A busy June saw the final Specialist Manager Meetings take place, the launch of our latest briefing Unlocking Potential: Education and the Orchestra, the AGM and re-launch of the All Party Parliamentary Classical Music Group, and saw Mark attend the League of American Orchestras conference in Atlanta.

We also met with the following organisations on your behalf: Surrey University; Public Affairs Network; Orchestras Live; Southbank Centre; BACH; ABTT Conference; UK Border Agency; BBC Performing Groups; ERA 21; Exhibition Road Cultural Group; DHA Communications; RPS; PRS Foundation; and the MBF Annual General Meeting. 

Members of the ABO Team also attended concerts and performances by the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, The Sixteen, Glyndebourne/LPO and Birmingham Royal Ballet. 

Fifteen ABO member orchestras are featuring in a promotion led by The Times and in association with iTunes to promote British Orchestras and their music this summer. The Sunday Times is offering its readers the opportunity to download 15 free tracks on Sunday 11th July and another 15 tracks on Sunday 18th July. The promotion, the ABO and the orchestras will be trailed in print and online in The Times from today. The promotion is entitled A Great Summer of Music from Great British Orchestras and highlights the live work that ABO members are doing around the country at festivals this summer as well as featuring their recordings available through iTunes. Remember to pick up your copy this Sunday!

Dates for the autumn series of Specialist Manager Meetings are in the process of being finalised and as these are confirmed they will be listed on the Events section of the ABO website.

If you have any ideas for topics or speakers that you would like to be considered for meeting agendas please email orla@abo.org.uk .

All the reports from the spring series of Specialist Manager Meetings can be downloaded from the Members Area of the ABO website. 

Thursday 15 July - Introduction to Press & PR, Course leader Kate Whyman, a freelance PR consultant specializing in music and the arts. Her client list includes BBC Radio 3, Cadogan Hall, London Mozart Players, Mayor of London, British Arts Festival Association, Festival and Events International, The Old Market and Brighton Festival of World Sacred Music . The course will be held from 10am - 5pm at  LSO St Luke's, London.

Tuesday 14 September - Finance for non-Finance Managers, Course leader Maureen McCulloch, a chartered accountant with extensive experience in charities and the arts who has been freelance trainer for twenty-two years. The course will be held from 9.30am - 4.30pm at  LSO St. Luke's, London.

More detailed information on the content of these excellent courses can be found on the Brass Tacks section of the ABO website. Prices start at £90 for members to attend and there are discounts available for multiple bookings for the same course.
 

The Emergency Budget of 22 June, as we predicted in last month’s Update, did nothing to lighten the increasingly grim mood across the entire arts sector. Of particular concern to ABO members will be the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% from 4 January 2011 and the announcement of average, real terms budget cuts over four years of 25% for all Government departments, except for Health and International Development.

On 17 June the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced further savings of around £73 million, which included cancelling the Find Your Talent programme, in which some ABO members were participating. More details here.

On 18 June Arts Council England (ACE) outlined how it would apportion £19 million in-year budget cuts. In brief, it has been able to use £9 million of its historic reserves to mitigate the cuts to RFOs and cap these at £1.8 million, a 0.5% reduction across the board.

Two other RFOs have had to bear a much bigger share of 4% cuts to their budget as “organisations not directly producing art”. These are Creativity Culture and Education (£1.6 million) and Arts & Business (£160,000).

ACE has absorbed £400,000 in minimising operating costs such as cutting training budgets and restricting travel. A further £6 million will be saved from postponing projects such as the public engagement programme and from scaling back on partnership working and development plans. To read the full details and the ACE press release see here.

The fact that ACE’s regularly funded organisations are not facing a far larger 3% cut across the board is to be welcomed, but concerns remain for what level of cuts across 2011-14 might be announced in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, scheduled for 20 October.
 

On 29 June Arts Council of Wales announced the first phase of a major overhaul of its investment in the arts. Over the past year, the Council has been working on one of the most detailed funding reviews it has ever undertaken. Of immediate relevance to the ABO is the retention of WNO and BBC NOW as funded organisations along with the addition of Sinfonia Cymru. In December, ACW hopes to learn the amount of funding it will receive for next year from the Welsh Assembly Government. At that juncture, individual allocations to the 71 organisations it funds will be confirmed. More details here.

Creative Scotland was officially launched on 1 July by Andrew Dixon, Chief Executive, and Minister for Culture, Fiona Hyslop. Creative Scotland is the new national leader for Scotland’s arts, screen and creative industries. Read full details of the launch here www.creativescotland.com

Last year Arts Council England commissioned Burns Owen Partnership to undertake a piece of research to help it establish a clear overview of the contribution that the Arts Council's funded organisations make to music opportunities for children and young people in England. ACE is pleased to announce the publication of its summary report, which is now available on its website to view and download.

The report highlights the enormous scale and range of activity being delivered by its funded organisations as well as the unique role they play in music education provision across the country. As we move into a time of increased pressure on public spending it is going to be even more important that ACE, and the organisations it funds, focus their energies to provide these opportunities in the most effective way possible. They hope that the report and its recommendations will offer useful information and guidance both to the organisations it funds and the wider music education sector.
 

The Mayor of London has published his draft Cultural Strategy and wants your views. The consultation site is available here including a short questionnaire. The Mayor’s Cultural Strategy sets out his vision, priorities and recommendations for how to strengthen the cultural life of Londoners across the capital. It recognises the significance of the cultural and creative sectors in making London a successful world city, and puts forward a case for its continued support and investment – particularly in the run up to the 2012 Olympics and the opportunity it presents for London to undertake a step change in cultural activity and participation. Results of the consultation will be published in late 2010.
 

This information is taken from the Independent Safeguarding Authority’s website http://www.isa-gov.org.uk/ 

In its recent document ‘The Coalition: Our programme for government’, the Government set out its aim to ‘review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels’. In order to deliver this promise and carry out the remodelling, the Vetting and Barring Scheme will be halted. The first phase of registration was due to commence on 26 July 2010.

Although the Scheme is halted whilst the Government undertakes its review, new safeguarding regulations introduced in October 2009 continue to apply. These include:

• A person who is barred from working with children or vulnerable adults will be breaking the law if they work or volunteer, or try to work or volunteer with those groups.
• An organisation which knowingly employs someone who is barred to work with those groups will also be breaking the law.
• If your organisation works with children or vulnerable adults and you dismiss a member of staff or a volunteer because they have harmed a child or vulnerable adult, or you would have done so if they had not left, you must tell the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

On 6 July the BBC Proms launches an online Proms Archive listing all performances, composers, works, soloists, conductors and ensembles in its 115-year history. Music-lovers will be able to search for the details of any one of the 7,168 concerts which have taken place since 1895 by composer, work, soloist, conductor, ensemble or date at www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive . They can also create Top 40 lists of Proms performances by composer, ensemble or person (from altos to zheng players) with the facility to narrow or widen searches by date.

Roger Wright, Director BBC Proms says:
“To have the entire database of concerts available reveals much about the Proms itself, but also about the history of classical music in the UK over the past 115 years. It’s fascinating to see developments in musical trends and the careers and popularity of particular artists, composers and music. We’re delighted to make this amazing resource available to the public and hope it will be invaluable to music- lovers, musicians, academics and fun for anyone who is interested in classical music.”

This is the first live version of the Proms Archive online and the BBC Proms is keen to hear from members of the public about anything inaccurate or anomalous and is inviting corrections and feedback by email to proms.archive@bbc.co.uk 

The BBC Proms is also keen to hear about memories of Proms concerts which might be triggered by seeing the database and is inviting comments and reminiscences at www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2010/share .

The BBC Proms 2010 opens at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday 16 July and the first big Proms event – Out & About takes place on Friday 9 July at Westfield Shopping Centre in West London.

Mark Pemberton attended the League conference from 16-18 June in Atlanta, entitled It’s time to take on the future. The mood was more positive than last year, when there was a sense of impending doom and an obsession with new business models. Fundraising seems to have returned to more positive levels and endowments have increased in value. But clearly some tough lessons have been learnt.

The conference opened with an ambitious initiative called Orchestra R/Evolution (see www.orchestrarevolution.org ). The website had been launched ahead of the conference and encouraged blogging and the submission of questions for the opening session. Facilitated by Eric Booth, a keynote address by Ben Cameron, program director at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was followed by a ‘town hall’ debate with delegates discussing at round tables two questions generated from the online debate, which focused on orchestras’ relevance and the changes they needed to make to survive. The debate was video-streamed from the website and comments encouraged via a Twitter feed.

The four-day event featured performances by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which hosted the conference; the Greenhill County Young Artist Orchestra; and an Atlanta School of Composers concert.
 

Trinity College of Music and Laban have launched a series of training days, seminars, networks and events aimed at supporting your skills to sustain an artistically and financially fulfilling career in the arts.

From starting a small business to developing new sources of work, finding artists to collaborate with to managing your finances, we will be running an event to help you.

Our Summer Programme of events has now been confirmed. Click on the course title to find out more and to book your place:

• 18 June - Stand Out From The Crowd
Creating the right impression for yourself in business

• 2, 3, 4, 14 & 15 July - Joining the Dots
Collaborative composition in young people’s creative music projects.

• 26 July - Starting Out
Where to start your creative career

• 3 August - Entrepreneurial Training
Harnessing the hidden entrepreneur & planning your pitch to new clients

• 13 September - Getting Your Event/Project Off The Ground
Generate your own gigs, events and projects

If you would like to receive an information pack about other Springboard events and find out how you can get involved contact Sean Corby at scorby@tcm.ac.uk or call 020 8305 4379.

The BBC, in conjunction with the ABO and with participation from the HSE, has organised a day long seminar that will look at orchestras working practices and the latest research on the Noise Regulations at Work act. This free day long seminar will be held in the BBC Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London and is open to all orchestra managers and musicians. This is a great opportunity to share experiences informally and look ahead constructively with the HSE.
Sessions will cover:
HSE’s perspective: from a senior representative from the HSE
What we know now: Ruth Hansford reports on the research with the BBC Performing Groups
What advice has proved to be sound? Thought-provoking (and fun) contributions from those putting in to practice in the real world
Where do we go from here? Discussions on what we can do together
Monday 19 July 10.30-15.30
Radio Theatre, Broadcasting Hse, London W1A 1AA

For more info:
Ruth Hansford (Project Manager, Noise) tel: 020 8008 3251, mob: 07912 583 540
Email: ruth.hansford@bbc.co.uk

Booking is essential, email: bbcacademy@bbc.co.uk // Tel: 0370 010 0264
For email bookings, put Noise Seminar in the subject line and provide your name, job title, organisation, phone and email details. You will then get confirmation and joining instructions.

It has been a fairly poor crop of honours for people associated with classical music and orchestras.

Composers George Benjamin and Karl Jenkins were awarded CBEs. Dr Ursula Jones was awarded an OBE. Derek Barr, former Chief Executive of Fairfield Halls, was awarded an MBE.

The BBC Philharmonic has announced that the Spanish Conductor Juanjo Mena will succeed Gianandrea Noseda as Chief Conductor in September 2011. Gianandrea has held the position since 2002, and will take the new title of Conductor Laureate when he steps down.