Strategic Planning for Capacity Building, Regeneration and Organisational Change

PURCELL MILLER TRITTON

a presentation by ................................. THINKING LATERALLY TO UNLOCK YOUR ASSETS & ENABLE DEVELOPMENT IN HARD TIMES NIALL PHILLIPS, HEAD OF DESIGN & REGENERATION, PURCELL

UNLOCKING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTS & HERITAGE PROJECTS

PENARTH PIER PAVILION 16th SEPTEMBER 2014


STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR CAPACITY BUILDING, REGENERATION & ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

DAVID CLARKE

MANAGING DIRECTOR DCA CONSULTANTS


a presentation by ................................. STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR CAPACITY BUILDING, REGENERATION & ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE DAVID CLARKE, DCA CONSULTANTS

• How can building projects help you meet your objects?

• How might they help ensure your long term sustainability?

• How can the arts and heritage play a part in regeneration?

STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR CAPACITY BUILDING, REGENERATION & ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE



• As a venue manager and producer in the arts

• Supporting and enabling artists and communities

• Helping to regenerate towns and cities

Most of my work with projects has been motivated not by the preservation of the building but by the need for:

• Meeting the needs of people and communities

• Reaching larger and more diverse audiences

• Organisation development and renewal

• Economic sustainability

• Commercial and entrepreneurial approaches

• Doing more challenging and interesting work

MY BACKGROUND & PERSPECTIVE



Recent examples include:

• Regeneration and place making – Nottingham Contemporary

• Renewal enables a new organisation to step up – Insole Court

• New facilities generate new income – Compton Verney

• New facilities inspire creativity and activity – Caernarfon

• Major projects bring the activity investments that enable future sustainability – Pitzhanger Manor, Delapre Abbey and more

HARNESSING BUILDING PROJECTS TO DRIVE FUTURE ORGANISATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY







Some principles:

• Never do a capital project lightly – they are all hard work!

• Do think about how the project will support long term sustainability from the outset of the project

• Don’t be afraid to invest in parts of the project that will drive income in the future – put them at the heart of the project and not as a necessary evil!

• Take the opportunities capital projects can provide to persuade partners and funders to make stable, durable, commitments

HOW BUILDING PROJECTS CAN HELP DRIVE FUTURE SUSTAINABILITY



The principles underpinning this approach might be:

• Make sure you integrate capital project costs and associated activities -the activities are key to funding and to sustainability

• Involve audiences in the project from the earliest stages, and record your processes

• Think from the start about how you can build partnerships of value around the project – who might have an interest in its outcomes? What can we do to bring them to the party?

• Business planning, capacity building, improving governance, all need to begin on project day 1 and run throughout the project.

HARNESSING BUILDING PROJECTS TO DRIVE FUTURE ORGANISATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY



• The easiest way to set yourself key stages is to align the project plan to an internal process or an external funder’s stages – e.g. Heritage Lottery Fund

• Approach architects or consultants to help you, at the early stages this help can be free or cheap, or they’ll help you identify a way of paying.

• Even a free day with you, which we’ll all do, can be really useful in helping test and organise your thinking

• Always do a proper, recorded, if brief, Options Appraisal early on – good process and funders will need it later

SO HOW DOES ONE MOVE THROUGH THE STAGES OF A TYPICAL PROJECT?



• Once you’ve done Options Appraisal, you will usually do something called Scoping or Pre-feasibility.

• It can be hard to get the funds for this if you’re volunteers– but it needn’t be expensive – try sources such as AHF or local small grants schemes

• If you are part of a local authority or University, you might be able to bend all kinds of pots of money to this purpose

• This will set out the outline of your project – what its vision is, what it aims to achieve, what it might include, how you might achieve it




• After Scoping or Pre-feasibility, you will need to start to rally support and get approval to progress.

• It is likely that if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to take some advice and begin to explore design options at this stage. Its worth thinking about getting a Critical Friend on board at this stage – architect or consultant, as many of them know the funding system really well and can help you write the right application.

• Although some funders theoretically don’t need design and business planning at this first stage, realistically in many cases you need to do some work to be satisfied that your plans really will make you more, not less, sustainable.




- If you are ready and you can spot a potential funder, you might make your first funding applications at this stage. In theory at least Round 1 applications to many funders demand little detail and open up the potential for funds to develop the scheme

- For sure you will need to start thinking about procurement now – and if you can assemble a little team who you trust and work well with, try and get them properly appointed – its worth taking the time at this stage.

- If you successfully assemble some funds, you will set out on your development stage




• The Development stage varies from funder to funder – but for HLF as an example it is a lot of work for all concerned – right through to RIBA stage D

• By now you won’t need these slides, you’ll have a monumentally complicated project programme and you’ll be an old hand at interlocking all your funder’s and partner’s requirements!




What makes projects succeed where others fail? • Honest, practical projects, meeting real needs, do best

• Nothing is so persuasive as the voice of the user or participant, the

people who really want your project to happen, funders are increasingly suspicious of ‘strategic projects’

• Be prepared for delay, crises, you just have to keep going, making practical steps in as close to one direction as you can

• Always be ready with a fall back plan or a work-around, never let the wall stop you or the hurdles floor you




• Make a personal timetable for yourself, not the published Gant Chart, but your own promise to yourself that you will keep the project moving along, more projects die in the waiting room than in the funding committee

• Share your project with others, so it doesn’t pine for you if you leave – you have to preserve the chance of a life for yourself without feeling guilty about your project

• Relentlessly talk to people about your project, foster their enthusiasm, consult and record, take photos, make you tube films, think of new imaginative ways of giving voice to the users, visitors, participants and enthusiasts who want your scheme to happen!



GOOD LUCK!

DAVID CLARKE MANAGING DIRECTOR DCA CONSULTANTS

0121 634 3326

[email protected] www.dca-consultants.com

Presentations & Public Speaking

Strategic Planning for Capacity Building, Regeneration and Organisational Change