July proved to be a busy month with a number of projects all coming to fruition. We launched the Green Touring Research conducted by Julie's Bicycle, we re-constituted the All Party Parliamentary Classical Music Group and the iTunes download offer ran in conjunction with The Sunday Times for two weekends resulting in almost 70,000 free track downloads. We also participated in the BBC Noise Seminar held in conjunction with the HSE. This proved a very valuable day and it was good to see so many members represented. The ABO will be joining a working group as a result of this to look at further developments and advice and guidance along with the BBC and the HSE. Watch this space for more information!

In addition to all of this the ABO team met with the following people:

Music Nation Steering Group; Association of Spanish Symphony Orchestras; Arts Inform; Ruth Hansford, BBC; Jonathan Evans MP; UKBA Arts and Entertainment Task Force; Simon Thomsett, Fairfield Halls; Youth Music; Arts and Business; Jonathan Gruber, Ulysses Arts; Susannah Simons, BBC; Arts Council England; A&B/NCA Culture Forum; Rhinegold Publishing; Pauline Latham MP; Southbank Centre; Royal Philharmonic Society; Public Affairs Network. 

Members of the ABO also attended concerts given by Britten Sinfonia at the City of London Festival, Glyndebourne/OAE, BBC Concert Orchestra, RLPO, BBCSO, CBSO, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Rolando Villazon at the iTunes Festival and London Sinfonietta at the Latitude Festival.

We also said a fond farewell to Jenny McLeod who has been our intern for the last 6 months. Jenny moves on to more lucrative pastures in private equity and we wish her all the best. She has been a stalwart member of the team and we look forward to welcoming her back into the orchestral world soon. 

The following meetings are now confirmed for this autumn so please do make a note in your diaries:

24 September: Opera & Ballet Managers' Meeting, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham
30 September: Education Managers' Meeting, Wigmore Hall,London
12 October: Chamber Orchestras' Meeting, Cadogan Hall, London
22 October: Marketing Networking Meeting, Barbican Centre, London
03 November: Development & Sponsorship Managers' Meeting, Wigmore Hall, London
18 November: Concert & Orchestra Managers' Meeting, Wigmore Hall, London

23 November: ABO Annual General Meeting & CEOs Forum, Southbank Centre, London

If you would like to attend one of these meetings please log on to the Members Area of the ABO website and then click on Events and book the relevant Specialist Manager Meeting.

So far three Brass Tacks training courses have been scheduled for the autumn:

Finance for non-Finance Managers - Tuesday 14 September, Course leader Maureen McCulloch is a chartered accountant with extensive experience in charities and the arts. She is the Finance Director of the Reading Agency and has been a freelance trainer for many years. She is also an Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. Course time & venue: 9.30 am - 4.30 pm at LSO St Luke’s, London.

Make The Difference: Evaluating Education Projects - Friday 6 November, Course leader Annabel Jackson, is a professional evaluator specialising in the arts, who has worked for all the main arts funders and for a number of orchestras and other arts organisations. Annabel was contracted by the ABO as an Evaluation Consultant and gave this course very successfully last autumn.  Course time & venue: 10.15 am - 4.30 pm at the Barbican Centre, London. 

All that you ever wanted to know about fundraising but were afraid to ask! - Tuesday 16 November, Course leader Sarah Gee is co-founder and Managing Partner of Indigo Ltd, a marketing and fundraising consultancy working with arts and heritage organisations to help them unlock the value of their audiences and visitors. She has previously worked as a marketeer and fundraiser for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the ABO itself.  Course time & venue: 10 am - 5 pm at the Royal Over-Seas League, London.

For more detailed information on the content of these one day training courses please visit the Brass Tacks section of the ABO website. 

The ABO board has agreed to create a new tier of membership for youth orchestras, following the decision by the National Association of Youth Orchestras to cease operation. If your orchestra has its own or has close contacts with a youth orchestra, do please encourage it to join. For further details contact our Membership Services Officer, Orla Molony on orla@abo.org.uk.

In this climate of fear about the impact of public spending cuts, we thought it helpful to outline what we know and the advocacy work that the ABO is carrying out in the run-up to the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) on 20 October. The ABO has produced an advocacy toolkit in association with DHA Communications, which outlines the arguments for sustained investment of most relevance to the work of orchestras.

It ultimately comes as no surprise that the new government has been talking about cuts to departmental spending of anything between 25% and 40%, as the Conservative Party had been open in advance of the General Election about their intention of driving down the public deficit. Jeremy Hunt MP, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has however stated his support for the principle of public funding for the arts, albeit with the caveat that it must share its fair portion of the pain. Cuts in DCMS spending will be mitigated by restoring the lottery to its original four pillars and examining how to foster a new culture of philanthropy. The spending proposals for the DCMS were submitted to the Treasury on 19 July and will be confirmed in the CSR.

Arts Council England has been asked by the DCMS to model cuts of 25% to 40% and in consequence has written to its Regularly Funded Organisations requesting they budget for an initial 10% reduction in subsidy in 2011/12. This will serve as a transition year that builds towards a new arts funding landscape for 2012-2015, with a possible reduction in the number of RFOs. In the meantime, they are directing the RFOs towards their toolkit, to enable them to help make the case for continued investment in the arts.

We understand that the national companies in Scotland have been asked to model cuts of up to 20%, and Creative Scotland has warned that tough decisions lie ahead. In Wales, the Arts Council of Wales has completed its investment review but will be unable to confirm the levels of subsidy for those organisations that remain within the funded portfolio until the Welsh Assembly has been informed of its settlement in the CSR.

We have no news yet of the level of cuts that will be imposed on local government, which will impact not only on orchestras but also on local concert halls and promoters. But we cannot imagine they will not be of the same magnitude.

We are also working towards our next briefing, which will use the key facts we have collated for 2008/09 to celebrate the mixed economy model and the reach of British orchestras. This will be launched to coincide with the party conference season, during which the ABO is planning to have a presence at all three party conferences.

The ABO Director is feeding all of these issues into the A&B/NCA Culture Forum, to which he has been elected. The forum met for the first time on 27 July, when it discussed the public funding landscape and the potential impacts, challenges and opportunities facing the sector. The next meeting on 24 August will focus on earned income and the final meeting of this series will look at the private sector on 21 September.

Culture, Media and Sport Committee has launched a new inquiry into the funding of the Arts and Heritage. Further information about the enquiry can be found here. The deadline for submissions is 2 September 2010.

A reminder that the DCMS is currently consulting on proposals to restore the shares of the National Lottery Distribution Fund to 20% for each of the good causes of sport, heritage and the arts. For further information please visit: http://www.culture.gov.uk/consultations/7070.aspx. The consultation period ends on 21 August 2010 and please send all responses to: lottery@culture.gsi.gov.uk.

The Arts Council’s annual review and the Achieving great art for everyone consultation report are now live on ACE’s website. Please follow the links below to view these documents.

The Achieving great art for everyone consultation report includes a cover note from Alan Davey. The report will inform the development of our long-term strategic framework that is due to be published in mid-October.

Arts Council England’s annual review for 2010 looks back on a year of radical thinking and great change for the Arts Council as we worked to reduce our running costs by 15 per cent and to manage the impact of a budget reduction of £19 million, in addition to an earlier in-year reduction of £4 million - bringing the total to £23 million.

Arts Council England (ACE) has published its self-evaluation framework, equipping ACE funded organisations with the tools to evaluate their performance against their own core values and mission statements. ACE hopes to encourage arts organisations to become more effective in the management of their resources and the development of their strategy for the coming year. You can find information on self-evaluation, and the framework, by clicking here.

Follow the journey of a ground-breaking project exploring the powerful effect of classical music on young people's lives in 'Orchestra United' to be shown on Channel 4 in four weekly episodes starting Sunday 25 July, 7pm

The Hallé Harmony Youth Orchestra project was a partnership between the Hallé, Diverse Productions, Arts Council England and the local authorities of Bolton, Manchester, Oldham and Stockport. Channel 4 also supported the project, and other contributors included Youth at Risk and the University of Manchester.

Click here for more information.

The Culture and Sport Evidence programme (CASE) has published its first set of research publications, databases and toolkits. This is the culmination of two years of ground-breaking interdisciplinary research sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in collaboration with Arts Council England, English Heritage, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Sport England.

The research published by CASE can help us to further understand and demonstrate (among other things) what factors drive engagement in the arts and the impacts that engagement with the arts can have on the lives of people in England. After two years of work the CASE programme has been able to demonstrate the following headlines:

• Childhood experience, education, age and socio-economic status are all important in predicting arts attendance and media consumption has a positive effect on arts attendance
• Older people from Black and minority ethnic groups are less likely to attend arts events but ethnicity has no effect on attendance by young people
• There are direct learning impacts for young people who participate in structured arts programmes including positive increases in attainment (1-2 per cent ), cognitive skills (16-19 per cent) and transferable skills (10-17 per cent)
• There is emerging evidence of a relationship between arts attendance and wellbeing, with people’s life satisfaction increasing the more they engage with the arts.
• The most effective way to increase engagement is to increase public education and promotion rather than reducing ticket prices or increasing the supply of arts programs
 

 Further information and all the publications to date are available on the CASE website: www.culture.gov.uk/case. And for more on what this means for the Arts Council please visit the CASE pages of the research section: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us/research/public-value-programme/case-culture-and-sport-evidence-programme/

Two appointments have been made recently at the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Isabelle Tawil has replaced Claire Lenyk as Development Manager for Individual Giving and Jodie Gilliam has been appointed Development Officer.

Mary Yeatts has been appointed Development Manager at Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Alice Clay has moved to work in the Corporate Development Department of  English National Opera and Natalie Marchant has been named as the new Concerts Assistant at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.