Voluntary Arts Ireland response to Minister Attwood's letter

Question 1

What should be the priority areas within DSD to best protect those in need, stress or disadvantage? What works best and what should be reviewed?

Voluntary Arts Ireland feels able to comment specifically on the Urban Regeneration strand of DSD’s work.

In particular programmes such as Neighbourhood Renewal would be worth prioritising as they focus more on local community engagement, leading to locally-led solutions.

We feel in these times there should be more of a focus on developing peoples’ capacities to help themselves and become more engaged in civil society. This leads to programmes that address community leadership, social entrepeneurship, creative thinking, innovation, working in partnership and many more ‘softer’ areas. So perhaps a rebalancing away from the physical regeneration as in particular capital expenditure is being severely hit.

We feel there is a need to develop connections and share learning between neighbourhood renewal areas to maximise the benefits of this approach. There is also a need to connect more effectively the grass roots organisations in communities to statutory bodies – to enable better communication between sectors that essentially speak different languages. This should lead to delivery mechanisms which are more fit for purpose.

Question 2

What could or should be done within the voluntary and community sector to work better to address overheads and deliver greater benefits to the community?

The sustainability of organisations/services/facilities is of paramount concern. Voluntary Arts Groups are a very interesting model in that on the whole they are self-sustaining because members pay for services and they are generally speaking run voluntarily – so with that structure greater benefit is delivered by having more groups.

Of course that model does not transfer when we are talking about broader services that require core professional staff - but it is interesting to think that we do not always have to go towards larger delivery structures to deliver efficiencies. Perhaps smaller more networked groups which share learning, resources and skills can be more flexible and responsive in their approach – delivering within their own capacity and combining with others to expand capacity when needed. It would also help to encourage more volunteering – as long as that was not seen as a way to replace required professional staff.

Question 3

Do you have any wider comments about how the Executive should address the budgetary situation?

Voluntary Arts Ireland would encourage the Executive to set priorities based on what in their judgement will deliver a better Northern Ireland and not to try to just maintain a smaller version of what we already have. It is time to make very strategic investments and to be brave.

We would encourage the Executive to articulate other expressions of value other than money, eg social capital. There is a great danger that to focus only on the pounds, shillings and pence version of value that you will end up with more of what you don’t want even though it cost you less to get it.

The focus on collaborative working and engaging local communities in helping the Executive is to be welcomed. There seems to be an opportunity to refocus the role of government departments to being more of a facilitator of community action rather than a director of it – it maybe that departments already want to be that but perhaps the way in which they are structured does not allow that approach to blossom.

Website: http://www.vaireland.org/

Other Responses

A list of the other organisations willing to share their responses. If you would like yours to be included, please forward to lisa.mcelherron@nicva.org

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