Sport England is looking at possible changes to the way it distributes National Lottery money for community sport. Views are welcomed on ways to improve application and award processes as well as any particularly valued features of the current Community Investment Fund.

Go to http://www.sportengland.org/index/get_funding/homepage-lottery_consultation.htm and respond by 12th September. Sector support umbrella body NAVCA has welcomed the consultation - http://www.navca.org.uk/news/sportfunding.htm.

A final consultation on a new Financial Reporting Standard on Heritage Assets follows an earlier discussion paper and exposure draft.

Third Sector reports that proposals which would have required charities to spend resources on valuing assets that hadn’t had a purchase price or prior valuation have been dropped. Download the Financial Reporting Exposure Draft: ‘Heritage Assets’ (FRED 42), in pdf, 212KB.

Deadline for responses 10th October.

A new report ‘Our Creative Talent’ from the Culture Department looks at the size, make-up and impact of formally organised voluntary and amateur arts groups. There are nearly 50,000 groups across the country with a total of 5.9 million members.

The document (after a little delay) is available online, via  http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/publications/5234.aspx, or read news item at http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/media_releases/5235.aspx.

The Rural Youth Network collects and disseminates examples of good practice on various topics relating to children and young people in rural areas. They have put out a call for examples in Transport, Leisure, Positive Activities and Volunteering - submit using the form (Word format).

Or for more information contact Sarah Hope, phone 0116 242 7441 or email: ruralyouth@nya.org.uk

(Source: Voluntary Arts Network newsletter)

Northern Ireland’s Civic Forum, involving ten sectors of civic society (including business, trade unions and the voluntary sector), was set up as a consultative mechanism on social, economic and cultural issues. It lapsed during the devolution suspension and is now up for comprehensive review. Views on how such a Forum might contribute to good government and on other models of civic partnership are invited.

Sector body NICVA’s news item at http://www.nicva.org/index.cfm/section/news/key/020608_Civic_Forum_review says “There is no appetite in our sector for a return of the Civic Forum in its previous form”.

Information and how to respond (by 29th August) at http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/civic-forum-review.

Museums are being encouraged to think about sustainability - social, environmental and economic.

The Museums Association has published a short introduction and a longer discussion paper, and invites relevant organisations to respond by 1st September. http://www.museumsassociation.org/sustainability.

In response to numerous queries about artistic events for visually impaired people, BlindArt has set up a forum at http://forum.blindart.net as a ‘one stop shop’ on what is happening in the arts for sensory impaired people.

Museums, galleries and other arts organisations can register to provide information on events, share news and network.

(Disability Cultural Projects via Voluntary Arts England)

Voluntary Arts England has added a comments feature to its web pages which aim to provide answers to the most common questions which come up when setting up and running a voluntary arts group.

They invite site visitors to add their own experiences, flag up useful information or report broken links. (Your editor hopes VAE have monitoring set up to ensure this doesn’t wander too far off course.) Running Your Group section is at http://www.vaengland.org.uk/ryg.

UPDATE: Voluntary Arts Network has asked us to point out that ‘Running Your Group’  is one of their projects that can be accessed via any of the national departments (Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well as England), or via the main VAN site (http://www.voluntaryarts.org/ryg). And yes, the new comments feature is moderated.

Taking Part in the Arts is a new web site from Arts Council England giving guidance for arts organisations on how to be more community and customer focused. It also has information on participation statistics.

http://www.takingpartinthearts.com.

(Source: Voluntary Arts England newsletter)

The charity status of colleges in Scotland is to be protected by an order which has been laid before the Scottish Parliament.

This follows one of the first reviews of charity status by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, which found that that Ministerial powers to direct further education colleges were inconsistent with the requirement under the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 that charities should operate independently of government. The order exempts colleges from the requirement.

Scottish Government news item at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/05/21110137.

Volunteering England and the Institute of Volunteering Research have created a specific set of web-based tools for sport organisations to assess their own volunteering impacts.

This is part of a project which tested the current Volunteering Impact Assessment Toolkit with 100 volunteers and players across three sports, and a final report about the methods and findings behind those new tools has also been published. The latter, ‘A Winning Team? The impacts of volunteers in sport’, can be downloaded as a pdf, 307KB.

The sport tools to measure impact of volunteering are available via http://www.volunteering.org.uk/sport, or read press release.

Proposals in the government consultation ‘Fair Play: A consultation on the play strategy’ to make public space more child-friendly include placing a stronger focus on spaces for play in the planning system and supporting local community ownership of space suitable for play.

Respond by 18th July. http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1543.