In 2008-09, our activities will focus on supporting the delivery of MLA’s three strategic priorities – learning and skills, communities and excellence – and on managing the transfer of our responsibilities to other organisations and closure.
Learning and skills – we will work with the sector to increase opportunities for learners to progress and achieve their creativity and unlock their potential by:
- Demonstrating to regional stakeholders how the sector contributes to adult learning and skills in the South East
- Working with regional partners to support two Find Your Talent pilot projects to increase young people’s involvement in cultural activity
- Delivering the regional Strategic Commissioning education programme for museums and archives, building sustainable links and programmes between LEAs, teachers and the sector, until it is transferred to a successor body
- Promoting and managing Their Past Your Future the UK-wide education programme in the region that explores the legacy of 20th century conflict
- Continuing to work with public libraries and other partners to promote the National Year of Reading and the Reading Partners South East author tour
- Working in partnership to develop a regional Youth Board through a young people’s development worker for public libraries
Communities – we will ensure museums, libraries and archives are inclusive and support cohesive communities, particularly in their work with young people by:
- Promoting the sector in areas of housing growth through the regional Living Places Group, the Thames Gateway/North Kent Cultural Partnership and the Quality Places Theme Group of the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PUSH)
- Promoting the new national Standard Charge for libraries and archives to planners in local authorities and provide expert planning advice
- Helping museum, library and archive services to play an active role in their Sustainable Communities Strategies, Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic Partnerships using the regional Local Area Agreements toolkit and through MLA’s statutory ‘Duty to Cooperate’.
- Supporting the local government improvement agenda through the Government Office for the South East and the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships and by promoting improvement tools
- Supporting library authorities to develop and evaluate their Big Lottery Community Library projects
Excellence – we will strengthen capacity in the sector to innovate and continually improve across workforce, collections, services, funding and partnerships by:
- Managing the Renaissance Museums Development Fund until it is transferred over to the South East Museum Hub. Projects include the Museum Development Service, Sharing Skills, Fundraising Bursary Scheme, ICT support and emergency planning
- Managing the Accreditation and Designation schemes until they are transferred over to a successor body
- Contributing to the MLA Partnership 2012 programmes, support the regional 2012 posts and represent the sector on the regional 2012 working groups, including the South East Legacy Trust bid
- Supporting innovative cross sector library partnerships through Inspire South East
- Continuing to make specialist archives advice available for archives, the Legacy Trust project and the Revisiting Collections project
- Continuing to promote funding opportunities to the sector and provide business support through our partnership with Arts & Business
- Continuing to provide sector with access to consumer and participation research, including the South East schools participation database, museum visits data and to research into the sector’s contribution to tourism
Transition management – we will place the needs of the sector and the staff first during this challenging period of change, recognising that effective knowledge transfer is an essential part of this process.
