ZESTY ADVICE FROM CITRUS CONSULTANCY

A lunchtime meeting at Phoenix with Karon Phillips, Senior Consultant at Citrus Consultancy. I met Karon at another lunchtime meeting - a two-hour seminar on fundraising for charities held recently at Voluntary Action LeicesterShire. She offered then to meet one-to-one so we could discuss fundraising strategies for the Council of Faiths. Karon gives me some useful advice, encouragement and guidance today. I add these to the growing file of tips and pointers which I hope will help us restore our financial stability.

NOT TO BE TRUSTEED

I'm surprised to be contacted today by Voluntary Action LeicesterShire, asking if I'd accept a nomination to be one of their Trustees. I'm sent an election acceptance form with my details and asked if I can verify this so that it can be included amongst ballot papers before VAL's forthcoming Annual General Meeting. This is the first I've heard of it and when I ask who has nominated me, it turns out to be someone I don't believe I know, from an organisation with which I haven't worked with. I'm flattered (assuming, of course, that it's not simply a mistake on the part of the person who did the nominating) but in all good conscience I can't accept this, so I turn it down.

MAPPING FAITH & PLACE: 3rd SEMINAR

At the University of Leicester, Bennett Building, Department of Geography, this morning for the latest seminar in the University's Mapping Faith and Place project. Mapping Faith and Place is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) within their funding stream, "Care for the Future: Thinking Forward Through the Past".

The core aim of the project is explore the significance of South Asian religions and cultural heritage in Leicester's urban landscape. The wider context for this work, of course, includes the other aspects of religious and cultural identity and life in the city. There's more to the diversity of Leicester in terms of faith and belief than just the South Asian representation - as the project acknowledges, both in these workshops and in its print and online publications.

This is the last of three seminars for this project. You can read earlier blog posts for the launch event (Friday 7 October 2011), first seminar (Tuesday 18 October 2011) and second seminar (Monday 16 January 2012). These seminars will be followed by a final conference in the summer, although it's hoped that the project will continue beyond that period of initial funding.

Leicester Council of Faiths has lent a hand at various stages of this project (although if we'd grasped how significant Mapping Faith and Place is, we'd surely have done more to help). We borrowed the two pop-up banners for our display at Highcross during Inter Faith Week a couple of months ago, when we also distributed many copies of the Leicester Faith Trail booklet. Members of staff (Deirdre O'Sullivan and Dr Ruth Young - both of whom are here today) and students from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History took part in that exhibition.

The first seminar focused on built sacred spaces in a stricter architectural sense: whether new-built or taken over from other, earlier uses, expressing a break from, or continuity with the past. The second concentrated on sense of place: how people construct stories around geographical sites and personal identities. Today we're looking at new media, the transformative nature of digital technology to affect identity and project it into the world.

I was concerned that we’d have an unmanageably small turnout this morning, given torrential rain and the relatively difficult access to the venue. But there are a dozen of us here, which is more than enough to make it work.

First order of business is the uploading, copying or scanning of resources related to places of worship or faith trails that each of us have been asked to bring today. I've brought three digital photographs taken on the Holi Yatra Walk, Saturday 10 March. Others have brought sound clips, video and solid artefacts.

Dr Claire Jarvis, Senior Lecturer in Geographical Information, gives a fascinating PowerPoint presentation, "Representing Faith and Place". She shows and discusses some ancient maps which may be said to tell us more about the people who made them rather than the places they were intended to describe. She speaks of how we are becoming "prosumers" (a hybrid of producer / consumer) in this geospatial digital age; prosumers of a vast quantity of maps, which are being created and used in greater numbers than ever before, and in increasingly imaginative and idiosyncratic ways. Maps are being increasingly used to reflect lived experience, to tell stories about ourselves as individuals and communities. We see some examples of this kind of map too, which say something more nuanced than just where something is located or how to find a place. I'm especially struck by this quotation in her presentation, from Miguel Helft, in the New York Times, 27 July 2007:

With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.

In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.

Incidentally, this concept of being a "prosumer" reminds me of the theory and practice of Co-Production, which was the topic of a meeting at County Hall on Monday morning.

Claire leads us through the process of creating our own maps, each of us at a work station, using mscape maker. I get to add my first digital image but no more, as I have to leave early for a Funding Fair at Voluntary Action LeicesterShire. I'm sorry I don't get to stay for the rest of this seminar, as I've found what we've done so far utterly fascinating and would love to learn and practise more. I hope to be able to follow up in my own time.

INFRASTRUCTURE PROVIDERS GROUP

At Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL) this morning for a meeting of the Infrastructure Providers Group. Support for this group and attendance at its meetings have declined markedly in recent months. I had attended earlier meetings on behalf of REDP and had decided to make a special effort to get involved again - making me the only example I know of a rat climbing back on board a sinking ship (laughs all round).

I'm here specifically to update attendees on the state of the Good Practice Equality & Diversity Healthcheck that REDP developed in its Mainstreaming Equality project and has been refining for potential use throughout the East Midlands. Some months ago VAL enquired about using thie document and process in the context of this project, so I'm here to make our latest response to that.

Funding for this project expires on 31 March. There's much discussion today about what happens beyond that date - if indeed, anything should happen at all. There was no opposition to the proposal that the Infrastructure Providers Group be wound up when its funding expires. However, there followed in depth and sympathetic discussion of which strands of its work are still live and how they might be kept alive.

• Should this group morph into a strategic group of infrastructure / support service providers?
• Should it change into a focus group for recipients of support services?
• Are there enough bodies still in existence -and for whom infrastructure / support services is high enough on their agenda - to make separate meetings worthwhile?
• Can the functions of this group be incorporated into the work of the recently established VCS Assembly for Leicester and Leicestershire?
• Is there still a need for a focal point which looks at what support services are still out there - who they are, where they are located, who they work with and what they do?
• Should there be an individual, group or meeting with responsibility for surveying the support that frontline organisations in the city and county are getting?

Similarly, no one argued with the view that the Coalition is unlikely to do anything proactive until the national deficit is paid off. Which leaves the Voluntary and Community Sector or Organisations of Civil Society - doesn't much matter what you call them when they're left stranded, unloved and unwanted - in the wilderness, struggling to survive until such time that they're valued again. If that time ever comes.

The final meeting of the Infrastructure Providers Group will be held on 25 March. At that meeting, we'll evaluate the project: what's been done, what remains to be done - and options for continuing its influence. I'm sure that there are still strong and positive things that can be said and done.

VAL GETS TWO-THIRDS OF THE DAY

This morning, members of REDP's Working Group at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) to "bottom" (in Kelly's words) fundamentals about why REDP exists, its features and benefits, all of which must be presented in consistent fashion at our upcoming "involvement" meetings around the East Midlands in January and February.

After this, another meeting in LCIL, with two representatives of Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL). Dee Martin from LCIL, Iris Lightfoote from The Race Equality Centre (TREC) and I meet with Michelle Skinner and Andy Foskett regarding involvement of the Voluntary and Community Sector in the management of Leicester City Council's new Children's Trust in Leicester. A preliminary paper had been circulated about a month back and the member partners of EDP had been invited to respond from a general equalities consideration as well as with regards to our specialist areas. Iris had shaped it into a coherent whole before sending it to VAL. It's clear from this meeting that issues around legitimacy of representation and related topics need to be ironed out to ensure that the right groups are involved from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

More stuff with VAL follows, but in the afternoon I make the short hop across Newark Street to a meeting at their place. I'm a member of an Advisory Group working on VAL's BASIS project. There are meant to be three of us involved from outside VAL itself, but at this inaugural meeting of the Advisory Group, I'm the only person attending from any external agency.