After Thoughts by Jane Taylor

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Whatever changes are visited on lottery distribution over the next few years, we really have little cause for complaint about lack of consultation. Having had a review period lasting a full year, one of the most striking things about the distribution white paper launched on 3 July is how little of it is prescriptive and how many requests it carries for more views and ideas. True enough, as one attender pointed out to the Culture Secretary at our annual conference, there wasn’t any specific prior consultation about merging NOF and CF. But on the white paper’s other big theme – public involvement –it’s hard not to get the impression that the government needs all the ideas it can harvest if it is going to achieve its desire to give the public a greater say. There must be many experiments around in local participation and decision-taking, and a good few in micro-grant management, too. So make sure you let the Secretary of State know what works – and how much it costs.

Balancing balances
As I approve very much of Tessa Jowell’s perpetual quest for bright new ideas, I am happy this issue (p10-11) to promote another little gem of a proposal: for cultural endowments. It occurs to me that once the relevant board had set up the initial programme fund for these endowment awards, that fund could be kept topped up with the cash the government is going to take away from distributors holding excessive NLDF balances. There’s a whimsical symmetry about using interest accumulated because of poor management to liberate organisa-tions from deficits acquired despite the best possible management. 

Excellence awards
Sadly I lacked the time and space this month to feature the winners of Lottery Monitor’s first Awards for Excellence. I will put this right in our next issue (which, please note, is September). But I would like to record our thanks to all those who nominated lottery projects for helping to make it a great success. Category winners were Gateshead Millennium Bridge (Public Space); Ethnic Minorities History Project, Gloucestershire (Small Awards); Lampost ICT, Walsall (Innovation), Lincoln City Council (Local Authority) and Aware Defeat Depression (Kids) –which the judging panel also awarded the overall prize for excellence. The awards were announced at Lottery Monitor’s conference on 3 July, but because of a mix-up, the two representatives from Aware Defeat Depression arrived off the plane from Derry just as everyone was filing out for lunch, to discover a) that they were the overall competition winners, and b) the awards ceremony had just finished. The day was saved when a west London traffic nightmare held up the afternoon arrival of the Secretary of State by 20 minutes, enabling conference attenders to hear a moving award acceptance speech from Judy Colhoun and Roni Corry of Aware Defeat Depression, followed by a hilarious 10-minute stand-up turn by Nick Higham, the BBC’s media and arts correspondent, deconstructing media coverage of the lottery. Book your seats for next year now!