Our CEO reflects on community-led programming: what have we learned so far?

Anyone following Raw Material updates for the last 3 years will know that alongside delivering our creative and wellbeing programme, we have some crucial aspirations for how we work with our staff and our community.  Embedding collective leadership and levelling the playing field are a core part of our ethos at Raw. We strive to do this while making sure we continue to run a lean, agile and responsive organisation! In the last 2 years, we have been progressing on a journey of cultural democracy - where the ‘service users' of an organisation (we call ours our community members) are given decision making power on the programme of activities they're being offered. Our Programming Committee offers our community paid experience in supporting both the strategic and artistic direction of our organisation.

At Raw Material we know that our programme is a key part of people’s recovery, personal development and confidence building, so we believe facilitating our community members to direct their own creative pathways with us is really important in terms of their personal growth.

We also wanted to find a way to open up opportunities to new creative practitioners to work with our community and enable our members to have the choice of new projects and programmes. We wanted to have a fair way to make decisions about new activities to try out, and it makes sense for our community to decide which new opportunities they’d most like to get involved with.

So we developed a structure and format, which we are continuously improving, to make both these things happen at the same time through our Programming Committee. It takes place once a term/ 3 times a year and it's a paid opportunity for up to 20 community members at each time to take on a decision-making programming role for new courses or projects to run at Raw Material. We also use the forum as a handy opportunity to get feedback or test new ideas for other initiatives  - for instance our building refurbishment, or our new Young Ambassadors programme. Or just to see how people are feeling right now about their experience with us.

We open recruitment for the Programming Committee about 5 weeks ahead of the date, and at the same time we open a call for creative practitioners to upload 2 minute video pitches of the course or project they’d like to run. We have purposely kept the pitch length at 2 mins, to ensure it's not a huge amount of work for anyone applying, and we provide guidance as to what should be included in the 2 minutes. The other reason for keeping the pitches short is so that we can include up to 10 in the meeting and provide lots of conversation and feedback time after each pitch.

We started the Programming Committee as a bit of a trial - almost a project in itself - but it’s fast become a cornerstone of the way that we work at Raw Material. Both our team and Trustee representatives attend as it's a brilliant way to get to know our community and what their interests are. It’s also a really fun evening - we use the platform mentimeter to vote (most attendees can use their phones, but we provide tech and live tech support from staff members for any of our members who need it!). We always finish the evening with pizza and networking so it has a social aspect too. 

One of our favourite things about the Programming Committee is that it's a truly intergenerational event - it includes members from age 16-70 - a rare and valuable opportunity both across our provision and arguably in society as a whole to bring different generations together to hear each other's experiences and views.

One of MY favourite things as CEO is that in facilitating the meetings I get a really good chance to talk directly and hear from our community in a dedicated time and space that I might not have otherwise. I have got to know our members much better and they know me too.

For anyone else considering going down this route here are some key takeaways from our experience so far:

1 - PAY PEOPLE FOR THEIR TIME: We knew from the beginning we wanted our community to show up and continue showing up for this event, and to understand that we valued their time and insights. We offer £20 expenses for attending the event and contributing (+ pizza at the end). It's not really a surprise to hear that both attendance and retention have been excellent for these meetings as a result. Equally, we have all been struck by how seriously our community members take their roles as decision-makers in this forum. As a team we are quite often positively held to account at these meetings, always have substantial and meaningful feedback to give the artists after the committee is over, and to take on ourselves about the format of the event or operations in general.

2. PEOPLE WANT THE DETAILS: Our community members are exacting in terms of the knowledge they require to make a decision. PItches from practitioners which are vague or unclear - even if the idea is exciting - do not get very far! We have been surprised at the level of detail some members have asked for - they want to know the nuts and bolts as well as what their experience is going to be and what they’ll get out of the opportunity. We’ve amended the guidance for pitches a few times to reflect this!

3. STRUCTURE THE FEEDBACK MOMENTS: When we first started running these events, as a facilitator I would just open the discussion moment ‘to the floor’. This resulted in dialogue which tended to be dominated by some of our more confident members and could easily be derailed into tangents or one or another person's individual experience.  After trialling a few different approaches we now have formal structured feedback which we direct at each table, intentionally encouraging a range of speakers to contribute, ensuring as much as we can that everyone’s voice is heard.

4. BE CLEAR ON EXPECTATIONS: our third Programming Committee had some unexpected moments and a public comment which did not align with our Code of Conduct. We decided to put a guidance sheet together for the Committee members which we put on the tables for when they arrive - it has helped to focus the conversations since then, making it clear how we hope people will participate.

5. BUY MORE PIZZA THAN YOU THINK: it's actually incredible how much pizza people can munch through! And nobody likes the one with loads of vegetables on it so just keep it simple!

We’d love to hear from other organisations who run similar processes or events. If you’re considering going on a similar journey with your own organisation we would be very happy to chat to you more about our experience.

Rachel Nelken

Our next Programming Committee is due to take place on the 16th of October. For more information and to get involved, please follow the link.