Beauty and the corporate beast

Mar 9 2010 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

PRIVATE business will have to put its hand in its pocket if the cultural clock is not to be turned back on areas like Teesside.

According to headline figures taken from a report by researchers Arts & Business, due to be published in full later this month, private investment in the arts fell by 6% across the UK in the last financial year and by a massive 39% in the North-east.

Although the regional figure is skewed slightly by spending on big cap-ex projects, the drop in private income to galleries, museums, theatres and other cultural activities heaps pressure on a sector already top of the list for public funding cuts.

According to Middlesbrough gallery director Kate Brindley, business could provide long term revenue protection for the arts, but it’s failing to see the potential benefit of aligning brands with internationally acclaimed centres, such as mima.

“Clearly, investment is a really serious issue. The majority of our funding is public sector and if you believe the messages coming out about public sector financing, mima is under serious threat.

“I think there is a responsibility in this region for business to take responsibility for the culture agenda. It’s really important in terms of the way people see the region. They won’t want to come to university or bring a business here if there’s not a sophisticated cultural offer.”

The gallery chief acknowledged that venues like mima had benefited from a surge in footfall, which has seen attendance and box office records shattered across the UK. Although just 7p in every £100 is spent on arts from the public purse, critics of state funding have seized on the public’s growing appetite for culture, saying the arts could be less of a drain on the Treasury and more sustainable if it gave up sacred cows like free admission.

But Ms Brindley vigorously defended open access, saying it was a moral issue and non-negotiable. mima’s free admission would be protected, she said, but the gallery had to look at where it could maximise income out of other services.

“The fundamental entitlement to seeing art should be available to all,” she said.

As Teesside’s flagship attraction, mima’s £1m turnover is funded principally by Middlesbrough Council and the Arts Council. But it has to raise 70% of its £250,000 exhibition programme from elsewhere.

Ms Brindley said it was not fair to draw comparisons between regional arts and metropolitan attractions, such as the Tate Modern and the British Museum, which rake in huge sums from their trading arms.

But while she said there was no getting away from the fact that the arts were “always going to be a subsidised sector”, she acknowledged that taxpayers could not continue to bank roll mima to the extent they have done in the past.

“We know we are going to have to make sacrifices. You either fill the gap or reduce the service and I do not want to reduce the service. Therefore to be fully sustainable within this community I’m looking at a number of different options.”

That included building long-term partnerships with business, she said.

“The public want more 20th century art shows like we did with Bauhaus and that’s expensive. If we get business sponsorship for the programme that would enable us to do more.

“We are prepared to tailor a package for business around how they would like to see a partnership progress. It may mean development opportunities for staff, using the building for entertainment... those would be conversations I would be interested in having. It’s not just about them parting with cash - although that’s part of it because we are predominantly public sector financed and these are lean times.”

Adam Lopardo, of the Community Foundation, agent for Arts & Business in the North-east, said the £11.9m that private companies, trustees and individuals had contributed to regional arts last year was likely to fall over the next 12 months. Like Ms Brindley, he did not want to see a fully subsidised nor a fully privatised arts sector, but said there was a “big bold line” connecting arts and business.

“I’m living proof of it,” he said. “The Community Foundation was set up by businesses during the last recession in 1991 to promote culture to other businesses because they felt it was hugely important to the economic development in this region.

“I see the effect it has. I walk around Middlesbrough now mima has opened and it’s a very different experience to what it was a few years ago.”