hello everyone and a warm welcome to all
of you on this third and final day of
the fifth edition of the CS lab I am
Laura Jude and I am the international
projects officer of Circostrada
Network today it's finally my turn to
open one of the keynote sessions after
my colleagues Stephane and Laura and I am
really excited and happy to do so and
learn with you through what is our very
first digital experience I don't know I
don't know how many of you attended the
first two session that I did and it was
really inspiring so I am very much
looking forward to today's conference
which will address the issue of advocacy
for change after four editions of stood
between France Italy and Latvia for the
most recent one we were supposed to go
to Manchester in April to enjoy the
really famous warm and beautiful weather
of England but due to the COVID 19
pandemic we were forced to readjust our
final plan or our initial initial plan
sorry
so together with XTRAX who is a
member of subsidy network and also the
co-organiser of this CS lab we reframe it we
decided to reframe it and to adapt it to
the current situation
hence the following thread of
leadership in times of crisis I also
want to take this opportunity and
express my deep gratitude to Micheal
Hoar for being so understanding
flexible receptive with regard to all
the changes we have asked him to make
when we took that decision in the
process of adapting the science lab we
decided we would try to achieve the same
objectives which are first to encourage
self critical assessment to propose a
forward-thinking approach to become
change makers to reconnect with our own
creativity to question what is stopping
us from being a fully representative
sector and how we can ensure that
everybody is included and glad but not
least to advocate effect
for our work and build support. before I
give the microphone to Anais from XTRAX I just want to make to take a few
more seconds to either refresh your
memory or get you up to speed and what
Circostrada network is. So Circostrada
in the European Network for circus and
straight arts it was created in 2003 and
it is supported by the creative Europe
program of the European Commission and
the French Minister of Culture it is
coordinated by Artcena, the French National Centre for Circus, Street Arts and Theatre
based in Paris and the network is made
out of more than 120 members across 35
countries in Europe and Beyond the main
goals of the network are to build
sustainable future features for circus
and street arts to capacity professionals
to create connection internationally and
to spur innovative ideas and projects
within these two communities if you are
interested in knowing more about who we
are or what we do can obviously check
our websites you can also follow us on
social media we have Facebook Twitter
and a brand new Instagram you can also
register to our newsletter or simply
write us an email or even post so I
wish you a really fantastic session and
I give another floor to Anais from
XTRAX thank you thank you Laura
thank you and hello everyone and thank
you so much for joining us in this final
keynote session on the topic of advocacy I
hope that you manage to attend our
other two keynote sessions which address
the topics of leadership in terms of
crisis and developing inclusive
leadership practices the recording for
and the discussion on leadership is now
available online so you can check at the
Circostrada and XTRAX social medias
will also pop a link in the chat and
they said the recording for yesterday's
keynote will be made available today so
my name is Anais
and I am the creative development and
partnerships manager at XTRAX and we
are a manchester-based development
organization for outdoor arts and our
main three areas of work includes we are
the managers of without walls so
Without Walls is the largest outdoor art
consortium in the UK and we work
alongside 36 partners and festivals our
second focus is on international
relations and we do this through a
platform 4:UK and which is a strategic
promo program and designed to support
the international promotion and export
of UK outdoor artists finally and we
offer services in event programming and
we also deliver a range of training
opportunities for artists and festivals
we are also the managers and producers
of as the world tipped by wired aerial theatre
so once again I would like to take this
opportunity to thank the Arts Council of
England for their ongoing support so I'm
very pleased to say that we have 75
people I'm joining us today and before
introducing to you today's speakers I
would like to remind you of a few
practicalities so firstly the session
will last 45 minutes please feel free to
use the chat and to say hello who you
are and where you're from and for access
purposes and also acknowledging that
English is not the first language for
many of our listeners today and we have
enabled captionings for this keynote so
to activate your captions you can click
on the button captions that should be at
the bottom of your screen and you if you
would like to ask questions to the
panelists and we encourage you to do so
please use the Q&A function please feel
free to comment post or tweet and using
the hashtag CSlab 5 and to make sure
that you follow our XTRAX and Circostrada
on our social media channels
as well be sharing it links to you the
recordings as well 
as publications and other resources so I
will now like to introduce you to
today's topic which is on advocacy
change and how to advocate effectively
for greater recognition and support so
to address this session and this topic
we are joined by Michael Hoar an
independent consultant with 25 years
experience in the arts and cultural and
sectors and Maggie Clarke the Director of
XTRAXwill be chairing this session
so a warm welcome to you both thank you
so much for taking part and I will now
hand over to Maggie to kick start the
conversation and thank you thank you
Anais and hello everybody my name is
Maggie Clarke and I am the director of
XTRAX and I am delighted to introduce
you to this session with Michael Hoar
Michael is an independent consultant
with 25 years experience working in the
arts and cultural sectors and his
experience combines academic knowledge
with an understanding of real-world
practice in the arts cultural and
creative industries
he has substantial experience of
lecturing at several British
universities as well as the University
of Cairo and has delivered many learning
and cultural strategy programs working
with local regional and national
government bodies as well as Arts
Council England he works with a
portfolio of clients including arts and
cultural organizations universities
local government charities and
independent professionals delivering
bespoke responses to organizational and
strategic development challenges
including business planning strategy
development fundraising board
development and advocacy and influencing
which is the topic of our discussion
today Michael very welcome and you have
the floor thank you Maggie
Thank You Anais and thank you Laura
yes hello to everyone I'm going to now
switch to sharing my screens so if you
just bear with me a moment hopefully you
can now see my slides
well yes I'm talking about the topic of
advocacy I think that right now a lot of
organizations probably many who are
listening here today are thinking about
how they make the case for their art
form in their organization we might feel
that we struggle to have street arts and
circus arts taken seriously and
recognize an institutional level or a
governmental level and we might feel
that we're going to fall further behind
as a consequence of the fallout from the
virus so how do we leave how do we get
ourselves in the driver's seat and get
more leverage so we maintain and
hopefully advance the position of our
sector in our organizations but how to
do it because the context is hard and
what do we want to communicate and
express right now now I recognize that
there are lots of different
organizations here today listening in
with different needs different sizes
different contexts so some of what I say
perhaps will be familiar to some of you
and some will be some will be new but I
hope I'll provide an interesting
perspective for people whose activities
are advanced in advocacy
I wouldn't provide hard and fast answers
but I will offer a way of thinking and a
perspective on how you can do this and I
would just say at the beginning is that
advocacy is to me is a little like
looking after it and tending a garden it
takes nurture and care and it can over
grow and sometimes it will feel that you
know you'll feel that it's not
delivering the results you want at the
speed you want rather it's delivering on
its own timetable but if you apply some
of the lessons I'm going to talk about
today you will get results I guarantee
you will get some results so first of
all on my first slide here you can see
I'm trying to draw a distinction between
advocacy activism advising and lobbying
an advocacy takes place on the outside
and is often seen as more evidence and
science-based activism can be more
confrontational again it's from the
outside but it can volved more direct
acting and lobbying which is sometimes
confused with advocacy but
they're certainly close bedfellows but
often takes place more on the inside as
does advising over here but advocacy
literally you know its origins as a word
go back to the old French into Latin
being called to aid to the aid of one
another or being called to the aid of
another literally to advocate to add is
to and vocare is to call or it might be
as a verb to plead in favor of but it's
deliberate strategic effort to create
and bring about social and policy change
through support for a particular course
of action I'll repeat that the
deliberate strategic effort to bring
about social and policy change through a
particular course of action but I tend
to find in arts organizations this is
just something we're often expected to
just get on with without much perhaps
without much training and without much
thought it's often rolled into the day
job but I've seen in my work really good
advocacy carefully planned yield big
results on a local national and
international and international level
when it's backed up by evidence but we
are probably all doing it at different
times in it and in different ways well
I'm going to put forward a simple
systems for you to kind of draw upon and
hopefully get into action with quite
quickly so how to think about advocacy
well it's many activities its organizing
campaigning trying to influence people's
thoughts and perspectives gathering and
commissioning research calling on
powerful agents and calling and
co-hosting meetings with other agencies
and organizations developing joint plans
and strategies and capacity building a
family of advocates as well as engaging
the media and and new forms of media
like social media it is a continuous
process when it works well the advocacy
stream is always running I would always
say that the game is always on a
National through to local resort so a
best achieved on are achieved on an
ongoing basis all of the time many of
are doing it with greater or lesser
degrees of focus and strategic planning
some people someone said to me recently
that they couldn't do advocacy because
they felt it was an obscure art a dark
art of some sort going on behind the
scenes but I think we can bring advocacy
into the light and and you know I think
with a few kind of core lessons we can
all do it and adopt it your leadership
style and your personality perhaps
relating back to some of the things
Hilary talked to us about earlier in the
in the lab a really really important
some people's personality styles and
leadership styles naturally lend
themselves to advocacy and others have
to apply more thoughts and apply
different tactics and learn these skills
there are some people talk about
reactive and proactive advocacy
proactive advocacy would be something
that's deliberately planned maybe maybe
 aligned or shaped within a
strategy and perhaps rolled out over a
longer period of time maybe one two or
three years reactive advocacy which
often does take place in in crises and
I've seen examples of it in the current
crisis takes place when people kind of
react very rapidly to a particular set
of events and these things can be
successful sometimes they can be
unsuccessful and have more unpredictable
results but I'll talk more about that
later on and there are you know in terms
of the context I think it's really
really important to make sure there are
lots of nationalities represented in the
participants today and it's really
important to make sure you understand
your national context your government
plans to unlock you know and you know
unlock after the lockdown what are the
national arts and cultural sector
priorities in your in your country or in
your place are they things that you want
to align with or are they things
that you want to challenge but I think
there's a powerful narrative that the
outdoor art circus art Street arts
sector can mobilize because unique the
outdoor art sector has a unique power to
mobilize
and to sell it to help people celebrate
and and also it will take place in you
know often in outdoor spaces usually in
outdoor spaces so the potential for kind
of social distancing and reconfiguring
how events take place is great
but also there may be a very significant
role in in helping people come to terms
with this crisis and also reimagine what
the future could be like in local places
and there's a unique power for outdoor
arts in doing this so I think there's a
narrative there that we can draw upon
your organization's can draw upon
clearly there's also playing a
significant role in economic recovery
and social and community reconstruction
there will be a role to help places come
to terms with what's happened but also
to help restart and kick-start the
economy in local places as outdoor ask
pulls people into into places and and
and helps boost prosperity there's a lot
of sensitive timing that will need to be
thought through there's lots of
uncertainty so your advocacy plans will
need updating regularly and you need a
very flexible strategy at this time and
also you'll need a mix of platforms
because at the moment a lot of advocacy
will take place online but you know what
I've learned is that we can all do it
you know I've been involved in lots of
advocacy actions over the years and you
know it's something that with a likes a
with a few simple lessons it's something
we can all adapt and begin to do we
don't need to be frightened of it or
embarrassed about it it is a normal part
of democracy it's a democratic function
or a function of democracy it's a it's a
normal and legitimate part of that work
and you know politicians and officials
and in public organizations and in
businesses they expect it and they're
just people trying to do a job like we
are we need to present them the case and
the evidence and the story we also need
to be flexible being influential and in
advocacy often means to me being open to
being influenced as much as it means
being influential good advocates are
flexible and dynamic and can shift and
move across agendas rapidly and they
aren't dogmatic
like I say most people who most people
live work with a real in other
organizations are really happy to meet
with me or meet with you especially if
you are expressing how what you are
doing will help them deliver their plans
as I say that again especially if you
are expressing how what you are doing
with your organization will help you to
help them deliver their plans the art of
advocacy is positioning yourself as a
resource to others it doesn't matter if
you've done a lot or a little of
advocacy start where you are you know
and begin with the resources and the
contacts and the partnerships and
relationships you have but one thing you
will need to do if you are working with
partners in different sectors say in
economic development health and
well-being planning local government
business or in with partners in place in
place and placemaking
is that you need to become familiar with
the policies and the concerns of those
partners you're not trying to put one
over or get an advantage on somebody
advocacy is for me is based on showing
the partner the person you're the person
you're trying to influence the win/win
the thing that they can do that you can
do with them that's going to provide a
win for both of you so it really helps
to know that person's policy area but
also if they're politicians their
particular interests and political views
how they voted in certain elections
knowing the facts about about their work
is important
you'll also need to craft a story and
know what it is that you're effectively
trying to communicate about your work
and your organization and also crucially
what you need from then on from that and
get that advocacy engagement and then
your planning will need to be very
dynamic I find that advocacy planning
needs to be much more dynamic than many
other areas of planning because once you
enter into an advocacy activity event or
engagement frequently quite
unpredictable opportunities can emerge
to extend that advocacy and grow it and
stretch it and develop it further so you
need to be ready to respond then and
it's about building real long-term
relationships
chips you know it is it is about
connecting with people you need to find
consultations that are taking place in
your local area or within your sector
that might have a bearing on what you do
and also I can't underestimate the
importance of being proactive and
calling meetings with partners and
putting yourself in the driver's seat
and in a leadership position you know it
depends on who you're encountering but
it's good to put together set-piece what
I call set-piece one-off events where
you can kind of leverage a relationship
with a powerful agent or a partner and
stretch that leverage and what you can
get from that event as far as you can
being part of a coalition or a
collective of people influencing against
a single goal is good and there are many
at the moment national and international
for instance campaigns and hashtags I've
noticed but particularly if you're a
small organization or an individual you
might want to think about if you're
interested besser by joining with or
triggering the formation of a
partnership the other thing I'd say it's
like make it core you know when you're
doing your business planning alongside
your marketing plan and your financial
plan and your risk assessments and your
equalities plan either produce a
separate advocacy plan or had specific
advocacy actions in your main action
plan make it second nature I'm surprised
how often organizations don't do this
and then the other thing that's
important is sensitive language and
communication it's really really
important to make sure that you know you
are thinking really carefully especially
as you make initial approaches to
organizations and in demand individuals
that use sensitive language you're
thinking about you're sharing the idea
of how we can look at something how we
can come together to make a case about
something how we can contribute to the
local community and the place
I'd like to come together with you in a
meeting to think about how we explore
that together and look at what we can do
to build that role perhaps about door
arts or the arts in a local strategy or
a plan so in a regional strategy or plan
or even a national war sensitive
language in communication I spend a huge
amount of my time drafting and
redrafting careful contact and
communication and emails with with
potential people I'd want to influence
or work with an organization to
influence I think there are there's a
huge amount written about advocacy
online and I took this opportunity to to
read some of that and there's a lot
written about advocacy it's quite a lot
written about arts advocacy some of its
good some of its some of its less
helpful but what I've tried to do here
for your situation is draw together what
I would call six steps to advocacy
really and if you try and follow these
steps I think you'll you'll you'll get
ahead so the first step is to prepare a
plan of some sort now this can either be
a full strategy if you're a larger
organization or in a partnership working
on a bigger campaign so be typical for a
campaign with a national impact and that
would would have an overarching goal it
should have strategic objectives you can
find all sorts of strategic advocacy
planning canvasses and all sorts of
things to help you with that there are
examples of this online you might have
strategic objectives for kind of 1 to 3
years or you might just do something
much more simple if you're thinking
about you've got more limited resources
you're a smaller organization you might
be working on your own in a place but
you might just have a simple plan which
just has so you know a simple action
plan with some simple objectives to it
but don't be kind of don't be fazed by
that the next thing you need to do
really is is described as assemble your
team you know who are the advocates I'm
the first thing it might be just you as
an individual I think most advocacy
actions are you know perhaps best taken
forward in partnerships and groupings
but if you're an individual and you you
kind of got to do certain things for
your organization perhaps more than for
a sector then you might you might just
be working on your own however I think
it's more likely that you want to work
with an or what I would call an
organizational team and this could be
quite broad you know it might be you
might be your staff it might be board
members it might be volunteers or
friends of the organization or it could
be other powerful agents like patrons
it's important to assign roles to
everybody
the next thing the next thing you could
do for it to assemble your team really
is either join or form apart a wider
partnership which I've talked about
already I think a lot of arts
organizations really benefit from doing
this and I've seen frequently partners
beyond the arts take take the arts more
seriously when a collection of six seven
eight nine ten organizations come
together in a local place for instance
and then are able to express that
collectively we have this economic and
social impact whereas I think it's more
difficult for some of the smaller
organizations to get the ear of perhaps
a politician or an economic development
agency or a business and then once
you've is once you've created your plan
and map your in and assembled your team
the next thing to do really is to map
your influence and I'm surprised how
often people fail to do this
systematically and you want to be
thinking in terms of who do you know or
have contact with in or in local
government or national government that
be politicians and elected officials or
it might be it might be civil servants
it might be who have you got contact
with in the arts sector in your place or
nationally or internationally it might
be the broader public sector again you
know in economic development health and
well-being planning regeneration local
government it might be in local
businesses who could could support your
case and cause and then it also might be
in the voluntary and community sector
but always remember when you're mapping
your influence think about the six
degrees of separation that people often
talk about who do you know that knows
that person that would help introduce
you or help you reach that person or
will have a conversation with that
person and this is where your powerful
board members or patrons or perhaps
Friends of the organization could come
in to help because very frequently I
find when you're working in partnerships
somebody always know somebody who can
get to that senior person and then once
you've done that mapping of your
influence it's useful just to think
about what are the gaps and as I said
how you can can plug some of those gaps
using contacts of your contacts
the next thing you need to do really
then and everybody talks about this in
all the tool in all the toolkits and
guides online is really about creating
the case and I think there's several
elements to this and I think the first
one is a lot of advocacy is about facts
and figures and data and evidence we've
become better and better at this in the
cultural sector over the last sort of 10
to 15 years and this might be research
that you've commissioned but it might be
research that you're gathering from
other places or it might be research
your co commissioning with other
organizations but I think it's critical
to start a resource bank or an
information bank with your organization
it might just be of a file a folder or a
file on your share Drive where you
gather relevant facts and figures
evidence data and information and also
reports and and policy documents in one
place your case also needs to have
qualitative elements this is the story
or narrative or the symbolic value of of
what you do and this this could be
something where you started perhaps to
talk about the human interest what it
what your organization achieves for a
place or for a set of people or a
community group or for the economy then
also you might want to think about
crucially how your work aligns with
economic and social and cultural policy
locally regionally or nationally and you
want to express that and articulate how
what you do meets the edge meets the
broader agendas of the partners you want
to influence in a place and then
crucially perhaps want to think about
your ambition for your organization I
think it's really important when you're
going into thinking about advocacy that
you're clarifying where you want to take
your organization to and how you express
that in a in the case that you make
because you might want to articulate and
express your ambition in the context of
how it did how you want to deliver in
the future for other organizations and
you'll need that that case to have
different versions you need a long
version you might want a case study
version you might want a really short
version so that if you meet somebody
unexpectedly who's important you can
kind of tell them about your
organization and its work just in a few
sentences
but you might have you might be creating
as I say case studies it might be an
infographic which is a sort of a diagram
with with facts and figures sort of
nicely presented on one page it might be
it's a video it might be photography
photography it might even include fluid
artistic work and be creative and I have
narrative prose in it it could be a
creative act and then once you've
created your case probably working with
your partners perhaps on your own or
with your organization you then want to
get into action and there's probably
three areas really that it's helpful to
think about when you're thinking about
advocacy and one of them which is
probably the area that I've done the
most work in is kind of direct contact
with politicians public bodies and
public servants and officials funding
bodies businesses faith leaders the
education sector the health sector
initiating direct contact and I think
you can be doing this through you know
online through through through online
letters and emails but also organizing
and co-hosting and hosting set-piece
meetings or one-to-one meetings might
even be commissioning commissioning
research together commissioning activity
together and you can really create be
creative here and take this as far as
you want but you can if you have perhaps
a visit from someone senior from from
another organization others might be
interested in meeting it's a really
really good way of attracting attention
of local politicians public officials at
senior levels business people and you
can perhaps co-host a roundtable
discussion about the role arts and
culture can play in the in the kind of
post COVID19 world and talk about how
you might want to work work on that
together it's a very kind of favorite
technique of mine and it can go very far
and you can kind of stretch the lever as
much as you can from from that visit
from that particular person but there's
lots of ways of doing this and as I say
you can be as creative as as as you're
able to and you also want to engage with
their consultations of those kinds of
those kinds of people so if they got
public consultations and town hall
events that you can go
- and make the case perhaps perhaps peek
at some of those events or just at least
turn up and make contact with senior
people make yourself visible and also
obviously social media can be important
there in terms of engaging with those
officials and we've seen that happening
a lot during during the the lockdown and
of course this work right now can be
face to face as well as it can be online
as well as face to face there's nothing
to stop you organizing zoom meetings
with with local partners or local
partners in the place to talk about how
we can we can kind of build support for
and build the impact of outdoor arts in
the kind of post coated world second
area of activity which i think you would
probably want to think about is how you
mobilize what I call a family of
supporters so this would be the public
board members through it might be
friends of the organization through
friends names champions
advocates volunteers and patrons and
perhaps it'd be very typical for you to
bring groups of people together and ask
people what they want so that they can
better advocate for your organization
and the area of work that you represent
and there's lots of ways of doing that
you can do group meetings you can do it
online
you know you can form newsletters and
and so on but it's very very helpful to
mobilize a family of advocates
especially if you're a smaller
organization and then the third area of
activity which i think is really really
important is just connecting to a wider
audience which you can do through social
media and through and through
traditional media okay and then clearly
you just need to do learn and adjust
change tactics as you need to
horizon scan for new consultations and
review your activities monthly at the
moment because it's going to be a very
dynamic scenario as you start to
advocate new opportunities will be
presented to you and you'll probably
need to refresh the message too so
finally I just say keep it simple and
especially if you're new to it take
small steps work online at the moment
and think about face-to-face activities
and contacts later you know you're in
this for the long haul all this it's a
marathon not a sprint you're trying to
build a long-term relationships and be
be prepared
you know the pace of the progress may
seem uncomfortable at times sometimes it
does advocacy doesn't deliver results
quickly and you'll find that you
sometimes feel like why am i doing these
things I'm not getting any traction with
anybody and then suddenly you'll find
that other people are mentioning you in
their work they're adding you to their
strategies they're inviting you to their
meetings and they're shouting about what
you work at senior levels in about your
work in senior levels of the
organization and the final thing I would
just say is you know now's the time to
think about who your influential
contacts are and I'm very surprised
people are very careful about when they
mobilize their their patrons and their
influential contacts but think about it
because I suspect probably for many of
you the time is now
okay an a no I'm gonna stop sharing my
screen and gonna take some questions
well thank you Michael there was an
awful lot to think about there but I
think you laid out very clearly some
steps that we can all take and things
that we can all think about in building
our own advocacy plans and I did like
the sense that you're giving us of this
is something we can all do it's not
mysterious we can all do it and that is
very empowering I think especially as
many of us are part of small
organizations and as we know many of us
are sitting alone with our laptops and
are away from many of our colleagues and
there's a couple of questions that I
think are coming through but one thing
that I just want to ask you and as you
know as I'm sure you know Michael many
organizations in the arts are quite
small and they have very little money
and not a lot of resources what do you
think should be our priorities if we are
a small organization and what can we do
if we have little or no money yeah it's
a really good question and one people
ask a lot but I think probably the way
to start I would say for a smaller
organization is to look around you to
your peers and other organizations in
the place that might be other arts and
cultural organizations they may not be
outdoor arts organizations there may be
other types of arts organizations but to
see whether you can form coalition's
with other organizations and maybe play
a small role
in a larger effort having said that you
know there's a role for you know you
know social media and your digital your
phone is in your hand you know and if
you want to join campaigns and a new
social media to make the case to local
partners it doesn't take a lot of time
and it can be a kind of daily or a
weekly discipline - maybe - maybe tweet
certain politicians or tweet people or
certain organizations so that can be
free and not take a huge amount of time
but I'd say for smaller organizations
definitely important to consider what
role you could play in a bigger
coalition I think that's great Michael
and I think it's really interesting that
you have talked a lot about how we need
to work in partnership with with others
maybe that might be local partnerships
of different arts organizations or
partnerships that span you know many
cities or many countries such as we have
with Circostrada and do you have any
thoughts about whether advocacy is
something that you can do by yourself if
you are in that situation where you
where you are alone as an organization
or as a worker can you do it on your own
and how would you approach that yeah I
think you can but I think it's about
calibrating the results that you'd want
to achieve I suspect that most of the
time unless you can mobilize some
powerful patrons or powerful agents on
your behalf and you may be able to do
that then most of the time you probably
what you can achieve alone will be lower
than what you less than what you can
achieve in a in a bigger group thing but
I think it's for me you know I see it in
the artists that it's everybody's
responsibility to do some of this
because the importance of the arts drops
off politicians agendas as
administration's change and and the Arts
Council in England will always say you
know we have to represent this were like
every the arts and culture and arts and
culture and it's imports to the economy
and national health and vibrancy we have
to represent it very frequently and I
think you've it's just part and parcel
of our work and we have to build it in
even if you're an individual what small
effort can you make I think it is
possible and then if you are an
individual you know you can
think about what tactics you at you
employ and you can think about the range
of activities that you can do we can all
do something is my view thanks now there
are a couple of questions coming in
through the from the people attending
here and one of them is around sector
advocacy and I think you've talked a lot
about how we can work in partnership
with others but how do you think we
heard a whole sector when there may be
many people that are part of that sector
who have a range of different opinions
about exactly how that should be done
yeah I mean that is the million-dollar
question and I found myself in many on
many occasions in a roomful of a sector
in a local place or in a region trying
to do exactly exactly this and it's not
easy but you know it needs skillful
facilitation and conversation it needs
careful planning you've got to work
through each of the partners challenges
and issues but broadly I've I've rarely
seen a failure when when a group of
partners have set out or a sector has
set out to create an advocacy plan or
create greater impact for itself but
you've just got to be patient and you've
got to work through people's problems
and challenges and you've got to sit and
sit inside other people's shoes you've
got to stand in other people's shoes and
look at what their challenges and issues
are and just try and find that that
win-win at the middle of the Venn
diagram of of a set of priorities and a
message that will work for everyone and
my experience is that it can be done but
patience is required but if you do do
that and invest the time you will get a
bigger result and you'll get a more
substantial embedded result I would tend
to find that's that would be my answer
there thanks Michael I think we've got
time for a couple more questions that
are coming through and someone has asked
whether you could give us a an example
of a concrete outcome that somebody
could reach for when they're setting out
to advocate for their organization yeah
so I mean I suspect that you know a lot
of a lot of the work I've done and I
swear I've seen really concrete results
and I've been really happy is is when
I've seen the kind of case that I
helps another organization or
partnership shape I've seen it appear in
another organizations policy or strategy
document so so if you're trying to make
a case about arts or or outdoor arts and
you're trying to articulate perhaps the
how important that is for absolutely
importance of it's a local economy or to
community engagement and Community
Development it fit if your work and the
value of it and your partner's names
appear in somebody else's strategy or
policy often it might be a regional
cultural strategy but it might be a city
strategy or strata regional strategy if
it appears as you kind of somehow as you
would like it to appear in that's in
that strategy or policy for me that's
always one of the biggest wins because
it then gives you the opportunity to go
back into into a conversation with that
organization in a place to talk about
how you make that that feature of their
policy a reality you know and then
you're in a longer-term relationship
because you might be built into a
three-year strategy someone and you can
Co commission research you can bring
resources to the table you can match
resources with the partner that to me is
where you get substantial change happen
over a period of time and also you embed
you know the the value of the Arts in
kind of local planning and placemaking
and the same principles apply nationally
and internationally - thanks Michael and
I'm going to try and squeeze in a couple more
questions and from our attenders today
and listview has asked whether it's
helpful to define our sector and as you
know we're talking here about the street
arts and circus sector across the whole
of Europe and internationally or do you
think it's better for us to sort of look
at being part of a larger conversation
advocating for the Arts more generally
rather than trying to distinguish our
separate special interest sectors yes I
do I mean I for my part it's it's
neither one nor the other you know it's
both things and I think it depends on
the objectives in your advocacy strategy
because if you're making the case to a
national Arts Council or
and perhaps the ministry for culture
perhaps you do want to raise the volume
on the importance of outdoor arts
because they'll already be aware of the
imports of the arts because they're the
the public body or the or the government
and department for that so it might be
that you're focusing on outdoor arts and
the role that it could play in post
coded nineteen reconstruction could be
very very interesting argument to make
so what I would I would think about but
then more broadly
you know perhaps if you were thinking
about a local place or a region or a
city region it might be that actually it
makes makes more sense to make the case
with a series of other arts partners
about the importance of arts and culture
in in city or place making because you
might be making the case to economic
development agencies and actually what
they're going to be interested in
hearing perhaps might be what's your net
worth as a sector I've seen that happen
in a in a city a number of arts
organizations came together and were
able to say so the economic development
agency into local government together we
we generate 25 million pounds over over
four years but separately it might be a
lot less and it's less likely that
you're going to get to have a seat at
the table and a conversation at the
table at that senior level and it's
about working together isn't isn't it
and I've got one last thing and if you
could answer very briefly how would you
say would you have any advice about how
we can approach targets and keep people
in national Arts Council's who so often
change and often seem less open to
changing their views and policies it can
be really hard as I'm sure you know to
approach these figures 10 seconds yeah
well sensitive communication looked for
that the win/win what's the thing that
they want that you can help them deliver
through through contact that would be my
simple answer
Michael thank you so much thank you to
all the attendants have listened to us
which I'm afraid we've run out of time
and I'm gonna invite Laura and Anais to
return to conclude the session with us
Thank you Maggie and thank you a lot
Michael for this really empowering
session and for your approach on
advocacy I will definitely keep all the
different tools who gave us and as you
as you just told
we definitely have as a network a lot of
advocacy for change to do so yeah thank
you a lot and thank you Maggie for the
great moderation I just wanted to thank
everyone and all of our listeners for
attending this webinar and you can use
the same link and to join us for our
wrap up session this afternoon which is
at 4:00 p.m. Central European Time and
I'll also remind you and that a few
questions will pop up as you exit this
webinar so we kindly asked if you take a
couple of minutes just to give some
feedback and obviously that's very
important for us in terms of making the
case to you and run more sessions like
these and so thank you again to everyone
and your wonderful speakers and we hope
that you will join us for a wrap-up
session thank you
