This is the full version of Arts & Business’ letter in response to a comment piece by Mike Bradwell titled "The Arts Must Resist Corporate Sponsorship", which featured in the Evening Standard on Wednesday 7 July 2010.
"Mike Bradwell’s comments in his recent piece urging the arts to resist corporate money is not only flawed but profoundly dangerous to the arts. At a time when public funds are about to be cut to the bone and arts funding decimated for a generation he offers this advice. If a sponsors knocks on your theatre or gallery door, an arts fundraiser should ‘Tell them to bugger off.’
You may feel this reflects our current zeitgeist, the mood of distrust between people and business. Yet what if it meant museums closing, galleries going to the wall and productions shelved?
Every year the corporate community, both as individuals and companies, put in hundreds of millions towards the cultural life of this nation. Last year the figure stood at £655 million, impressive in a recession.
In the current circumstances to reject this money would be suicide. It would critically damage the arts, denying our children access to the rich cutural heritage we are all so proud of. If this was done in behest to a lightweight assertion that all companies are ‘evil’ would not only be suicide, it would be madness.
Clearly this is not a helpful or mature attitude. Quite apart from the gaping holes about to be blown in the cultural budgets up and down the land, this smacks of a received prejudice towards the corporate world. That prejudice has little intellectual heft and simply isn’t realistic. Businessmen and women, bankers and accountants are not universally evil and are, let’s be honest, a vital part of our everyday lives. Even the oil industry, the industry Mr Bradwell particularly targets, is staffed by human beings.
The arts and business can play a great role in the healing of our society after a traumatic year. I can assure him there are real live human beings in the corporate world who wish the arts well and want to give to them. Should we really vilify this? No we should not.
Business is a force for good in the arts across the whole country. It is not about selling out to the highest bidder. It is a time for doing all we can to ensure these creative alliances continue to allow the arts to flourish."
Colin Tweedy, Chief Executive of Arts & Business