Opportunities for creative health in the not-for-profit health sector
Personal Reflections
This week I attended an event hosted by Stronger Kent Communities about the future of the not-for-profit sector in Kent and Medway. As a freelancer its always important to consider how valuable attending these sorts of events will be, but I’m keen to make better connections with charities, CICs and funders in the area so I hoped that the networking potential alone would be worthwhile.
I’ve worked in and out, and at the intersection of the creative and health sectors in Kent for about 15 years and it was great to see a few familiar faces including colleague and friend Mary Rouse, Community Development Manager for Ebbsfleet Garden City and good representation from the arts including Dawn Badland from Applause Rural Touring, Sian Stevenson and Cheryl Pierce from Moving Memory (for whom I am a trustee) and Zoë Carassik from Pie Factory Music.
The first panel discussion was about partnerships and collaboration and in all honestly I didn’t really hear anything new that I haven’t heard many times before, over many years. It would have been good to have heard something more radical in how we can actually deal with the barriers to organisations developing partnerships. Bali Rodgers from Safer Communities Alliance gave the most useful reflections and insight about how very small organisations could be much better supported if they were brought in at the start to go on the ‘journey together’. Too often very small grassroots organisations are used to access communities but not given the opportunities or resources to shape and deliver the work.
Stevie Rice, CEO of West Kent Mind and Coaching Consultant Nicola Pye ran a useful session about taking care of ourselves, particularly as charity sector leaders. Stevie’s honesty as a leader who has a constant ‘on’ mode was refreshing and a helpful reminder to us all about practising healthy behaviours which implement a culture of self care within organisations. This was another prompt for me that creative health approaches could really support staff wellbeing and to make contact with organisations I might be able to develop initiatives with.
The second panel discussion with Karl Wilding, University of Kent Centre for Philanthropy, Rich Warrington, NAVCA and Steve Inett, Chair of Kent & Medway VCSE Steering Group offered some good thoughts on the current political environment, not waiting for permission and in terms of evaluating impact, how we all, especially funders and commissioners, need to stop thinking about numbers and start thinking about people (based on the Do With programme from The Kings Fund). Arts and culture got a few mentions here and the need to resource the telling of stories about the work. This felt like a direct calling for me to share my audio practice with more organisations as a way of helping them do this, and how the creative sector can help tell stories in a myriad of ways.
The most interesting speaker was Ian McLintock from Charity Excellence Framework who gave a really engaging talk about AI being both a friend and foe; what it can help us with and what we need to be very vigilant about. For example, as a tool to help very small organisations or less experienced people write and then access funding – great! But the rise of fake news and misinformation and the growing complexity of hacking via AI is a reminder for us all to take data security very seriously (my emails were hacked this week!) No one knows where AI will get to but its here to stay and its developing at lightening speed. The danger of it lies not in itself, but in the way we choose to use it.
The day ended with funder perspectives from Jane Haddock of the National Lottery Community Fund and newly in post Catherine Glover of Kent Community Foundation, both of which gave me some food for thought about whether to make Creative Health Stories into a CIC and to ask myself the ‘so what?’ question. Catherine also talked about how stories give meaning and bring projects and evaluations to life, which again was a prompt for me to make contact with funders about their expectations for reporting and whether they could start asking for alternative methods of reporting and sharing stories.
Zoë made a great statement and plea at the end to stop referring to the ‘voluntary sector’ as most of us are employed and earn a living running these businesses and the term devalues what we do.
I made some new contacts with a few organisations to follow up with and I came away with a slightly more renewed sense of purpose and a list of actions to start telling people what I do and how we could work together.
