In December 2005 Phoenix was awarded £90,000 through the Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts programme. This, together with a £9,000 Partnership Award from Brighton and Hove City Council and Phoenix’s own resources, will fund an extensive programme of organisational development over the next three years.

Prior to embarking on a full-scale organisational review, Phoenix commissioned Val Millington to undertake a pre-feasibility study, with support of Arts Council England South East, the purpose of which was to assist Phoenix in articulating its vision and aspirations for the future and key issues the organisation needs to address in order to deliver that vision.

Through the pre-feasibility study process, staff, trustees and stakeholders identified the particular strengths of Phoenix and a number of areas of activity, which could be improved or made more effective, which would help Phoenix to realise its development potential and ensure its continuing relevance and significance as a key provider of support to artists and for our public programmes.

So after completing this pre-feasibility work it is great to announce we have been awarded the funding to carry out the actual organisational development project.

The project will look at all areas of Phoenix’s activities and develop and update where necessary.

Areas of focus are:

A central aim of the organisational development process is to involve Phoenix artists in the review through their participation in research visits, discussion about the future direction of the organisation and pilot projects. Rather than simply undertake building based consultation, the intention is to cultivate an atmosphere of activity and critical debate through which options can be discussed and a desired way forward determined.

Of course, it is unlikely that there will be unanimity among 100 artists on the future direction and the Trustees and Management Team will make the ultimate decisions. However, it is vital that change and development is embraced by significant, active artists’ constituency and so the involvement of artists in the process is seen as crucial to its success.

A number of Focus Groups, each involving Trustees, the Management Team and Studio Members have been set-up to undertake the work. They are [with members' names in brackets]:

Steering Group [Lucy Greenaway, Ben Tompson, John Varah, Mark Richardson, Donna Close, Ros Reyburn, Juliet Kac]

Gallery & Education [Karin Mori, Sue Gollifer, Emma Willcocks, John Varah, John Kelly, John Packer]

Membership [Lucy Greenaway, John Varah]

Building [Lucy Greenaway, John Varah, Penny Porter, John Packer, John Kelly]

Finance & Structures [Juliet Kac, Mark Richardson]

Marketing [Belinda Greenhalgh, Mark Richardson, Karin Mori, Emma Willcocks, Sue Gollifer, Anna Dumitriu]

A range of specialists will also be involved with the organisational review, providing vital skills and expertise to help Phoenix make informed decisions about its future direction and sustainability and how best these can be achieved. These include:

We intend to be extremely thorough in our work and will be consulting other arts organisations in the region as well as artists working in Brighton. We hope to produce a piece of research that will be useful to other organisations as a picture of artists requirements in the area. If we contact you next year we hope that you will take a little time to help us with this work.