Arts Funding: RBS Draw the Purse Strings. What about the Arts?
The BBC are reporting this evening that the troubled Royal Bank of Scotland, getting ready to sell a fifth of their business, are also going to be drawing their purse strings when it comes to sports and corporate sponsorship.
The original article is linked here
Some of the numbers are pretty staggering, and although they are not listed in the BBC article this evening’s 6 o’clock news gave viewers an idea of some of the figures involved.
The BBC’s Sports Ambassadors, including stars such as Andy Murray, cost the business around £200m.
The RBS 6 Nations receives funding in the region of £20m although this relationship has only recently been resigned and is expected to run until 2013.
The F1 William’s team is the big focus of the article this evening with funding in the region of £20m expected to be dramatically cut.
But where does this leave the performing arts in its relationships with big business? The boom years have seen many organisations adjust to fund their artistic activities through sticking a few corporate banners around the place.
In another article in this weekend’s Observer, linked here, Venessa Thorpe covers news from Arts and Business that a third of business who give more than £1m last year are expected to slash budgets this year.
Do we now end up in the strange situation where, with these large banks and businesses being part nationalised, public money is being fed into arts and sports via organisations such as RBS with no say from organisations such as the Arts Council? The conservative press take little prodding to run stories about the perceived frivolousness of such organisations spending money out with their core areas of business but will this deter big business from entering sponsorship arrangements?
So what lies ahead for many of the UK’s most prestigious arts organisations, many of whom are proud to exist without public subsidy but cover their costs using the support of large corporates.
Looking at the corporate sponsorship sections on the websites of some of the UK’s arts organisations can have scary correlations with the gloomy BBC News or FT business pages. The Globe’s page boasts financial services companies such as Deutche Bank and Credit Suisse as well as other headline hitting companies such as Ford and Virgin Atlantic.
As well as their corporate donor list The Globe highlights another area of interest when we examine the field of arts and business relationships – The Globe lists The Independent as its media partner for the season. Albeit that such a relationship is not as straightforward as a sponsorship deal as such a partnership probably generates content for the newspaper, thus bringing it measurable benefit. However as traditional media outfits struggle to adapt to the stresses and strains of the current century and the wandering taste of the consumer, will such relationships fade into the darkness or will the mantle be picked up by new media corporations? The Re:place Radio Llandudno Arts Festival? Perhaps a topic of discussion for another blog.
Not to pick on the already beleaguered Edinburgh Fringe Society, but their current sponsorship page, and the current state of affairs has probably also got them checking in the back of their wallets for that last fiver. Will this evening’s news of funding cuts from the Royal Bank of Scotland leave them feeling vulnerable? The Fringe Office is already said to be considering the fate of Fringe Sunday but what of their Royal Mile activities which in recent years have been just as RBS labelled as they have been multicoloured.
The list continues on the Fringe Office’s page with such cheery, yet possibly soon forgotten faces, as the music chain Fopp and the troubled Bank of Scotland group. It is almost a surprise not to see Woolworths listed as a major contributor. Which corporate rocks will be looked under this year to keep the show on the road?
The contrast is of course the Manchester International Festival which announced it had raised a staggering £3.1m in sponsorship for the biennial event. Relationships have been put in place with organisations such as the Northwest Regional Development Agency, the Northwest commercial property giant Bruntwood, the owners of Manchester Airport and car park provider NCP. My initial reaction would be to say that this is perhaps a little less glitzy collection than the screeds of investment bankers and the like who support other such events, but if the money is there then you can’t really knock it. At the end of the day we should remember that this process exists to support the artistic output, the art is not presented to attract the “poshest” sponsor.
Another thing to point out would be that the relationships put in place seem to be far more easily connected to the project with organisations such as NWDA obviously seeing regeneration and investment targets being worked towards by stumping up the cash. There is a far more blatant link between NCP car parks putting cash into an event which will bring people into the city than other businesses simply wanting to raise their profile by being associated to the arts.
The coming months the story of how organisations fair when trying to cover their costs without turning to the Arts Council will no doubt come out. But will the media, public or corporate shareholders let companies, many of whom are now turning to the government themselves, continue their level of support for the arts?
Is this a bigger danger to the arts landscape in the UK than the Arts Council funding cuts on the horizon because of the cost of London 2012? That mainly depends on whether consumer confidence and the wider economy bounces back and making predictions on that front seems to be on a par with predicting the final costs of the London Olympics.
Photo credit: Tigerweet on Flickr
