tried to engage with their commissioning colleagues, so this lack of knowledge is not due to their lack of interest or attempts to engage. However it seems to be very difficult to build such relationships and knowledge at the moment and this may be another reflection of the pace of change in local government at the moment. Another problem is the length of time contracts are awarded for so that if people are missing the tenders it may be several years before they might have chance to bid again. People are aware that commissioning could be important in the future, particularly as a means to secure funding long term, but very few really know how to take the next step. Commissioning is another area that the bridge should take a lead on to help the whole sector help itself in the longer term.

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There may be more experience and a higher awareness of this in the education sector, but would need to be investigated further. There was a lot of expressed need for support with funding applications and the comments virtually all relate to this rather than anything to do with commissioning. Despite commissioning been seen as an important future support for culture, many people are still at the stage that want help with scoping and refining funding applications. The bridge may have to consider how it might help support this need, perhaps as part of a staged progression in encouraging people to look at the wider and newer forms of funding support. They comments also give a flavour of some of the work people want help with and this in turn should give the bridge another insight into the range and scope of work that its partners are developing. Comments included: • Storytelling project with Primary Schools in Peterborough during 2013/ 14.- would like bridge help • Mental Health project with primary schools in the Melbourn area • Securing a subsidy for primary school visits as Wysing is currently a very expensive option for them. It would also be helpful to find funding to support sixth form visits so more can come. • Would like to develop more work for children and young people facing challenging circumstances but this would be dependent on securing funding. • Would like to discuss if a Grants for the arts bid might help with increasing the work with artists and possibly around an inter-generational theme.

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Report compiled by Catherine M Davis. CatherineMDavis44@gmail.com 01462 458831 22nd June 2012. The author would like to thank Gemma Cox (Participation and Engagement Administrator [Bridge], Norfolk & Norwich Festival), and Oliver Payne (Participation and Engagement Administrator, Norfolk and Norwich Festival) for their help with compiling the lists and the mapping of museums, schools, libraries, venues and festivals.

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