Earlier this month we were delighted to welcome shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper to one of our training sessions for the young people we have put into jobs at Notting Hill Carnival. Ms Cooper was keen to talk to young people about their experiences of the Future Jobs Fund. We at NDotM have had our criticisms of the scheme (brought in last year by the Labour government as a response to the recession and abolished by the incoming coalition). But one thing that all the young people we talk to raise with us is that the scheme has helped break down the culture of free internships that deny access to the creative sector for so many young people. Increasingly, job applicants need experience even to get an unpaid internship. This situation cuts off whole areas of the professions to anyone who can’t afford to work for free. We can only hope that the new government’s Single Work Programme will address this issue, which has serious implications for social mobility, when it introduces it next year.

We were also invited to attend the launch of the Big Society Network at Number 10 Downing Street. The coalition has struggled to get traction for this idea beyond the world of “social enterprise” but it is clearly at the heart of David Cameron’s vision for his premiership. As a small charity already delivering in the public sector, we’d like to think New Deal of the Mind can contribute something to the conversation now happening about the Big Society. To my mind, this should not be a party political issue. The Co-operative movement (usually associated with the Labour Party) has been talking about Big Society-type ideas for the best part of a century. I was intrigued by Paul Twivy’s concept of Your Square Mile, “the UK’s biggest mutual organisation”, which would pool information about local community action and help provide groups who join with benefits such as cheap liability insurance and better access to public buildings.

This is not the time to set up ideological barriers. I genuinely hope some of these new ideas work. Mass unemployment is something this country simply can’t afford.

Vince Cable wants to introduce a “variable graduate tax” as the primary means of funding university education but what impact would that have on creative arts graduates whose lifelong earnings are notoriously low, often lower than those without degree-level qualifications? Guest blogger Kit Friend, former campaigns officer of the University of the Arts London Student Union and chair of culture for the Conservative Party’s centre-right Bow Group

After two years of lobbying, the government is listening to us and considering moving from a fee-based Higher Education funding system to a graduate contribution (read: additional tax for graduates). Yes that’s right, students have been lobbying FOR this change, have voted it through our local unions in referenda, held debates, and even passed it at the conference of our National Union of Students.

Graduate tax is the fairest route to fund HE for the same reason top-up fees were first justified – the graduate premium. The lifetime additional earnings a graduate will receive over a school-leaver with 2 GCE A-levels or equivalent is around £100,000 – shrunk drastically from New Labour’s claims of £400,000, but the difference points more to our former government’s commitment to hyperbole than to the effects of recession. Nevertheless, there is a fiscal benefit from Higher Education and it is not unreasonable therefore to expect a fiscal contribution from the students who will benefit in the long term.

I will not, in this post, deal with the hysteria that a graduate tax will encourage mass migration of university leavers; this is no more a threat than it is under the current system. But the Cable plan does present both excitement and challenge for the creative industries and arts education.

The graduate tax highlights an awkward truth for arts graduates – we represent the only discipline in Higher Education with a negative graduate premium for our students, and the lowest lifetime earnings on average for any subject. Many in our sector defend this – “It’s not about the money” they say – but the graduate tax firms up the issue. If our skills are useful, if the positive contribution we make to culture and community is so vital, and our sector is the fastest growing (and the healthiest in Europe allegedly) – why shouldn’t arts graduates expect the same average earnings as graduates from other subjects? We could let the market control the path to this conclusion – all sides seem happy to acknowledge that in the new shape of higher education, universities “must be allowed to fail”. If the core income source for courses becomes the earnings of an institution’s graduates, and in the arts this proves so minuscule that colleges and universities are forced to cut back on provision, the scarcity of arts graduates could create higher earnings and solve the over-supply issue often cited as a reason for low pay.

But do we want it to get to this point? It would not be a meritocratic solution: we would not be able to guarantee access for the most talented to the privatised system that would be likely to emerge as institutions need to supplement coffers with up-front-fee-payers (including international students). I would argue that, instead, if we want a sector that encourages the brightest talent, we have first to directly address the issue of low-pay.

As David Beckham revealed of his passion for Lego : “I know it’s not a career but I love doing it”. This used to be an acceptable approach in our own sector but maybe that attitude is dying: RIP the casual creative, all hail the arts professional.

Much discussion about how to actively encourage a “feel the fear and freelance anyway” attitude and the vast differences between people who go freelance after a career as an employee and young people who know from the start they want to work for themselves… particularly artists and creative types which  reinforced NDotM’s Creative Survival report earlier this year. FSB to announce their campaign for recognition of self employment soon.

A valuable exchange of experience, opinions and  research.

Our thanks to Jenna Jovi who not only did a great job filming, producing and editing the piece, but also turned it around very quickly.

As I write, the World Cup is in its final stages, with the England team who slunk back home to see the remaining flags of St George flutter forlornly — tattered remnants of dashed hopes and broken dreams. Everyone seems to agree on the need to invest in home grown talent if England is to have any chance of ever being in serious contention for the World Cup and investment is not purely financial; it’s about practical support and encouragement. The suits that run the FA, and indeed the England squad, would do well to sit in on one of the training courses we’re running with an inspirational outfit which, rather ironically, is called GOALS whose remit is to encourage personal and social responsibility, self motivation and enthusiasm. GOALS are currently working with the scores of young people who’ve just started their job placements with the Notting Hill Mas Band Association. This was is what our chairman, Richard Greer, blogged after watching a training session.

“There were about 20 young people there, all of whom had come through the Jobcentres. I guess most of them came from disadvantaged  backgrounds; young people for whom the possibility of getting any employment was bleak, even before they could begin finding something that might give them a chance of doing what they wanted to do. The experience of listening to them talk about their  aspirations,  and  the  hurdles they faced, but which they were determined to overcome, just made it clear how important is the task of NDotM. It was pretty inspiring.”

Just over 180 jobs with various arts and cultural institutions across London have been filled and we expect the rest to be in place within the next few weeks. Sixteen people started work with Stratford Circus and NewVIc in East London a few weeks back and 10 have been taken on by the London Metropolitan Archive while others are working in theatre, dance, production and design jobs across the capital.

Tomorrow…the World

Well, maybe not quite. But we were delighted to have had 500 national jobs approved and funded by the Government which means the good work of NDotM is moving across the country.

These latest jobs will be with PANDA in Manchester and the North West, Brighton & Hove and the East of England. We hope some of them will boost our Digital Domesday project which will help to digitise the vast untapped archives of this country. We’re talking to, and working with, a range of people, including the writer Barney Hoskyns who runs Rock’s Backpages archive about projects that could be absolutely massive in terms of local history, creative opportunities and jobs.

Coalitions — All the Rage

We’ve  got  our  own  new  coalition  going with Ixion Holdings, an independent,  not-for-profit  organisation, owned by Anglia Ruskin University that  provides  training  and  other  support  services to organisations like A4e, Barnados, Shaw Trust and others that help people into or back into work. We’re jolly pleased to be working with them and think there are loads of exciting things we can collaborate on.

Talking of coalitions, we hosted a terrific Open Salon on election night (which seems like years ago) at London’s Southbank Centre. A late bar, giant TV screens and sofas full of interesting people, our event was free and open to anyone  –  an oasis of democracy in the midst of all those ticket and invitation  only  events  on May 6th. Laurie Taylor, Jude Kelly, David Buckland, Catherine Meyer, Philip Blond, David Seymour and people from the audience took their turns on the sofa with Martin Bright and frankly, we think our event was so much more fun than being stuck on a boat with Joan Collins and Andrew Neil. Our thanks as ever to Jude Kelly, Martin Colthorpe, Phil  Nichol  and the technical crew at Southbank who made it not just possible, but also easy to do.

Crossing the Bridge

We’ve  bade  farewell  to  the Hut and moved across Waterloo Bridge to Somerset House which is quite possibly one of the nicest places to work in London. An amazing building absolutely steeped in history which is home to  an  eclectic  set  of creative entrepreneurs and social enterprise organisations.  Our  co-tenants range from Editorial Intelligence,
Music  for  Youth, LCACE, Sorrell Foundation and Clore Leadership Programme to the scarily beautiful (and extremely tall) people from the British Fashion Council. We’re already working on collaborative projects and, although we miss Southbank, we are immensely fortunate to still work alongside talented and creative people who are totally committed to supporting, encouraging and producing art and culture that one might argue is even more valuable to the UK as an extremely mediocre national football team. Sorry boys.

Enjoy  a  summer  of  music,  art, performance, literature, festivals, architecture, museums and galleries — at least until the proper football season gets going again!

As always, thanks for your support. And in case you missed it, you can read Martin’s article in the Observer on New Deal of the Mind here.

Best wishes,
Jo