W A Y S O F L O O K I N G

A T

T H E S P O N S O R S C L U B

Mark Robinson

At age 21 in the UK you can adopt a child, supervise a learner driver, drive lorries, buses and road rollers and fly planes, helicopters and airships.By the time The Sponsors Club reached 21 we’d adopted numerous partners across the business and cultural communities, supervised hundreds, even a few thousand, learner fundraisers and sponsors, driven projects and ideas, campaigns and callsto action.We haven’t driven a road roller or flown an airship…but there’s still time.

Adam LopardoDirector,The Sponsors ClubMay 2012

I wanted to reflect the myriad of experiences of The Sponsors Club in something which rejects single definitions and dry analysis in favour of varietyand celebration. The title is adaptedfrom Wallace Stevens’ poem, ‘13 Waysof Looking at a Blackbird’. Poetry wastoo narrow a river, however, to containall the stories and images, so you willfind here a different way of looking atThe Sponsors Club for each of its 21 years. There could have been many others. It attempts to show more than to tell,and to evoke more than to sum up the spirit and achievements of the many people involved in the work of The Sponsors Club during that time.

This piece is informed by conversations with many of those people, to whomI am hugely grateful. I hope they, and others, will see some of their thoughts reflected here. One word I heard a lot was fun, and I have also tried to have fun in approaching the serious business of art.

Mark Robinson

Mak

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age p

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river

s, sh

ops,

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eans

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ders,

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thos

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– an

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ns, b

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, tru

cks a

nd lo

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,fro

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of h

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and

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ter, b

ite.

1

As a cornucopia

1990

1991

1993

1994

1996

2000

2004

2008

2011

First ‘official’ meeting, Tyne Tees Television

First grants given through matching scheme

First employee Chris Moseley, seconded from Marks & Spencer

RSC season retained via support package put together by group of sponsors

Ron Parsons becomes Manager

Sponsors Club merges with ABSA office in the NorthDavid Faulkner becomes Director

Adam Lopardo becomes Director

Set up Business Collectors Network

End of regular Arts Council funding

2

As a ten line timeline

3

As a shadow of the Northern economy

The early members of the Sponsors Club were amongst the largest regional businesses, including a number of recently or about to be privatised utilities.

The two community foundations involved were still fairly new innovations rather than the established leaders they are today. All were regular sponsors of the arts in the region, with most supporting the Royal Shakespeare Company’s annual residencies in Newcastle and other touring into the region. The individuals involved tend to attribute the idea to each other, rather than themselves – credit mainly passing between Tony Pender and Ron Parsonsof English Estates, David Faulkner of Northern Electric, George Hepburnof the Tyne & Wear Foundation and Peter Moth of Tyne Tees Television.

The idea was a simple one: the biggest sponsors could build on their own activity by putting into a pot, with some additional funding from Northern Arts and from the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts (ABSA, which later became Arts & Business) and encourage other businesses to support the arts. Initially this was through a

matching scheme which soon becamea well-used way to multiply the benefitsof bringing a new sponsor into the arts.

This did indeed encourage new, often smaller businesses to support the arts,and many became members of theClub itself over the years.

There is a shift from the larger businesses, however, towards more small-to-medium sized businesses, and from major manufacturing and utilities (many of which had previously been nationalised industries) to service and knowledge intensive industries, property development and the creative industries.

The Sponsors Club reflects changesin the region over the last 21 years,but also the continuities of collectivity and collaboration.

4

As an alphabetically ordered table plan for all members and funders since 1991, including the ones that no longer exist

Table 3Founded ITV Tyne Tees Live Nation (Sunderland Empire) Marks & Spencer ncj Media Newcastle Building Society Newcastle College NewcastleGateshead Initiative Nigel Wright Consultancy North East Museums & Libraries

Council

Table 1Accenture Admast Advertising Allied Domecq Arts Council England Arup Benfield Motors Berghaus bhp Law

Blue River Browne Smith Baker

Table 2British Telecom City & Northern Cleveland Community Foundation Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, Copthorne Hotel Crutes Cumbria County Council Deloitte Dickinson Dees EDF Energy English Estates

Eversheds

Table 4North East Museums Service North East Times North West Museums Service Northern Arts Northern Electric and Gas Northern Rock Northumbria University Northumbria Water Group One North East Orange

Table 6Sumo Teesside Community Foundation Telewest Tesco The Banks Group The Express Group The Gate The Sage Group PLC The UK Postcode Lottery Tyne Tees Television UBS Wealth

Management

Table 7UK Land Estates Universal Building Society University of Durham University of Newcastle Urban Events Vermont Hotel Ward Hadaway xSite

Architects Yorkshire Bank

Table 5Parabola Estates Polar Productions Potts Print UK Procter and Gamble Python Properties Muckle LLP Ryder Architecture Samuel Phillips & Co

Sanderson Young Silverlink

Drawing on local talentDrawing on local talent

Making a real songand dance over Firth

Moor the Merrier

5

As a top 10 of pun-tastic (and genuine) newspaperheadlines inspired by business sponsorship

art anD soul of business

Drumming up company morale

Grant is sweet music

P&G staff in their own write

Arts supportedto the tune of £10M

Much ado could meanall’s well, in the end

Film sponsorreels in award

Brush with the artsis a stroke of kindness

It is something of a truism, at least amongst menand women in suits, that the cultural renaissance of the North East was achieved through Partnership. Another way of looking at this is as Teamwork.Those involved in The Sponsors Club do not claimto have been in the foreground of the major private sector fundraising necessary to deliver the large capital projects in North East England in the last15 years. They are however regularly described aspart of the larger regional team which respondedto need and opportunity, strategized its way to successful institutions and venues and has madethe connections richer since. (The boat bobbingon the Ouseburn outside Seven Stories mightserve as a symbol of this, arising from a three year Sponsors Club-supported project with Universal Building Society.)This comes, at least in part, from a fierce commitment to the region, and to regional identity. Businesses in the North East know in what kind of ground their feet are planted. The work in the region (at its best)is more than Partnership, then, though it includes that. After all Partnership has been defined as‘A relationship between individuals or groups that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility, as for the achievement of a specified goal’ but a Team has been defined as ‘A group on the same side, as in a game.’(You will have your own definition or declamationof the phrase ‘cultural renaissance’.)

6

As part of the team

Where poets have passed more than time

steps worn shiny by syncopated feet

where beat bohemians grew old and Ginsberg may indeed

have peed

scissors through a ribbon on a very first toilet

years of freezing Morden Tower tradition cut

- or is it only connected by Hanro plumbing

to a new generation of people becoming

7

As an improving destroyer of tradition at Morden Tower

60

members of the Sponsors Club 1991-2011

306

number of arts organisations supported

620

awards given 1991-2011

£1,402

average size of grant

£869,815

amount awarded 1991- 2011

£2,500,000

likely amount of funding generated by those awards (may be higher)

8

Through some numbers

The Sponsors Club is seen by many people as an example of the North East’s regional identity and difference. It began separately from ABSA’s regional operations, although working closely with the national body from the beginning, especiallyaround the New Partners scheme.For a short while there was a Northern office of ABSA as well as the Sponsors Club, but the two ‘merged’ in 2000. Although this relationship was a mutually beneficial one, the Sponsors Club retained its own identity within the Community Foundation, and its own regional steering group. At various times this led to suggestions of full merger. These were rejected, in a tone to which this writer can attestfrom attending a key meeting whilst working for Arts Council: this is our club, with regional interests at its heart, and must remain so in order to do its job.The roots dictate the shape of the tree and the blossom thereon.

9

As an example of regional identity and difference

10

As a haiku: The Way the Managing Director put it after the Meeting

11

With you and your way of seeing it at the centreof what it could be in the future

Please draw or write your own image of the Sponsors Club in the box:

RSC SeasonMost expensive cup of coffeeI’ve ever had

12

Through the arts it supports

13

As a series of shifts

The list of grant recipients is too long to reproduce here. There are few corners of the arts in the regionin the last 21 years which have not been touched by support. It is noticeable, though, that the list is not exactly what many people might suspect. Business likes to play safe, some might say, is likely to give money to the bigger organisations. Whilst many businesses do support the major institutions in the region, to all our benefit, The Sponsors Club has made a significant contribution to the diversity ofthe arts offer in the North East by giving grantsand match funding to many smaller organisations. This has been especially important to voluntary organisations who bring professional standardsto the amateur arts, such as Castle Players, andto organisations such as Pakistani Cultural Society and African Arts Association promoting workfrom minority ethnic communities.

To suggest these organisations are the grassroots whilst the bigger venues are somehow not is mistaken. The grassroots in North East England must include all shapes and sizes. But one can certainly see the results of Sponsors Club investment in those roots.

‘Big beasts’

Manufacturing and utilities

Mainly Newcastle

Men (mainly)

Wine

Sponsorship

Intimacy

Bottom of table of givers per capita

Contacts

Backwater

services and creativity

Men and Women

Skills

Cappucino

Top bar London

Reach

Place to be

SMEs

Philanthropy

Region-wide

We eat, drink and plan our proud places forward.Do we sense some things may never be quite the same?We are determined the days that derive from this will be brighter,More beautiful, more bountiful and bounteous. Our mutual aim.

14

Through a coincidence of dates and a resolve

15

As a catalyst

As arts organisations became more savvy in their fundraising, and as more fundraising posts were created in the region, and more freelancers became based here, the needs shifted. The Sponsors Club became more involved in making connections between businesses and their people, and artists and arts organisations. These connections were about needs rather wider than money, although that remained important. The national Year of the Artist in 2000-2001 saw a greater intensity of artists based in business in the Northern region than elsewhere, and this developed in the following decade. Many businesses had artists in residence or commissioned new works for their new offices. From this grew an understanding of the impact artists could have in business environments, bringing out and shaping the creativity of employees, helping express the culture of businesses—and what business could bring to artists—new perspectives, specific expertise, access to spaces and equipment, profile. Two examples show The Sponsors Club acting as a catalyst. The Business Collectors Network was created in 2008 to encourage regional business to collect works by the emerging generation of visual arts, many represented by a burgeoning set of more commercially-minded galleries. Supported by a curator, the Network collectively purchased new work by regional artists, which was then circulated around their offices. This stoked the market for art, gave artists income and profile and experience of working with collectors. The Network has now stopped operating and has passed the collection on to Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums.A second example borrowed the format of TV’s Dragons’ Den to put arts organisations with an idea in front of a panel of investors from Sponsors Club members. This enabled businesses to provide financial investment to Tees Valley Dance, Globe Gallery and Northern Print, but also to pass on tips and expertise —including to those unsuccessful in their pitches. The very process of pitching was also found to be beneficial.

The Sponsors Club Annual Dinner 2008 took place on 29 September 2008, the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.

A club in all senses of the word a way of putting something back

the North East as village the rich helping out the poor artists

artists helping out the poorer uncreative businesses money matching money

sorting it over dinner where business men who don’t play golf do deals

not just for big businesses not just there for the RSC at the Theatre Royal

a club that you wanted to be part of and could be

creating opportunity connecting both art and business to the grassroots

a close-knit community swapping skills bringing new people into the game

buttering up sheep in wolves’ clothing a network to mobilise a sense of belonging

evolution fun needed then and needed now friendship

16

As a justified series of clichés

17

As a succession of people leading it, each summarised in 4 words,one of which must contain a hyphen

George Hepburnnurturing Community Foundation foster-parent

Chris MoseleyM&S loan-signing negotiator

Ron Parsonsprogenitor sponsor turned player-manager

David Faulknerwell-connected director of connections

Adam Lopardoexotic young blow-in reformer

List A: 30 April 1991

British Telecom

Cleveland Community

Foundation

English Estates

Northern Electric

Proctor & Gamble

Tyne & Wear Foundation

List B: 30 March 2012

Admast Advertising

Arup

Blue River/Founded

Crutes (now merged with DWF)

Dickinson Dees

Eversheds

Founded

ncj Media

Newcastle Building Society

NewcastleGateshead Initiative

North East Times

Northumbria Water Group

Parabola Estates

Potts Print UK

Python Properties

Silverlink

Sumo

The Banks Group

The Express Group

The Sage Group PLC

UBS Wealth Management

University of Newcastle

Ward Hadaway

Yorkshire Bank

18

As two lists of founder and current members

Planets orbit the sun, we think now,but what is the sun, and what a planet or m

oon,and how do we tell one from another?

An orbit mapped is only ever provisional.

gives

up its

unexp

ected and newly logical harvest?

Mapping an orbit is only ever a sketch.

What if the sun and moon and planets swap roles,

like dancers exchanging leaps and catches, approa

ching

and t

hen s

tretch

ing o

ut th

e dist

ance

until

it yi

elds,

19

As an orbit in which it and Community Foundation,arts and business are planets

The Sponsors Club has proved to be both adaptable and resilient over the last 21 years. Although it faces a future which will require change to its model as funding from Arts Council England and Arts & Business is withdrawn, it has outlasted many regional bodies. There have been three audience development/arts marketing agencies in that time, for instance. The regional development agency and government office have come and gone. Northern Arts is a decade-gone. Cumbria has moved to the North West, without shifting an inch.

Leading thinkers in the field of organisational and sectoral development in the arts suggest that strong networks and collaboration, the habits of innovation and experimentation, and an ability to adapt are all common characteristics of resilient organisations. Central, though, is a culture of shared purpose and values that is passed on within an organisation, even through changes of personnel and programme. The Sponsors Club demonstrates this very clearly—scratch the surface now and the core culture of coming together to bring others in to support the arts through communal and fun work is still central. This is passed on from person to person, whether business member, artist or staff member.

The things the Sponsors Club does have adapted over 21 years, from match-funding and match-making to skills or knowledge transfer and providing specific expertise. Things have been tried, some worked brilliantly and became part of the offer for a period, others less so. The Club has proved surprisingly able to let go of favourite activities whilst retaining its identity. The membership has shifted—but the current members express their purpose and motivations in very similar terms to the founders. The relationships to Arts & Business nationally, and to Northern Arts/Arts Council England as funder, have continually adapted, and will do so again in the new non-core funded environment. Other changes in the future will be in reaction to the Coalition government’s emphasis on philanthropy in funding the arts, helping business work together within thisnew agenda. The Sponsors Club remain determined to continue to serve the needs of both arts and business in the North East.

20

As an example of adaptive resilience

Mark Robinson was born in Preston, Lancashire and now lives in the parish of Preston-on-Tees in

Eaglescliffe. He is a writer and director of Thinking Practice, a consultancy working internationally in culture and organisations. He was Executive Director, North East for Arts Council England,

where he worked from 2000-2010. He is the author of ‘Making Adaptive Resilience Real’ and ‘The Role of Diversity in Building Adaptive Resilience’ (with Tony Nwachukwu). He is a widely anthologised poet whose collections include ‘Half A Mind’,

‘Gaps Between Hills’ and ‘The Horse Burning Park.’ Smokestack Books will publish ‘How I Learned to

Sing: New and Selected Poems’ in 2013.

www.thinkingpractice.co.uk

21

As a Sonnet of Bridges across North East England Mark Robinson

yne, Transporter, Wearmouth, Chain, Millenium, Swing, Redheugh, Wark,

Hikey, Carrick, Cricket Club, Hag,Deadwater, Sheepwash and Sweethope Lough.Featherstone, Eggleston, Beckstones, Wath,Infinity, Chantry, Ogle Dean,Chew Green, Mountain Ford, Preston Pipe, Barn Flatt Stepping Stones and Jubilee.Stobo, Fingland, Tweedshaw, Monk,Croxdale, Furnace, Gasworks, SkinneryWestfall, Daddry Shields, Duchess, Iron,High Level, Long Plantation and Penny Ferry.

A place of bridges and connected spans.An aqueduct for art, made by many hands.

T

In keeping with the book I have21 thank you’s

1 The North East Business Community for founding and supporting us

2 The North East Arts Community for working with us

3 Northern Arts/Arts Council England North East for founding and supporting us

4 The Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland for hosting us

5 Chris Duffy for working for us 6 David Faulkner for working for us7 Stuart Garratt for working for us8 George Hepburn for working for us9 Denise Heslop for working for us10 Tahira Hussain for working for us11 Chris Mosely for working for us12 Ron Parsons for working for us13 Ruth Raynor for working for us14 Heidi Savoury for working for us15 Kala Shuttleworth for working for us16 Jane Tarr for working for us17 Kevin Taylor for working for us18 Ellie Turner for working for us19 Kathryn Warwick for working for usAnd last but not least 20 Sumo for designing this book 21 Potts Print UK for printing it.

Adam LopardoDirector,The Sponsors ClubMay 2012

The Sponsors Club is part of the Community Foundation serving Tyne& Wear and Northumberland registered charity number 700510

www.sponsorsclub.org.uk0191 222 0945