Arts must prove worth to keep funding 2

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 2 Mar 2010

Arts organisations will have to start proving their value if they are to continue receiving government grants, a debate in London last night was told.

A National Campaign for the Arts-hosted debate on whether the government can afford to continue subsidising the arts fractured into debates about entrance fees and high and low art, but there was agreement across the panel that arts organisations and government-funded artists will have to be more clear in communicating the value of their work.

All panellists, including playwright Bonnie Greer, journalist and National Trust chair Simon Jenkins, Royal Society of the Arts chief executive Matthew Taylor and Taxpayers’ Alliance co-founder Matthew Elliott, agreed that the arts are destined for budget cuts whenever the post-election government starts to look at treasury books.

But Jenkins warned the arts sector against pleading against funding cuts, arguing that the sector is in fact in very good health and that the sector provided “tangential” services, rather than essential services such as those provided by schools and hospitals.

He argued that arts organisations should become more self-sufficient not through philanthropy, which he argued could be corrupting, but through ticket sales. “Anything that is regarded as worthwhile should be paid for,” he said.

Most of the panel disagreed with Jenkins’ argument that the user pays. Greer, however, agreed that increased reliance on fundraising may undermine the independence of arts organisations, citing the situation in the US where “you have to pay to play” and where influential donors can censor individual artworks and artists.

Certain ‘mandarins’, she added, within arts funding apparatus “may have to go”, to make way for a younger, less “subsidy-fat” generation of artists and arts managers.

The RSA’s Taylor argued that arts needs to be more savvy about communicating its “multiplier effect”, its ability to attract private investment, its ability to encourage consumer spending and the overall growth and worth of the industry to the wider UK economy.

Directory: National Trust

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Laura Mulhern
Director
South West Artwork CIC
3 Mar 2010

This article is an interesting one!

We are a community interest company that have been promoting and providing contemporary art for the masses of the South West since 2006 and have been largely self-sufficient throughout that time. Mostly because we had to rather than choice sometimes!

We have felt from some failed funding submissions in the past we should steer clear from arts funding from larger funding organisations as we are either not disadvantaged enough or not big enough to compete with larger arts organisations that have the advantage of knowing the right people or fulfilling the right criteria within a marginalised group.

Personally speaking the arts should be available to everyone to enjoy and not just for the ones who can pay, should play. Likewise, can funding be avaible to all?

But how do we keep the opportunities open to everyone who wish to promote the arts, not just available to the 'mandarins' as so excellently quoted by Bonnie Greer?

Going down the route of self sufficiency has certainly been a challenge at times, but saying that it has made us far more inventive, and free with our decisions. It has also enabled us to incorporate local businesses more, which has proved to provide multiple positive results from collaborations etc...

[Reply]

Maria Peters
Education/Marketing manager
Sound Gallery CIC
1 Apr 2010
Response to [ Laura Mulhern]

We are also a community interest company/social enterprise and I am certainly agree with the comments made above. Applying for funding can be much less fruitfull due to not dealing with 'disadvantaged enough' populations because of the region we are in or because such funds are mainly absorbed by much larger organisations. We have successfully applied in the past to the sheme 'Strike a Match' introduced by Arts & Business which we found inspiring and creative in terms of putting forward ideas for collaborative projects with local and national businesses rather than filling boxes in a word-counting exercise which is what some other types of government funding have been recently reduced to.
Bring back the 'Strike a Match' fund!

[Reply]

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