Core Services
Core Services
ATC has over twenty five years experience of identifying and addressing the professional and business development needs of individuals and organizations within the UK Creative and Cultural Sectors. Working at national, regional and local level, it has worked effectively with many partners to produce imaginative but realistic and deliverable responses to the changing needs of their clients. Our services inckude:
•Undertaking Commissioned Research Projects:
ATC has carried out research projects across a wide range of geographical areas, artform and sub-sector groups, and within individual organisations which, variously, identify development needs, audit facilities, and compare planning options. Clients have included Regional Arts Boards, Local Authorities, Learning and Skills Councils, Membership Organisations, and national arts venues.
•Supporting Organisational and Professional Development in the Cultural Sector:
ATC has been a constant innovator in defining best practice which meets the development needs of practitioners within the changing environment of the Cultural Sector, first as a pioneer of short course training, later as an advocate of using Training Needs Analysis techniques to target development initiatives effectively and of bespoke initiatives including mentoring, surgeries, peer support, business incubation and advisory attachments to meet individual needs.
•Fundraising:
ATC has over twenty years of experience in resourcing its own work through a combination of public funding and commercial contracts. Although a company of modest size it has raised approximately £2,000,000 via the UK Arts Sector, local government, the UK Business Support Community, and through the ESF Structural Funds. It has also helped a range of large and small clients to access and manage development monies, most recently MLA East Midlands and ESF support via Government Office East Midlands.
•Use of Facilitative Techniques:
ATC believes in development strategies which add value to what practitioners already know, understand, and relate to, rather than looking to dazzle its clients with grand but unrealizable ambitions. Its starting point is to use its practiced facilitative techniques to framework existing knowledge as a prelude to further exploration, and the practical input of practitioners forms a key element of its summative process.
•Project Devising and Origination: ATC has been the UK leader in establishing innovative development programmes for creative people and businesses, including:
the National Foundation Programme in Arts Management – the first independent accredited training programme for arts managers in the UK; the East Midlands Arts Mentoring Programme – a programme of career-changing personal support cutting across all artform areas; the Write Away Programme of residential retreats for emerging writers - now in its eleventh year; the First Stage Programme – a twelve-month comprehensive package including theatre placements, workshops, group-based action learning, and an individual training action plan for each participant.
•Network Building: ATC has been a prime mover in building some of the most influential formal and informal networks in the UK arts sector, through both its programming and management of conferences and its hands-on management of groups; including: the Arts Training Network – ATC was a key player in the formation and development of this key national grouping in the mid 1990’s, devising many of its programmes and eventually serving as its official Secretariat; the Mainstream Partnership – which has emerged as one of the highest profile and sustainable groups of ethnic minority artists and performers in the country was set up and supported by ATC.
•Project Management: ATC has a wealth of experience in setting up project details, engaging specialist staff, establishing financial structures and reportage systems, and devising effective lines of communications, all of which form a central administrative framework underwriting successful programmes of delivery.
•Delivery: ATC staff themselves cover arts business and management and professional development topics. This is supplemented by ATC’s links to expert individual teachers and trainers, and to specialist delivery organisations in areas such as technical theatre, street arts, and literature.
© Arts Training Central (ATC) 2006
