Mr. Brian Rowntree:

The Chairman said earlier he was looking for recommendations. If I may be so bold as to put one or two forward, I believe it is in the interests of us all to look at the social capital we have available to us and to maximise the opportunity from that. This is not about efficiency savings; it is about best value. It is about stretching the envelope of opportunity as opposed to restricting the envelope of spend. I believe that social capital needs to be understood and interrogated further. Many organisations have huge amounts of social capital, as does Government, and we should do more research to look at what we can bring to the table and how we structure that in the form of partnerships, strategic alliances, closer associates, etc.

We should look at training and development in a structured fashion for volunteers, particularly around arts and culture. We should look at models of intervention that add accreditation and value so people can feel rewarded in a different fashion for what they do because they have some badge of respect that says they have contributed and their contribution has been understood and acknowledged.

We must have a more co-ordinated policy around intergenerational activity which looks at appreciation, respect and development in these areas, where the outflows add to the other recommendation I have outlined. We also need to establish a nationwide network of key hubs, which I think can be done quite swiftly, key centres into which people can feed. Those can then have sub-hubs, but we need a nationwide network of regional hubs through which we can filter ideas, learning and development, and then we can outflow from those in a structured fashion. The co-ordination of the arts is the simplistic part, its development is more long term, but the understanding of the arts is the job we have in hand. We must work harder and more smartly at understanding the value and the contribution the arts make to how one lives, not where one lives.

Again, on behalf of McAuley Place, I thank the committee.