Rocky road

When it comes to the subject of private funding for the arts, Arts Council England is between a rock and a hard place (p1). It has no choice but to do its paymaster’s bidding, but in doing so it is complicit in signing the death warrant for England’s model of arts funding, of which, ironically, it sits at the very heart. The £100m investment to encourage cultural organisations to stand more firmly on their own two financial feet is more than just small change in these straitened times, and the Government will no doubt be looking for a financial return in the form of standstill or reduced public funding for the arts in the years ahead. Make no mistake: this is a sea-change moment, and the more successful arts organisations are at jumping through this particular policy hoop, the more swiftly public funding for the arts will be chipped away. But failure isn’t a good option either, signalling, as it would, the squandering of the aforementioned £100m and the associated finger-pointing at arts organisations as being incompetent stewards of the public purse.

Whether the Government’s vision of a more financially independent arts sector would be a good thing is another question entirely. The 20-year relationship between Northern Stage and lawyers Dickinson Dees (p3) appears to be the ultimate example of how private giving can form an integral and effective part of an arts organisation’s income stream – but how realistic this is for many arts organisations remains to be seen. In his latest blog (see The Fund Zone at www.artsprofessional.co.uk). Greg Klerkx suggests: “in the current rush to hire full-time fundraisers, there’s a real possibility that dozens of organisations will burn precious resources for little gain… The time to build a fundraising operation isn’t when things are tough but rather when an organisation is strong.” It’s rather a shame that he isn’t a member of the advisory panel for this particular initiative.