[vimeo http://vimeo.com/14829433]
Arts Funding in a Web 2.0 World
I tend to agree with JG Ballard when he said:
The trouble is the alternatives to pursuing public funding are so damned hard. They traditionally rely on someone liking your art enough (or believing it to be a decent investment proposition), to want to actually buy it at a price that does not lose the artist money and that values their time and skill reasonably.
But what if we set up a site where artists could pitch their projects at the ‘drawing board’ stage, including the budget necessary to create the work, and then donations were crowd sourced from the web?
It could look a bit like this from the US.
- Does such a platform exist here in the UK?
- Could it?
- Should it?
Making Social Marketing Work – 29th July Leeds
This practical workshop will introduce you to the theory and practice of social marketing – how to use marketing techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals designed to lead to social good.
Whether you are trying to promote healthy lifestyles, encourage people back into work or to start a business, get back into education, or engage in a campaign, an understanding of social marketing can help you to:
- find new people who want to work on your agenda
- support them on their journey to make real change happen
- get the right people at the right events at the right time
What Will You Learn?
You will learn how to:
- Develop marketing collateral (leaflets, posters and websites) that might just work
- Use the media effectively – PR and role models that work
- Build ‘Word of Mouth’ strategies and referral networks
- Work with ‘gatekeepers’ to ‘gain entry‘
- Manage introductions in the community
The day will involve some theory and explore a number of examples of good and not so good social marketing campaigns. Participants will have the opportunity to apply what they learn to a real campaign of their own.
Agenda
What is social marketing and how can I use it?
What behaviours are we trying to promote?
Using Segmentation to Increase Impact
Eating an Elephant – bite sized chunks….
Social Marketing Tools – with a focus on emerging social media (twitter, facebook, wikis etc)
The Role of Traditional Marketing and PR
Developing a Social Marketing Campaign (making a start)
Marketing through Relationships and Networks
Find out more and book your space – http://socialmarketingworks.eventbrite.com
Dad, I Want to be an Entrepreneur! Will You Help?
These are not words I am expecting to hear anytime soon – but who knows?
If David Cameron gets his way and he finds an army of entrepreneurs to go into local schools to promote the ‘joy’ of entrepreneurship and the job market continues to go west – it could well happen.
How would I respond?
Well, if they say they want to be an entrepreneur and ask for my help, then I will refuse it, and do all I can to persuade them away from the idea.
If they say they have to be an entrepreneur – because it is the only way they can do the work that they feel they have to do then I will roll up my sleeves and help with enthusiasm.
Why the distinction?
Because however you wrap it up, in spite of what people like Cameron say, entrepreneurship is hard. Especially if you do not have a large bank account to bale you out when things go wrong. I don’t think I have met a single entrepreneur in my work who would describe the experience as joyful. Dramatic, yes. Full of highs and lows, yes. Scary, yes. But joyful…not so much.
So why promote the lie? Why continue the enterprise fairytale?
It doesn’t even help to build an enterprise culture as with increased start-ups come increased failures and more bad experiences of entrepreneurship.
It couldn’t be to do with an obsession with outputs over social impact could it?
I will leave the last word to Noel Coward:
Some years ago when I was returning from the Far East on a very large ship, I was pursued around the decks every day by a very large lady. She showed me some photographs of her daughter – a repellant-looking girl and seemed convinced that she was destined for a great stage career. Finally, in sheer self-preservation, I locked myself in my cabin and wrote this song – “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs. Worthington”.)
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
The profession is overcrowded
The struggle’s pretty tough
And admitting the fact she’s burning to act
That isn’t quite enough
She’s a nice girl and though her teeth are fairly good
She’s not the type I ever would be eager to engage
I repeat, Mrs. Worthington, sweet Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
So Em amd Meg – unless it is something that you have to do, ignore Messrs Cameron, Brown (remember him – architect of much enterprise policy) and their army of enterprise evangelists and give entrepreneurship a miss – at least until you have some real knowhow under your belt.
On the other hand if this is the only way that yo can do good work, and you are prepared for the journey that lies ahead, then, and only then, let’s go for it…
Working on the Press Gang..?
The work of the enterprise coach is, for me, about providing a relationship that people can use to explore how they might transform their lives and whether or not this is a journey they want to undertake. It is a relationship characterised by trust, confidentiality, skill and often the long-term. It is not directive; the coach has no ulterior goal that they are steering the person towards. The only goal of the coach is to help their client to become the kind of person that they really want to be.
The relationship provides a chance for them to really transform their life. Of course this doesn’t always happen – but there is a chance. The transformation may come about through starting a business. Or through getting better housing, becoming a better parent, tackling an addiction or pursuing an ambition. The job of the enterprise coach is to enable people to take more control of their futures. To find their power in shaping their own lives. It is a truly valuable, challenging and privileged role.
It seems to me that much of the Enterprise Coaching world sees things a little differently. For them the enterprise coach is part of a smiling press-gang, working ‘in the community’, promoting the benefits of enterprise (narrowly defined around self employment, employment, business start-up or expansion) and encouraging people to grow their ‘dream business’. Clients are usually recruited to workshops after a limited amount of 121 work, given a crash course in business literacy and referred to the mainstream – where they take their chances. It is a directive process where the only positive outcome is a referral into the business support industry. It is about skimming talent and potential rather than a longer term engagement to change attitudes, habits, beliefs and decisions. The whole process is lubricated with the judicious use of free lunches, celebrity speakers, community transport and the potential of getting some cash. This is traditional pre-start up business support. We have been doing it for a long time in various communities. It feels safe, and it does produce start ups. But I have yet to see it transform communities.
Sometimes it even damages the very communities that it is intended to help. I would suggest three mechanisms by which this unfortunate and unintended consequence sometimes occurs.
- Firstly the service helps to skim off the most able and talented in the community: those that already have the confidence and self belief to start a business and helps them up and sometimes out of the community. Those that succeed do so, not because of the support of their community, but often in spite of it. Enterprise is seen primarily as a process for personal progress rather than community building.
- Secondly we engage large numbers of people on the enterprise journey that we are unable to work with in sufficient depth or for sufficient time before they are referred into a mainstream that is not resourced to work with them. Failure, disappointment and frustration are commonplace. Word spreads and the reputation of the service provider drops. Numbers engaging with the project fall away and the community becomes even more suspicious of the enterprise agenda.
- Thirdly is the mechanism of reactance. The more we persuade people to look at enterprise as something that is potentially good for them the more likely they are to resist our persuasion. Flood a community with pro-enterprise messages and perversely you may decrease enthusiasm for it.
But back to the two visions of Enterprise Coaching that I opened with. At the moment we are losing the chance of realising the first because of the funding that is being pumped into the second. I meet and often work with great coaches who are trying to deliver the first vision for enterprise coaching, while being performance managed by a system that is demanding the second. The consequences are inevitable. As I have written before, enterprise coaching is being broken.
The question is – what are we going to do about it? Join our LinkedIn group to find out…
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