Search launched to find private funder to fill subsidy holes after Osborne challenge

The National Campaign for the Arts have joined forces with Arts & Business to create a new forum to “reanimate” private sector cultural support to meet the government’s challenge for alternative funding.

Twenty forum members will be elected by the combined membership of the two organisations’ of 1,650 member bodies, focussing at first on England.

“The forum will be the independent voice for the arts focusing on the immediate needs of the arts and the role of the private sector in helping to deliver those needs” said Louise de Winter, director of the NCA. “It will be democratically elected ensuring that voices from large and small, metropolitan and regional organisations are represented. We will be offering the forum as the consultative group that the government can work with to make the best decisions for our cultural funding ecology going forward.”

It is to go into action almost immediately. The formal call for candidates was made yesterday, and the first dialogue of the elected forum members wil take place before the end of July.

Colin Tweedy, chief executive of A&B , said: “The chancellor has challenged the nation to begin a dialogue on the way forward. Arts & Business with the NCA are immediately responding by creating a dialogue with our combined arts memberships of over 1,650 cultural bodies, to identify the impact of where cuts might fall, where growth can come and how we can build our collective cultural capacity for the future.”

Winter added that arts organisations were particularly vulnerable to local authority spending cuts. “It is often those organisations away from the metropolitan centres that struggle with business and private funding” she said. “This forum provides an opportunity for the sector to identify strengths and weaknesses and create a platform on which arts organisations can build stronger relations with private funders, particularly in the regions.”