Colin Tweedy, the Chief Executive of Arts & Business, (the British equivalent to the Australia Business Arts Foundation, AbaF), recently visited Australia to network with a number of other international arts and business bodies from Canada, Italy, Austria, the US, UK, Korea and Japan. While Arts & Business is now in its 27th year of operation, AbaF is comparatively younger, only existing in its current form for the past three years. Despite this, Tweedy says he was suitably impressed with the progress the organisation has made in that short time.
‘AbaF is going very well and I was genuinely surprised,’ Tweedy comments. ‘I was not expecting to see such an impact, especially with senior business leaders.’ Tweedy notes that he would be unlikely to get as many CEOs to an Arts & Business event in Britain than the number he observed at the recent AbaF Awards ceremony in Sydney, earlier this month.
‘I genuinely think they [AbaF] have become the number two [international arts and business organisation] to A&B,’ Tweedy affirms.
But Tweedy notes that one of the major distinctions between the international arts and business industries at the moment, is the readiness of businesses to get involved. In Europe and America, he observes, many of the traditional business sponsors of the arts are disappearing, appearing to have lost interest.
‘…in Australia, it seems they are either five years behind [this trend], or …they [businesses] are still excited about giving money to the arts. Which is unusual, because a lot of other countries are not excited,’ he says.
This year, business investment in the arts in the UK fell by 3%, to £111 million ($AUD290 million). In 2000, investment dropped by a staggering 24% from the previous year, largely due to the amount invested in millennium year projects. But while next year’s figures are predicted to drop again, on the back of the worst recession in a decade, Tweedy comments that ‘business has always got a good reason to say it doesn’t want to support the arts in times of recession.’ The situation in Australia, he believes, is a little more enthusiastic.
AbAF, through its Mapping the Marketplace survey, has been trying to provide a snapshot of business investment in the arts, in Australia.
Brian Peck, AbaF’s Deputy Executive Director, points out: ‘Those business and arts organisations with whom we are working…are in fact reporting an increase in support by business for the arts.’ However, he emphasises that these figures are not representative of business and arts partnerships nationwide.
According to AbaF’s second Mapping the Marketplace survey, released earlier this month, the arts organisations that participated in both the 2002 and 2003 studies collectively experienced a 61 per cent increase in funding from the business sector. Meanwhile, the businesses that took part in both years of the survey increased the amount of support provided to the arts and cultural sectors by 84 per cent.
Overall, the 78 arts organisations participating in the 2003 survey were found to have collectively received $39.7 million in private sector support in 2002-2003; compared with $35.1 million reported by the 68 arts companies which took part in the 2002 survey. In the business sector, the 54 organisations in this year’s report provided $13 million to arts and culture; compared to $9.9 million invested collectively by 59 participating businesses in the previous period.
Kerry Klineberg, AbAF’s National Business Liaison Manager, has spent time looking at a number of international arts and business models to define AbaF’s approach, but points to the UK model as a particularly important one. AbaF operates an adviceBank initiative, based on Arts & Business’ Skills Bank program, which focuses on developing the business capabilities of arts organisations through skill sharing. This volunteer system is one that Tweedy applauds.
‘I think the key thing, is to move away from simply telling businesses to give cash, hence why I think what AbaF is doing is important.’ Encouraging business employees to volunteer their time to share skills with the arts sector, Tweedy reckons, is the way forward.
So how do you get business to fund arts and culture? According to Klineberg and Peck, AbaF has worked to identify what businesses can gain from partnerships with the arts, which now underpins AbAF initiatives.
‘It’s a sense of, what do you need in your [business] organisation to survive and grow over the next 12 months,’ Klineberg explains, ‘And then, let’s look at arts organisations that might be able to deliver some of those needs.’
And while businesses will each have different needs, AbaF has focused on four key areas, which Peck describes as operational benefits, reputation and networking benefits, market advantage benefits and employment advantage benefits.
In other words, creating an attractive workplace for potential and existing employees, and one that sets an organisation apart from its competitors. Which, Klineberg explains, can ‘provide for a strategic investment with an appropriate arts organisation.’ But Klineberg also points to the relationship between business and the community, as an increasingly important area that will be the focus of AbaF’s work over the next 12 months.
The 2003 Mapping the Marketplace report found that the major motivation for business to support arts and culture, was an ‘ongoing commitment to supporting the community’ (82%), with 52% of this portion referencing arts and culture.
AbaF’s new 12-month initiative, Changing Lives – Creating Communities, aims to reflect the role that the arts can play in building and sustaining communities, and developing the capacities and confidence of individuals. This initiative also picks up on a movement which is far more progressive in the UK than it currently is in Australia – that is, the role of the arts as a tool to assist the health and wellbeing of society, and in social and economic regeneration of communities.
‘I think the key is to show [that] the arts are equal to business, that they can give as much value back to business,’ Tweedy observes. ‘The whole issue about creative industries…they [arts and creative industries] are sensational in delivering so many new agendas.’
There are a plethora of arts organisations in the UK working to improve people’s quality of life, including London’s Cardboard Citizens, a theatre company for homeless people, (which also has an excellent critical reputation, recently collaborating with the Royal Shakespeare Company). Another unique example is Clean Break Theatre Company, a performance group for women ex-offenders and prisoners. Creativity and education is also the focus of a major campaign at the moment, to integrate arts and creativity more fully across school curriculums to encourage learning. In the arts sector, most UK-based arts organisations employ an education officer to work with young people and the community, and some, including the London Symphony Orchestra, even have gleaming new learning centres to reach out to the community.
It’s an area Colin Tweedy feels particularly strongly about, and is concentrating on through research with UK Government think-tank, the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).
‘My view is, art is transformatory,’ Tweedy says. ‘Art has a huge impact on every part of society. [Last year] we launched the Prince of Wales Arts & Kids Foundation, which we run to get every business to engage in getting every child in Britain to experience the arts direct. And, we’re working with the IPPR about the whole issue of health in the arts, and offenders in prison, street crime, education, and regeneration.’
‘We were very excited about what was happening in Australia,’ Tweedy observes, noting the interest AbaF expressed through the Changing Lives – Creating Communities approach. ‘So all those snobby English people who think that Australia is just about beer and kangaroos, I think have been proved wrong!’
Related Websites
www.abaf.org.au
www.aandb.org.uk
