Voices Gloucester Community Panel

About the Funding

Voices Gloucester is a programme of events from individuals and organisations across the city designed to bring to life the heritage of the communities around us, originally developed as part of the engagement strand of Gloucester History Festival.

We have now been awarded funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund to develop year-round signature events with community activities to engage audiences with heritage and drive social change across the city. As well as funding grant recipients will receive support, advice, training and marketing of their activities.

Gloucester Views is a Voices Gloucester partnership project supported through Gloucestershire Archives by Historic England which will also support community heritage activities.

The role of the Community Panel will be to:

• Ensure that the opportunities are widely shared across communities in Gloucester and act as ‘Community Champions’ for Voices Gloucester
• To review strategic applications and make recommendations for which should be funded
• To participate in a formal assessment process, including reading and scoring community applications,
• To meet at least 3 times a year to discuss and review process and application. Members of the public may attend these meetings as observers, and agreed Minutes will be published.

Panel Meetings

These will be held at the Heritage Hub (or Zoom should Covid or other restrictions apply). There will be at least one scoping/overview meeting a year, and at least two to review open access funding programmes. Panel members will be invited to submit information on any access needs so that their requirements can be met.

We expect to recruit a minimum of 6 members in 2021. Panel members will be expected to commit to a minimum of one year and a maximum of three years, subject to annual review. In 2021, panel members will be recruited from a diverse representation of heritage organisations, former Voices Gloucester programme participants and community representatives. In future we hope that the recruitment process will be an open one.

The maximum number of people on the Panel will be twelve.

The panel will include:

• Community representatives
• Representatives from University of Gloucestershire, the Gloucester Culture Trust and the Gloucester Heritage Forum
• At least one panel member under 20

Meetings will be chaired by the Creative Director of Voices Gloucester and supported by the Project Officer.

Community Champions

Panel members are expected to encourage community participation in Voices Gloucester programmes and events and to offer the Creative Director support and insights to benefit the programme as a whole.

Governance considerations

A quorum of 50% & 1 member will be necessary for the panel to make decisions.

We appreciate that Panel Members may have strong links with many of the projects seeking funding. Community Panel Members may not directly benefit from funding.

Panel members are required to share conflicts of interest, which will be logged by the Project Officer. Where conflicts of interest prevent a panel member from participating in assessment or discussion on a particular project, a score will be created by taking an average from the other panelists.

This is a voluntary role. Community Panel members who are not undertaking this work within their paid role, will be able to claim reasonable compensation of up to £100 per annum.

Decisions are usually made by consensus but there is provision for a vote to take place with the chair of the panel having the casting vote in the event of a tie.

If there are more successful applications than funding available, the panel will, with advice and support from the Chair, consider how projects complement and enhance both Voices Gloucester activity, and other heritage and culture programmes in Gloucester.

Final curatorial decisions that take into consideration how the programme as a whole will best work together will be the responsibility of the Creative Director.

Funding decisions will be shared with Panel Members by the Creative Director (Chair) and will be published on the Voices Gloucester website.