Fundraising for the Arts:Changing the Performance

Julia Rowntreewww.jrowntree.co.uk

BudapestApril 2008

Programme for the day

• Lift, London International Festival of Theatre

• Three types of relationship:

1 Commercial

2 Civic

• Practical exercise:

Will we sponsor you?

• Another type of relationship

3 Co-Learning

How do you feel about fundraising?

• Arts’ relations with business are determined by wider    cultural, political and economic context;

• A different focus and style in each country;

• Boundaries between arts and business blurring;

• But a need to leave space for neutral ground between    commerce and culture;

• Engagement with business a route to learning about    the role of the arts in facilitating this neutral ground.

•  Adapt adapt adapt.

1981-2001 LIFT biennial summer festivals 4500 artists, 62 countries

LIFT Education 1993

Transition: 2001-2006 LIFT Enquiry into the role of theatre for our times worldwide

2007-2008Change of leadership and

The Lift - a civic performance space

one example from The Place Theatre

Lift’s relations with business evolve

Commercial sponsorship begins 1986Civic role asserted 1991

Lift Business Arts Forum begins 1995Lecture series 2004

The Lift - a civic performance space 2008

1993

Meaning of “international” changing

London thought to be probably the most culturally diverse city in the world

Intercultural engagement at home

Lift Learning begins

THE LIFT ENQUIRY 2001 - 2005

What is theatre?Who can be involved?Where can it take place?

Preparation for transition in response to globalisation, new technologies,

climate change.

Year-round programme

The Lift : 2008

A portable public meeting and performance space,

programmed internationally,

in response to conversations we need to have locally, nationally and globally.

www.liftfest.org.uk

Lift sponsorship

Why engage with business?

1986

Expense of international visits

Public subsidy at standstill

Only way to diversify income

Accessible ticket prices

What are the motivations of sponsors?

Programmes from London

What sponsorships can you find?

What benefits do you think the sponsors see in the sponsorship?

Rise of free market politics - relations with business based on commercial values

Reaching new markets - logo on publicity

Senior level networking - receptions

Image - press and broadcast media coverage

Entertainment - Tickets to performances

Client/employee entertainment

Corporate Social Responsibility

Product sampling by influential people

How much?

Costs of sponsorship:

£5,000 - £50,000

No real market, more like dating!

First step was to engage allies and Lift champions to walk with us, be our advocates, help us make connections, develop a language.

Board members and development council.

(Lift’s legal status - a charity limited by guarantee)

Commercial sponsorship in 2001 approx 13% of overall budget at £2.3million.

Opening up access to and understanding of other worlds.

Board: Legal status, practical expertise, figurehead chair with passion for arts and sense of public life.

Development council: no legal status, meets occasionally as council, way to call on one-to-one advice.

Process of engaging with businesses

Research:

• Who are they? Precise information about individuals and companies.

• Building your allies and champions

• Building internal solidarity and entrepreneurial outlook.

Contact

• Getting past the switchboard

• Engaging individuals

Making and keeping friends

•  Research, research, research

•  Walk in other worlds

•  Enlist champions

•  Get invited to the meetings of others

An almost impossible job!

• Competing with other demands for funding.

• Fitting with corporate plans - too short, too long

• Uncertainties of Lift programme

Schemes at one remove from the programme but within the spirit and values of Lift.

International Dinner Series 1988

Légrádi Testvérek

Katona József visit 1999

Remove the risk - sponsor the choice of the audience!

The Place Portfolio - London’s centre for contemporary dance.

Four choreographers. A party to show their work.

Project champion, Tony Elliot, Time Out director.

Guests asked to donate £50 in future work of choreographers. 100 donations at £50 = £5000.

Framlington, Financial company, matches that investment with £5000.

Public Arts fund matches that with £5,000.

New work performed in autumn. Guests invited to return.

Be a Brick, buy a BlockReal concrete blocks with different designs stencilled in red, dark blue and royal blue

£10 for peasants£100 for bourgeoisie£1000 for Aristocrats

Project champions:Melvyn Bragg, television - peasantStuart Lipton - bourgeoisieRichard Rogers - bourgeoisieLord Palumbo - Aristocrat

Stuart Lipton’s address book

Architects, builders, individuals etc

£8000

Arts business relations exist in a wider context

Civic questions come to the fore

CRISIS!Early 90s

Civic fragmentationLondon’s local government

abolished by Margaret ThatcherIn 1986

Lift’s motivations for lateral thinking

Low morale

Need for a new conversation

Need to build different forms of support

Need for celebration rather than complaint

Taking a ‘helicopter view’, we had:

An ability to bring people together across levels of power, working role and experience in a spirit of curiosity and celebration.

Our idea was to raise morale in the capital.

To celebrate London and engage others in an understanding of exceptional projects

happening in different walks of life.

LIFTING LONDON CONFERENCE 1991

Setting the stage for stories of

success:Housing

EducationCulture

Business

Project champions, allies, participants and advocates from:

• civic organisations• business (Financial Times), • public sector, • education• the arts• NGOs

What we learned

• Interdependency between sectors but need for neutral     space: i.e. a space for public collaboration beyond the market and the state to imagine responses to issues of common concern.

• A cultural commons made through a shared project.

• Role of the arts - imagination, celebration, reflection, critique.

• Starts with a personal and organisational change of performance and taking a lead without formal authority.

Group working• Which of your projects might be successful in    securing a sponsor or backing from other    organisations?

• Put together a five-minute presentation.

• Name the company/organisation to whom you are    presenting.

• The rest of the group will take on the role of this    company or organisation.

• We will decide whether to sponsor or partner with    you.

What have you learned?

Another crisis…….

How we understood that business has a lot to learn from the arts

Even that we might have something to learn together

1994 CRISIS!Baring’s Bank crashes

BT sponsorship of Lift’s Education Programme fails

Ascendancy of market values

A new form of relationship with business?

Lift’s motivations for changing the game

All-pervading commercial values undermining

our sense of theatre’s sacred role

Desire to critique commercial values

Feelings of powerlessness

Boredom with being a supplicant

Need for celebration rather than complaint

Set out to discover what business might have to LEARN from the arts

Aim to change a commercial relationship to one of co-learning

First steps in what became

The Lift Business Arts Forum

Important role of project champions:

Brian Eno

Global Business Network

Heinzen, Fairtlough and de Geus

Charles Handy

Financial Times

Introductory evening at Financial Times

Business people, public sector, students and artists in small groups with facilitator

Small groups attend together at least 4 events in Festival programme

Organising question:

What did you see? What would you do differently in your work as a result?

Lift Business Arts Forum 1995

Motivations for business participation in Lift Forum

- Sensing strategic change via contemporary performance- Insight into creative and innovation management- Personal and leadership development- Openness, challenging assumptions, cultural sensitivity, the big questions- Lack of job status- Connection to people you would otherwise never meet

Learning outcomes from Lift Education:Creative responsibility

Personal potential

Potential of the group

Aesthetic sense and judgment

Relationships

Effects

Properties of materials

Emotions - hope, joy, empathy, failure, success

Risks, roles and responsibilities

Purpose and meaning

Attitudinal changes sought in large organisations•vision and an ability to take responsibility

•an ability to draw on a full range of skills and potential

•an ability to overcome fear and prejudice

•an awareness of different cultures and value systems

•managing diversity, fostering skills and potential in others

•an ability to grasp and articulate complex relationships

•an ability to regard chaos and ambiguity as positive and creative

•openness and trust

•learning individuals in learning organisations

•a continuous search for excellence

Evolved to become a year-round learning programme with:

40 participants of different culture, generation, power and expertise:

Business people

Artists

People from public sector

Young people from a London college or youth arts group

Lift Business Arts Forum what happens?

1 Organising question or theme negotiated

between all parties

2 Attend events

3 What did we see? What did we learn?

Play, try, test, reflect

4 Stories of our own learning, action and

change

What did people learn?

• ‘It made everyone step out of their comfort zone and led me to think differently about the process of change.’

• ‘We really explored the idea of a multicultural company, acknowledging that everyone sees things differently.’

• ‘We must hear a minority view, even if we don’t like it.’

• ‘All the financial regulations in the world are worth nothing if you don’t understand the cultural context in which they are set. Lift helps sensitise you to just how complicated culture is.’’

• An artist has a view of how to reflect and shape the world; it matters not at all where the material comes from.’

• ‘The idea that you can achieve something from nothing and it comes from chaos.’

How did the money work? A snapshot from 1999

40 participants in Forum from business, public sector, arts, students

Development funds up front £31,000generated from different size companies from 5,000-10,000

Participants’ Fees from private and public sectorgrant from arts funders.

Total : 54,000

Costs approx 24,000

Surplus to Lift 30,000

No logos requested, no outcomes demanded

• Relationships of trust vital, civilities and actual     people who facilitate very important for     bringing strangers together.

• No grandstanding. No experts.

• Diversity of gender, age, culture and working    perspective.

• Qualities of physical space and welcome    important: natural daylight and good food.

• The more controversial the production the better    the conversation.

So what?

The ‘helicopter’ view…..Intimacy with business forged in earlier era now has capacity to offer routes to reflection and critique …..

"Most of our institutions focus on the politics of delivery which provide us with the

services we want. Lift is experimenting with the politics of invention and the skills of agreement

needed to survive an unpredictable future."

- Barbara Heinzen, geographer, Forum Adviser

How will we move beyond oil?

Rehearsing global learning connections at local level

None of us has the complete picture

Technology is not enough

Process over generations

Aesthetic exploration

Relationship to cosmos and specifics of place

The Lift Forum: engagement and experiment

A new neighbourliness in a global performing space

• Intimacy

• Diversity - age, culture, working experience, men    and women

• Working together project by project over time

Business Arts Forum methodology, relationships, timetable etc have informed Lift’s current artistic

trajectory.

Relationships from Lifting London still benefiting Lift 17 years later

Business Art Forum participants still engaging with arts and civic activities.

Some thoughts…..

If it isn’t working, try a new direction. Experiment. Try turning a crisis or dead-end on its head.

Starting by not knowing is an asset. Ask people’s advice. Walk in other worlds to make friends. Start with project champions.

What’s the invitation? Think collaboration, not competition.

Start with the art. Look for a different form of invitation.

Timing?

Think cultural commons… what are the big questions that are common to arts, business and civic interests?

How do you take a lead without formal authority?

Who are your allies?

Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement, Julia Rowntree, Routledge 2006.

The Turning World: Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre, Rose de Wend Fenton and Lucy Neal, Gulbenkian 2005.

Feeling for Stones: Learning and Invention When Facing the Unknown, Barbara Heinzen, 2003, www.barbaraheinzen.com

The Living Company: Growth, Learning and Longevity in Business, Arie de Geus, 1997, Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Two books about LIFT