Arts organisations encouraged to rely on private money instead of subsidies

Jeremy Hunt announces £55m scheme to help arts organisations build American-style endowment funds The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has announced a £55m scheme to help and encourage arts organisations to build up endowment funds from private money rather than being too reliant on public subsidy. Hunt has put former Conservative miniter Michael Portillo in charge of the scheme, which will see organisations competing for around 50 grants of between £500,000 and £5m to match the money they raise from private sources. Driving up philanthropic giving to the arts and creating more US-style endowment funds is one of Hunt’s centrepiece cultural policies. In a speech at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London he said: “It took the Met in New York over 100 years to build up their £2bn endowment. I want our endowments century to start today.” Hunt accepted that many arts organisations were fragile. “They are led by talented, passionate people who rightly think that great art matters more than great money. Yet without financial security, fragility becomes vulnerability – and great art can sometimes wither on the vine.” The scheme is part of a £100m pot of money to boost philanthropy which includes £50m from Arts Council England, £30m from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and £20m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Last week, the Arts Council announced its £40m philanthropy scheme, Catalyst Arts, which aims to make sure organisations have the skills, time and tools to raise private money. The new “endowment fund” scheme will require organisations to raise, on average, £2 from private sources for every £1 they get from public money. That means the £55m scheme aims to unlock £110m from private sources. Hunt said it was all about arts organisations becoming more stable and not being reliant on one source of money. Applications for the money will open in October, with decisions expected early next year. Alan Davey, the Arts Council’s chief executive, welcomed the announcement, calling it “another important step in helping to make arts organisations more sustainable in the long term”. The speech came on the day the Guardian revealed that Nicolas Kent, the artistic director at London’s Tricycle theatre for 27 years, was standing down because of arts cuts . He said philanthropy was not a panacea for the arts and proved very difficult to attract for the type of work the Tricycle specialised in, such as political theatre and black and Asian theatre. Hunt said the Tricycle’s 11% cut in Arts Council funding was a lot less than many organisations in the public sector were going through. But he added: “I don’t want to pretend it’s easy for anyone. Nor do I think that philanthropy is going to plug the gap in every case and that’s why it is really important that we have public funding. It’s really important that we have a mixed economy in the arts.” Arts funding Jeremy Hunt Philanthropy Mark Brown guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 4, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.