Brendan, EMDA and City Arts; a case study

Case Study

City Arts enter the commercial world - August 2009

Enterprise & Innovation

East Midlands Business Champion Brendan Blewitt has worked closely with Nottingham City Arts to help them develop a greater awareness of the needs of commercial operations and facilitate their approach to business organisations.

As Gillian Bates, Communications Manager at City Arts, explains: ‘City Arts receives funding from the Arts Council, Nottingham City Council and various trusts. In the present economic climate we felt that it was vital to broaden the organisation’s appeal and identify additional sources of funding within the commercial world.’

Business Champions - a programme created and funded by the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) which recruits high-calibre proactive business figures. Working with voluntary and educational organisations, Business Champions support projects where a commercial perspective is needed. For City Arts, involvement with Business Champions would, they felt, help them to bridge the gap between Public Sector Arts and Private Sector Business.

It’s easy to see why Business Champion Brendan Blewett was attracted to this particular project. Now a principal of training organisation Vision Development Consultants, Brendan has a varied background, including two years working as an artist in the heady New York art scene and a further period exhibiting his art in Spain. Add to that his ten years heading a college art department and more recent history in business and you have an individual with a unique insight into the operations of both ‘worlds’.

Brendan identifies one of his key skills as an ability to probe the inner workings of an organisation, to ask the right questions. After some initial discussion, he started work with City Arts with a full day session, looking at the way that City Arts functions. Together with staff he identified key words that expressed their mission and explored how well they are communicating both internally and externally.

His contribution has been invaluable, says Gillian Bates. ‘Brendan has been brilliant. He has been able to understand the way we work, and has made us look much more coolly and dispassionately at City Arts and appreciate how we can make real improvements’

Brendan found that the structure of the organisation made it difficult for City Arts to be flexible, and got in the way of effective communications. As he said: ‘City Arts draws on the skills of people from mental health professionals to community artists. Communication and clear identification of responsibilities and areas of influence among such a disparate group has been a challenge’.

This first session was followed up by a second where they looked more at how communications could be improved through a clear definition of individuals’ roles and responsibilities throughout, and they also identified projects which they felt had a commercial dimension, or would be attractive to businesses. Brendan has also been able to identify and facilitate funding for the project through the Government programme, Train To Gain.

Gillian Bates made the point: ‘We didn’t really know how to go about approaching commercial businesses and whether we would share the same values.’

Brendan has been able to demystify much of the business world for City Arts, providing a language and an approach for them to base their presentations on.

As Brendan put it: ‘Many organisations are aware of their Corporate Social Responsibility obligations and are looking for ways to give back to the community, either through participation or sponsorship. We have been able to identify transferable skills and opportunities where City Arts can work alongside the business community’.