What was re.volution?
re.volution was a peer learning network which aimed to radically reconfigure business & organisational development support for cultural and creative practice in the UK.
Whilst primarily targeting leaders working in small and medium sized organisations, we welcomed people who were sole traders, acting on behalf of consortia or from larger organisations and were keen to encourage membership from across the spectrum of business models in use – social enterprise, community interest companies, cooperatives, charities etc.
The network was designed to help people solve the problems of trying to do too much, with too little, too often on their own. Free of charge it brought peers together from all over the UK and across the arts and cultural ecology, including museums and galleries, to share critical thinking and practical solutions.
A bespoke on-line and off-line learning programme was especially curated for the network which included a re.source library offering a range of tools and approaches relevant to the four core themes of the progamme:
renew mission
reconfigure business model
revise approach to money
Leadership, culture and values
re.volution also offered a brokering platform supported via the website and by the re.volution team whereby each peer offered up to three days of their time in any twelve month period to help fellow peers address challenges or work through opportunities based on those four themes.
Membership of the network was also available which allows access to the resource library.
The network was designed by MMM, in collaboration with Industry Lead bodies and many others working across the arts and cultural ecology. During the start up phase of the initiative (2011 – 2014), MMM’s role was to:
broker all the relationships in the network in order to ensure relevance and fit,
design and deliver the on and off line learning programme and resource library and
gather a range of new data through the network, especially around financial issues, that will enable arts and cultural organisations to develop their resilience.
A second stage of the network was also designed which will offered peers the opportunity to go on to deliver their business and organisational change goals with the best, most appropriate, most value for money expertise available in the market and share re.volution’s methodology and learning internationally.
After the start-up phase, which will ran until 2014, it was MMM’s intention to pass responsibility for the further growth and development of the network to interested parties in the sector.