Could it be 'Magic'? The man who wants to transform Swindon's arts and culture
The Big Interview with Rod Hebden of New Elements, which is heading up the town's art and culture strategy
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It’s all about harnessing Swindon’s creative potential
Nearly a year ago Swindon Borough Council made a big announcement about their all-encompassing arts strategy ‘Magic Swindon’. They described it as a manifesto for change that would be transformative for the town. You can read the piece The Ink wrote about it here
And then there was… urm… nothing. A deafening silence which would make you think that the whole thing, like many cultural strategies before it, had vanished completely. It was into this void of nothingness that The Ink wrote a piece a few weeks ago asking the question about Magic Swindon’s disappearing act. You can read that piece here
Within that piece we asked for someone from Magic Swindon to put us in the picture and that is when Rod Hebden, who you might know as the man behind the brilliant Festival of Tomorrow and who runs New Elements, got in contact to let us know that he is now helping to make this ambitious strategy for Swindon happen. Jamie Hill caught up with him for a chat.
Interview by Jamie Hill
It would have been easy to think that nothing has been happening with ‘Magic Swindon’. The silence has been deafening.
But in truth it’s been quite the opposite.
I’m sat across from Rod Hebden in the Tap and Brew in Old Town. He’s an affable man who first came to my attention a few years ago when he was handed the reins of pushing the ambitious but ill-fated plans for a brand spanking new museum and art gallery in the town.
Rod runs a company called New Elements and was the brains behind the very successful Festival of Tomorrow, which for the past five years has taken over the town during the February half term week. The festival blends the creative arts with research and innovation to explore the ideas that will shape our shared future.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t realise that Rod, who I had dealt with many times before, was now helping to co-ordinate the network of local creatives and organisations working the background to deliver the Magic Swindon arts and culture strategy.
Despite being slightly surprised about the piece I had written a couple of weeks before, Rod, ever the professional, has agreed to meet me to put the record straight.
He said: “We haven’t been pushing it as there’s been nothing really to say yet. The problem is you raise expectations then people are going ‘where is it?’ and ‘what’s happening?’ So we’ve been quite quiet because there wasn’t anything to say.
“We don’t want to do the big ‘shiny’ announcement and then people go, ‘Well, where’s that then?’”
So how did we get to this?
In summary Arts Council England and Swindon Borough Council paid a consultant called Richard Blows to pull the arts/cultural sector together in a very informal way - nicknamed the Magic Swindon network.
They spent some time, in quarterly meetings, working out what everyone agreed were the challenges and opportunities the arts sector faced.
This ended up creating The Magic Swindon 'manifesto' which the borough council then adopted as its arts and culture strategy, which they announced to big fanfare last July.
Since its formation, The Magic Swindon network has already seen lots of exciting collaborations being forged with the town’s cultural sector. As an example, Rod credits partnership working with local creatives as being the key to doubling the impact of the Festival of Tomorrow this February. However, moving the wider strategy forward proved to be more of a challenge, as there was no-one to lead/co-ordinate the strategy and no-one had the spare capacity to take it on.
To try and counter this Richard Blows was taken on again to help bring everyone back together to help put together an Arts Council England Place Partnership bid. The network then spent time working out how the bid could be shaped and securing cash/in-kind match funding promises.
It was soon decided that The Bid needed to be led by a local organisation, as it was agreed that it should be led by the grassroots, not by the borough council.
And this is where Rod Hebden and New Elements entered the fray as they were asked to be that lead organisation, who then worked with Richard to develop the bid and secure the match funding, based on the work that had been done before by the network.
Rod said: “We submitted the bid Expression of Interest in December, and were informed it was successful in Feb. We then submitted the full bid in April with the decision expected in July.
“Swindon Borough Council are supporting the bid with cash (from central Government) and in-kind officer time, and are recruiting a new role, Head of Culture, Heritage, Arts and Special Events (nicknamed Head of CHASE), which will be the SBC lead.
“The point of a Place Partnership project is to do something that is transformational for the town that kind of lifts it, which isn’t necessarily one big event.
“It’s not about that we don’t already do arts and culture, it’s about how we gather and lift that culture that we’re already doing.”
The contents of a Place Partnership project vary from town to town and have been quite successful in transforming different areas.
Rod said: “The Arts Council felt the bid should be more grassroots and needed to be led by an organisation in Swindon that was not the council but is able to work with the council as a stakeholder.
“They also suggested that it probably should not be an existing NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) as there could be quite a conflict with whatever they’re already doing. And one of the challenges was that if an NPO is specific to one artform then it would be quite hard for it to not be skewed.
“So a few people said that we should lead it. New Elements, which already runs The Festival of Tomorrow, was formed by myself when I went freelance. It’s a limited company at the moment but is soon to be a CIC [Community Interest Company] and it operates like a CIC already. There’s no shareholders taking profits out of the company. We’re looking to turn it into a CIC for transparency reasons and it would feel better if we’re taking this kind of lead on a project like this.
“Being the lead organisation means that we’re the ones that have put the bid in to the Arts Council and if it’s successful the money comes straight to us - governed by a Board, drawn from the network. Most of it would come in and go straight out because it’s about supporting the sector.”
The actual bid that has been applied for is £600,000. And with match-funding and in-kind services, if successful, Rod thinks the final figure behind the project will be to the tune of around £1.2 million.
The project will be looking to tackle five different strands highlighted by The Magic Swindon network work within the sector.
They are: -
Perception and Brand - There is a perception that Swindon is a ‘cultural desert’ by people from within and outside the town. The project will be looking at ways to make the heaps of existing culture in the town visible and that there’s a full calendar of events going on already. The idea is to create something that rebrands Swindon as a big festival town. Rod said: “The project will be about joining up these festivals and making them feel like they’re part of an ongoing programme rather than these disconnected things that happen but don’t talk to each other. It’s not about homogenising them but making them feel like a kind of programme for the town.”
Space - Rod said: “A thing that also came up that people struggle with is the lack of places for creativity which might be theatre space or studio space or art studio space. It might be for performance, but it might be for rehearsal. It might be that I’ve got this art and where can I show it?”
Funding - Rod said: “The other bit is access to funding. Particularly for small organisations who don’t want to put in an Arts Council bid because they are hard work and complicated. How do we support small artists who don’t have a fundraising background, don’t have the time to put it in and have some great stuff that they want to promote?”
Talent Pathways - Rod said: “The next stream is about talent pathways. This will be for people who have grown up or live in Swindon and are interested in getting into photography or multimedia or dance and they think to themselves ‘well there’s nowhere in Swindon is there?’ so they go to Bristol or elsewhere because they assume there’s nothing in Swindon. Whilst it’s okay for people to leave Swindon we want them to feel that they can stay if they want to and that the opportunities are here. So we want to create ‘Talent Pathways’, which is essentially a map of what you can do in Swindon. So if you’re a young person in Swindon you will know how you can develop your creative passions on your own doorstep without having to leave or you can come back to the town and be a part of that. It's a lifelong learning kind of thing.”
Collaboration and Co-ordination - Rod said: “The next plinth of the project is about collaboration and co-ordination. We need basically a hub that holds everything together. Runs network events so that we can keep talking and runs training, and supporting people if they have fundraising needs. They are the ones that manage all this, report to the Arts Council as well as the borough. They will be the ones to work out the budgets and the governance. This all sits within New Elements but there will be freelance posts that do other bits and pieces. There’s some money that will fund me and Lou to spend time on it from New Elements. To hold it together and co-ordinate it but we’ll be creating an overall advisory group for it, and steering groups for each of those strands. So essentially the arts network is owning and deciding what we’re doing and how we’re spending the money.”
The Arts Council is expected to come to a decision in mid-July and if successful Rod is expecting to use August to put everything together before the project really kicks off in September.
He said: “There will be money to spend on delivering each workstream, but working through the finer detail of exactly where and when it’s spent to best achieve our aims is all part of the project. For instance for the ‘spaces’ element of the plan we might need to spend money on them. We might need to support people to get PLI (Public Liability Insurance) to be able to put their art in. A lot of artists aren’t allowed to use spaces as they are not an organisation so they can’t put their name on the lease. This sort of stuff. There might be a fit out cost and we would be there to support the artists to be able to do that.
“There’s also going to be a fair bit of commissioning pots in that. So money to commission different artwork. So say if you’re an artist and you want to get involved in the literature festival who can’t necessarily pay and you haven’t got your own funding. Well, we might be able to commission you to do whatever it is you do.
“These pots of money will be managed by those steering groups so that again the network is deciding where the money is spent.
“We want the steering groups to be representative and they will be separated by those strands. Made up of volunteers.
“If we get the money we need to be reaching out to the whole of Swindon and make it as diverse as possible so as many people as possible benefit.
“What we need to be careful of is that if we get a ‘yes’, immediately the public will expect something big and shiny when in reality it will be lots of little things going to lots of places.
“So we will be talking about things as they happen. It’s a bit like a space mission where this funding helps the rocket get escape velocity but once in space, then we’ll start to see the fruits of all the labour.”
The Place Partnership Bid is a two year project and one thing at the front of Rod’s mind is how to put things in place so that Swindon benefits beyond that time frame.
He said: “We want to also look at legacy as to what will happen in two years as it is a one-off bid.
“We won’t need that scale of money in future to keep it going as we would have done a lot of those changes structurally that would have needed to have happened but we need legacy for the team like a Swindon Cultural Trust.
“Some of our time we will be working out how we can make this a jumping off point for the foreseeable. It could mean that we turn into an NPO.
“One option is to create a cultural trust which organises a festival meaning; it would be a scalable operation that lasts beyond the two-year timescale.
“Whether this particular bid is successful or not, the network has already felt like a success to me. To have over a hundred arts and cultural organisations and individuals from across Swindon, coming together regularly to discuss our challenges and how we can work together more, has been wonderful. At our last meeting, one member stood up to say how lovely it felt and that we had started to feel like a family. And, on the ground, we’ve already seen new working relationships and collaborations forming as a result of the network, which is really what it’s all about.”
One of the things that Rod says doesn’t help especially when there’s a bid in play is negative press like the piece put together by The Ink.
He said: “I understand why it was written but this could be a very positive thing for the town and articles like that can seriously jeopardise projects like that which look to see if these types of bids have public support.
“Let’s hope this article goes some way to redress it and shows that Swindon is supportive of making this transformative change to itself.”
The Ink News Briefing
Partners commit to a safer Swindon - Tackling domestic abuse, disrupting organised crime and improving safety within the night-time economy are some of the priorities local agencies in Swindon will focus on over the next three years. Full Story here
Child rapist jailed for 25 years by Swindon Court - A man who subjected a child to years of horrific sexual abuse has been jailed for more than two decades. Caetano Mauricio Vas was found guilty of four counts of rape of a child under 13, two counts of sexual assault by penetration, one count of inciting a girl under the age of 13 into sexual activity and one count of sexual assault. Full Story here
Swindon to be visited by The National Disability and Para-cycling Road Series - The National Disability and Para-cycling Road Series is coming to Swindon on the weekend of Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 June. The event is organised by British Cycling and provides an exciting and inclusive opportunity for disabled cyclists to compete against riders across all sport classes - Bicycles, Tricycles, Handcycles and Tandems.. Full story here
Racist knife attack in Swindon - Three masked racist thugs who seriously assaulted a man in Swindon's May Close are being hunted by police. Full story here
A corner of poetry
With Ink resident poet Deborah Raikesmay
This month I wanted to explore how hard the exam system is on youngsters, who all develop at different rates. I remember with a shiver, my own exam days: the grim faced invigilators, the hush of the hall, that desperate feeling when you know you haven't revised enough and the excited, grateful feeling you get when the question you PRAYED would come up - has come up!!!!
The jolly GCSEs
Time stands still to start exams
Pens are clutched in hot, hot hands
Then A Voice gives the command
'Turn over the Exam paper and begin
Rustle, rustle, groan and sigh
Some steam ahead
Some moan and cry
I DID revise!!! I DID!!! ( I lie)
I'm anxious, thoughts in spin
Scribble, scribble -
Shakespeare - Yuk
Why do we have to give a fuck?
He's so lame! I'm out of luck -
The bloody question asks for quotes
Hand is aching, so is head
Wish that I was ill in bed
Wish that I had dropped down dead
Or somehow smuggled in my notes.
Tick, tick, tick
It's nearly Time
'Put down your pen , remember, sign
Your name across the bottom line
And hand your finished paper in'
Clatter, crash, they stand and race
Out of the hall, out OF THIS PLACE!!
Tension etched on every face
Are they for glory? Or disgrace?
Success? Or destined for the Bin?
cdeb25
The Swindon Link Magazine Archive
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