nalgao has now confirmed the programme for its Arts, Health & Wellbeing seminar in Bolton on 19 and 20 July organised in partnership with Bolton at Home.  The seminar is aimed at officers involved in both policy and practice related to arts and health commissioning and service provision. 

The programme will start with an evening social and artistic programme on Monday 19th July, illustrating best practice arts and health organisations in the Bolton area. The following day will explore the many ways that local arts development and delivery supports crosscutting agendas. The seminar will demonstrate how working with health initiatives, organisations and communities can increase participation and access to the arts; which in turn promotes wellbeing and increases confidence and ability, and also supports community development and social cohesion, bringing groups of disadvantaged or hard to reach people to increase their quality of life.

The seminar is supported by Bolton at Home, the National Culture Forum and CLOA amongst others and starts with a keynote presentation from Clive Parkinson, Director of Arts for Health at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The delegate fee for this two day event is just £120 (accommodation not included) for nalgao members, or £100 if you attend for Tuesday only.

 Click here to download the seminar programme and booking form.

Seminar organised in partnership with

nalgao is developing an integrated communications strategy to improve and develop our communications packages. At present, the nalgao magazine (Arts at the Heart, which is due to be circulated to you in the next couple of weeks), the nalgao websites (at both www.nalgao.org and www.nalgao-goodcompanion.org.uk) and the weekly nalgao ezine are stand-alone packages and it is very difficult to navigate between them.
 
To improve our services, as well as making them much more creative and interactive, we are recommending to you that we move towards an electronic magazine, and with the savings offered in printing and distribution costs, to develop an integrated package with improved website and ezine. You will still receive a magazine 3 times annually, but the format would be electronically available, also benefiting those of you who have already moved to a paperless office.
 
Your views on this are extremely important to us. We are therefore requesting you to undertake a very short survey, based in Survey Monkey. We would be extremely grateful if you could please follow this link to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YZXW57H and complete a quick questionnaire, which should only take you a couple of minutes.
Many thanks in anticipation of your participation

Exeter, Norfolk and Suffolk will not become Unitary authorities the new Coalition Government has decided.  The decision, contained in the Coalition’s Programme for Government will overturn commitments made in the dying days of the Labour Government,  commitments which national newspapers have reported were opposed by Senior Civil Servants. 

nalgao yesterday launched ‘Outside In’, a study examining the issues and opportunities in contracting out local authority arts services.  The report was launched at a seminar of the same name in London attended by 180 people.  Produced by Paul Kelly of Cultural Futures and Rick Bond of The Complete Works, the 60 page ‘Outside In’ report identifies five different ways that local authority arts services can be externalised.  The report authors talked to nine different organisations about the issues and benefits involved in alternative ways of delivering arts services and their report is packed with anecdotal detail and practical checklists.

The ‘Outside In’ report also briefly examines the opportunities offered by Strategic Commissioning which is increasingly being undertaken by local authority childrens’ services and care services. 

Lorna Brown, Chair of nalgao said, “At a time of growing pressure on local authority arts services, nalgao considered alternative delivery mechanisms at its conference last October and the possibility these offered of protecting long-established arts services.  We realised we needed to share authoritative information with our members. It has taken just four months from our conference to the release of this well researched, valuable and timely report. That must be something of a record in local government response times.  I am delighted that nalgao is able to offer its members this valuable advice. We are looking to build on this excellent research over the year ahead with updates on our website.”

The ‘Outside In’ report was produced with the financial support of Arts Council England.
 
Click here to download the Outside In report.