Marketing Network

This is an evaluation star we each completed yesterday to see if we felt we had gained from the session,(the central circle is how we felt at the beginning of the mtg and the outer one at the end) well it's a bit more interesting than just answering questions!

Thank you to the marketeers who came along to our first network session. You never know how well these sessions will go but I think everyone felt this was a really useful time out from what often feel like an overwhelming workload. We have also come up with a plan to help us all play an active part in celebrating the amazing artists, and arts activity that goes on in Wiltshire. We are looking at WAP producing a brochure celebrating all things arty and cultural that Wiltshire has to offer to its residence and tourists. We will then all be able to raise each others profiles as well as our own at our venues and events. We also plan to attend tourist fayres, and large regional events such as Race days and agriculture shows, have a stand and shout about how fab Wiltshire is as a Cultural County! What do you think?

Don't forget we have a session for those of you tasked with fundraising at The Pound on Thursday at 6 (If anyone has trouble getting to this because they rely on public transport let me know), and a session for those of you working as individual artists or practitioners on October 12 at 11am (formally 2pm) in Bradford On Avon. Let me know if you would like to join us for either of these.

Professional Development Day for dance and theatre practitioners

This looks great! Best get enrolled I suspect this will fly of the shelf!

Made In Somerset

Take a look at what's happening this year at Made In Somerset!

Open publication - Free publishing

Cultural Olympiad Projects to share?

There has been an arts and heritage working group formed to help insure that we can raise the profile of all of the activities going on in Wiltshire that are part of the Cultural Olympiad, and to support any groups or individual wanting to take part.

We are meeting tomorrow and will be hearing from a number of projects at various points of development. If you have any plans you would like me to share with the group, would like to seek partners for a project or have any questions re the Cultural Olympiad please get in touch with me via email: wiltshireartspromoters@gmail.com

Sorry I've not given you very much lead time on this, but please do share any thoughts or plans you have around the Cultural Olympiad, including ways we might 'animate' the torch route at any time and I'll feed them into the group.

Community Arts Training

Meril Morgan has asked me to share this with you. I presented to this group last year and will do again this year and have been in touch with some of the people who took part since. I think this was a really useful catalyst for people to venture out into the world and promote their work so please do take advantage of this subsidised opportunity and let anyone else who might benefit from this know as well.

The arts service runs a 4-day community arts training course for anyone who would like to develop the skills and knowledge to set up and manage an arts project that will benefit their local community – it may be of interest to any community group including those with no experience of the arts or an arts practitioner who wants to run community arts projects.

Community groups, or those organisations that work with the socially excluded, can really benefit from running arts projects, but they often don’t know where to start. Our aim is to give them the skills and knowledge to take their ideas forward

Using the skills and knowledge of expert trainers, the course is designed to cover all the elements of running a project including pre-planning, fundraising, partnerships, publicity, marketing and managing community arts projects.

Participants need to be based in Wiltshire. Statutory and voluntary organisations with paid staff will be charged £40 per person, whilst voluntary groups, individuals and artists will pay £35 per person. The next 4-day course will take place on 4/5 and 11/12 November 2011.

Deadline for applications is Wednesday 5th October 2011. For more information and an application form, please visit www.wiltshire.gov.uk/arts or email arts@wiltshire.gov.uk or telephone arts development officer, Meril Morgan, 01249 705531

Mindful Employer Line Managers' Resource Pack

If you employ staff please be aware of this!

This is a resource pack that provides practical guidance and information to support staff who experience mental health conditions including stress, anxiety and depression.

This was shared by Grow in their E bulletin.

Vodafone and JustGiving Extend their Free Text Donation Service

Ohh this looks interesting! Anyone used Text donation? How well did it work for you?

The mobile phone provider Vodafone and the donation website JustGiving have made their text donation service JustTextGiving available to individuals that want to raise money for charity. The companies launched JustTextGiving; a service that they said would enable all UK-registered charities to raise money through text donations for free, in May. So far it has only been available to charities but from today individual fundraisers will be able to set up their own unique code that can be used to direct text donations to their chosen charity. Participants, who must be aged 18 or over, need to register on the JustTextGiving site and set up a unique code for their fundraising, which is all free of charge. When they do this they will be allowed to choose the charity – which must also be registered with the service – that will benefit from any fundraising through the code. The individual can then publicise the code at fundraising events, inviting donors to send donations by text. This message would have to contain the unique code and the amount the donor wanted to give, and be sent to 70070.