A&B Awards show leadership of arts and commerce together.

The arts are showing the rest of the country the way out of recession, said Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts & Business, and the non-subsidy support of arts is ensuring they stay on course.

Speaking at the 31st annual A&B Awards at the V&A, Tweedy said the winners “show the astounding variety of imaginative partnerships possible between culture and commerce.

“If there has been a knock to the reputation of business during this recession, the arts are proving a perfect way for them to reconnect with their communities. Business has no obligation to support the arts” he said. “That they continue to do so is a force for good for all our collective futures.”

He said that In 2004 A&B had set themselves three years to change. “We relaunched with our young professionals programme; our master classes which have been sold out; Culture House for private givers; and the Prince of Wales Medal for philanthropy in the arts” he said. There was also, he said, a new online art gallery, and A&B were now working on a blue print for private giving for after the election.

The prestigious Goodman Award for an outstanding voluntary contribution was won by Lady Solti, the widow of conductor Sir George Solti, particularly for her work with young people through Sadler’s Wells theatre. Accepting her trophy – a miniature wooden temple made by Afghanistani craftsmen sponsored by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation based in Kabul, as all the awards this year were - Lady Solti said: “I want to share this with all fellow volunteers who are so important to the arts – now more than ever. It’s all about sharing, all about achieving accessibility together”.

Earlier, A&B’s chair Baroness Helena Kennedy had announced that she was standing down with immediate effect, a year in to her second three year term. She is being replaced interim by Steve Williams of Unilever and the post is to be advertised.

Other winners of awards were:

JTI A&B Community Award – Liberty Stadium and Pippin’s Designs
Pippin Designs, a charity that works with disabled, special needs and vulnerable children, has partnered with Liberty Stadiums on a community art project to fill the empty Liberty football stadium with art created by the children

Prudential A&B People Development Award – Translink Metro & Belfast Actors
Belfast Actors developed an unusual way to improve the services for Translink Metro through a training scheme where actors posed as customers. This engagement gave drivers the confidence and tools to deal with real life situations and resulted in the highest customer satisfaction on record and increased passenger numbers.

A&B Young People Award – Ernst & Young and South London Gallery
Ernst & Young and the South London Gallery came together to give young people from local schools the chance to put together their own exhibition. The highly successful Double Take programme took learning out of the textbook and made it real for over 4,000 students.

British Council A&B International Award – Takeda Pharmaceutical & London Symphony Orchestra
Pharmaceuticals giant Takeda has taken the London Symphony Orchestra to audiences throughout the world through a staggering 192 sponsored concerts so far. The “Musicians on Call” initiative takes music to the housebound or those in hospitals across the world, promoting the important relationship between music and health. Takeda’s continued support enables LSO to perform artistically demanding programmes across the world.

A&B Cultural Branding Award – Deloitte & Royal Opera House
Ignite, an annual contemporary arts festival broke new ground for both partners, building on their reputation for excellence. The judges felt the partnership was a stand-out example of cultural branding – revolutionary for both brands, as well as engaging staff and clients and bringing a new community together.

BP A&B Sustained Partnership Award – UBS and Circus Space
Circus Space was a derelict power station but with sustained support from UBS has been transformed into an internationally recognised arts powerhouse.

Prudential A&B Board Member of the Year Award – Ferry van Dijk and Hoxton Hall
Ferry Van Dijk is a manager for new business development at Shell. Ferry, who was previously a mentor for teenagers and involved in leading student and political youth bodies, was a perfect match for Hoxton Hall by bringing his business acumen to the arts today.



Lloyd’s A&B Innovation Prize – Edding Pens and Monorex
Monorex arts collective supports new talent on the London arts scene through their Secret Wars live art event. Monorex approached Edding (pens) UK to arm their warring artists with the necessary ink.

Women in the arts are being pushed to the fore in a new scheme being promoted by ACE’s Cultural Leadership Programme.

The CLP is appealing for nominations for a new “Women to Watch” list of female leaders in the arts in an attempt to enhance recognition of the achievement and potneital of emerging women in the sector.

“We firmly believe that an important part of the drive to tackle under-representation is to recognise and celebrate good practice and, crucially, to support and encourage emerging and mid-career women leaders in the sector” said Hilary Carty, director of the CLP. “By launching this list we are hoping to engage a variety of senior leaders in supporting the advancement of talented women across our industries.”

The list will be launched in March to coincide with International Women’s Day, with submissions being judged by a panel chaired by Jenni Murray, presenter of BBC Radio’s Woman’s House.

The panel are looking for submissions from the realms of advertising, archives, crafts, design, libraries, literature, museums, music, performing and visual arts, the historic environment and other creative businesses. They should be for women in the positions of artistic director, chief executive, managing director, chair or organisational lead.

“There are nowhere near enough women in positions of power and influence, whether it be in the cultural and creative industries or other sectors” Ms Murray said. “We need to do everything we can to enable and encourage the next generation.”

The arts have traditionally been more encouraging to talented women, and currently a number of key posts are held by females. Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund both have female chairs, and the latter’s chief executive is also a woman. The London Symphony Orchestra’s managing director is a woman, as is the Southbank’s artistic director and the Minister for Culture.

However, CLP believes that despite culture being worth £56.5 billion and 8% of the overall UK economy, there is a lack of investment in leadership in the creative and cultural sector and in particular there are significantly fewer women in positions of leadership than men.

ACE chair Dame Liz Forgan has called for the arm’s length principle of funding for the arts to be upheld in the face of a deepening row over the appointment of a new chair for Arts Council London.

Speaking at a Theatre Management Association conference last week, she said the principle had kept the arts independent for more than 60 years.

“It keeps the arts free of political interference in the content and nature of creative expression” she said. “It protects politicians from being held accountable for the occasionally outrageous, offensive or otherwise troublesome work of artists.

“It is looked at jealously by artists in some countries that do not have these arrangements…(and) is seen as an emblem of good practice all over the world.”

Her remarks are being seen as a thinly veiled reference to the controversy over the appointment of Lady Sue Hollick’s successor as chairman of London’s regional arts council.

She had been embroiled in a row involving the Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, refusing to accept a nomination for the chair of the London Arts Council by London Mayor Boris Johnson. She had been co-opted onto a shot listing panel which included the mayor’s noisome, Veronica Wadley, but who Dame Liz said in a leaked letter to Bradshaw was not as well qualified as other candidates, and the panel left her off the shortlist. Wadley was nevertheless put forward on Johnson’s insistence and appointed after a Greater London Assembly interview, but the appointment was not accepted by Bradshaw who accused the mayor of political interference, which Johnson has refuted.

She has now named Ajay Choudhry, artistic director of Rented Space Theatre and CEO of the digital media company Enqii. It is not a political issue, she said, but a matter of good management of the arts.

Venues in Burnley have been put under pressure not to stage a controversial new play about the town, claims director Max Stafford Clark.
Stafford-Clark’s company, Out of Joint, are currently touring their production of Mixed Up North, set in a youth theatre group in Burnley in a number of venues throughout the North West of England and in London.
But dates in Burnley itself were cancelled after pressure was applied by senior figures in the council, he says.
“We were lined up to do Burnley Mechanics Institute, Burnley Youth Theatre and a local school, but for a variety of reasons, none of the dates went ahead,“ says Stafford Clark, who co-wrote the play with Robin Soans, to examine the aftermath of racial tensions in the town which boiled up in riots in 2001. But he added that Burnley youth theatre admitted that they had been under pressure from the council not to go ahead because the play “presented the town in a bad light”.
Stafford Clark said that an e-mail from Burnley to colleagues in Bolton council, where the play was presented at the Octagon theatre, also complained of Bolton’s decision to allow the play to be shown there.
If the play had gone ahead and people didn’t like it, fair enough,” said the former Royal Court director. “But to try and ensure that it doesn’t get shown in Burnley is a disturbing example of censorship. There is a sense in some official quarters that they would rather some issues were swept under the carpet.”
Based on real testimony from young people and social workers in a multi-racial theatre group set up to improve community relations, the play deals with continuing tensions between different racial groups, sexual violence and the town’s attempts to bury its past.

A future Tory government could merge English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund and demand cuts in the distribution costs of grant giving bodies like the Arts Council.
Speaking at a meeting to discuss the future of heritage, shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt promised that museums and art galleries currently classed as Non-Departmental Public Bodies will be reclassified so they have greater independence from government.
Accusing the Labour government of neglecting the heritage sector, Hunt said that, with 14 ministers responsible for heritage in 12 years, it had been “impossible to get any consistency in policy making”
He promised that under the Tories, major cultural institutions would be freed from Treasury rules. A new Conservative government would introduce a Museums and Heritage Bill to establish a new administrative status for non-departmental public bodies within the cultural and heritage sectors. The new status would allow them “to be truly effective and entrepreneurial fundraising bodies” able to raise money for capital projects and for endowments on the US model. A new administration would also explore long-term funding agreements, possibly stretching beyond 3 years, in return for a solid commitment to build up endowments and alternative income sources.
But the shadow culture secretary added that during tough economic times, “we need to ask whether English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund should exist as separate grant-giving entities. The arts and sports world manage with one, and by HLF’s own figures combining their functions with EH would save £7 million.”
Hunt also said that “administration costs of 9% at HLF and 8% at the Arts Council “are still too high”, adding “we believe that lottery distributors should have distribution costs no more than 5%.” This could generate an extra £30 to £40 million of lottery funds for the heritage sector from 2012 on.
He also repeated the Tory pledge to restore the Lottery to its original four good causes and to introduce tax changes to boost philanthropy.

Up to a quarter of jobs at Scottish arts Council and Scottish Screen could be lost in the merger to form Creative Scotland next year.
The new business plan for the merged body reveals that it will have 33 fewer full-time posts than the current level of 146 full-time positions within the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen combined. Traditional departments will disappear and managers will hotdesk at locations across Scotland. Headquarters will be in Edinburgh but the agency will retain offices in Glasgow too.
Scottish arts chiefs say all job losses will be voluntary and £1 million has been earmarked for payoffs. Current funding arrangements for grants will remain at least for the first six months following Creative Scotland’s start-up. But implementation director Richard Smith warned, “Creative Scotland will be an organisation that has to be prepared to make some tough decisions, not to take the easy line. It will not be a comfy pair of slippers.”

Latest figures suggest that the government’s drive to create more cultural opportunities for young people is working - at least for older children.

A survey for the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) shows that 45% of 5-15 year olds are participating in five hours of cultural activity a week. The findings from the survey Taking Part: The National Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport reveal that 66% of 11-15 year olds had more than five hours of cultural activities in and out of school, while the figure for . of 5-10 year olds was 26%.

Paul Collard, chief executive of Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE), which delivers the government’s pilot cultural offer Find Your Talent, says: ““Access to cultural opportunity is too important to be an accident of geography or the privilege of a minority and we are already exploring various ways to overcome the challenges of in enabling all children to access culture.”

News focus

Twelve arts schemes have been chosen from the Artists Taking The Lead competition as the four arts councils’ main contribution to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, led by Arts Council England, London

The 12 works of art that will mark the 2012 Olympics have been chosen. “They will lift your spirits” said the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell. “Many of them will also make you smile.”

The winning commissions sharing £5.4m have been selected from 2,000 applications, and many from notable artists have failed. “They were just not good enough” said one of the selectors. “What we have is invention, delight, surprise and great quality”.

The nine English regions will each receive £500,000, Northern Ireland £190,000, Scotland £460,000 and Wales £230,000, contributed by all four arts councils.

EAST

On Languard Point, the Pacitti Theatre Company. Whole communities are being involved with 205 black flags being flown around the coast, gradually replaced by the flags of participating nations; there will be street feasts and a whole cul-de-sac of houses will be painted black and become a theatrical arena; disused shops will house exhibitions of ephemera, and the talents of composer Michael Nyman and choreographer Wayne McGregor as well as radical theatre director Robert Pacitti are being harnessed.

EAST MIDLANDS

Lionheart, Shauna Richardson. Three 30-foot high crocheted lions, inspired by Richard the Lionheart who was associated with the region, will dominate the Nottingham skyline. Richardson wants to highlight crochet as a contemporary arts medium.

LONDON

Bus-Tops, Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu. Forty bus shelters across all the London boroughs will have LED panels fitted to their roofs on which Londoners will be able to send messages, play games and make statements, exploiting the ct-creativity of a new audience for art – those who travel on the top decks of double-decker buses.

NORTH EAST

Flow, the Owl Project and Ed Carter. An environmentally friendly watermill will float on the Tyne with the artwork generating its own power and monitoring the river’s environment. Musical instruments will play, activated by the data, and audiences will be invited to interact.

NORTH WEST

Project Column, Anthony McCall and FACT. Produced by Liverpool’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Anthony McCall’s column of spinning loud will rise from Birkenhead’s disused Morpeth Dock, visible 10 metres away, which will disappear and reappear in structures sequences.

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Nest, Brian Irvine and John McIlduff (as Dumbworld). The people of the Northern Ireland will be asked to donate an item each to be fashioned into a gigantic work of art by artists and designs, and then to become the official point for large-=scale musical event.

SCOTLAND

Forest Pitch, Craig Coulthard. Trees in a secluded part of a forest near Edinburgh will be cleared and a football pitch created for one match only, played by two teams of amateurs. The trees will form the goalposts sand the spectator stand, and after the game the area will be left to return to nature.

SOUTH EAST

The Boat Project, Lone Twin (Greg Whelan and Gary Winters). People in the south east will be asked to contribute a wooden object of personal significance to be use in building a sea-going boat, which will be launched in May 2012 on a two week voyage. The boat will then be the centre of four arts events, performance, visual, test-based and sonic.

SOUTH WEST

Nowhereisland, Alex Hartley. An island the size of a football pitch found by the artist in the Arctic will be brought to the south west through international waters, will be given “micronation” status, and will navigate the coast visiting ports and harbours accompanied by a travelling embassy. There are already 359 signed up citizens.

WALES

Adain Avion, Marc Rees. An abandoned DC9 aeroplane fashioned into a wingless bird will “nest” around the principality, pulled to each site by teams of local athletes and community members.

WEST MIDLANDS

Godiva Awakes, Imagineer Productions. Lady Godiva’s ride will be re-enacted as a progress from Coventry to London by a 10 metre high puppet, made form aluminium and carbon fibre, and symbolising equality, fair play and justice.

YORKSHIRE

Leeds Canvas, Leeds Canvas. This is a collaboration of artists and arts organisations in Leeds that will use the buildings, streets and people of the city as a “canvas”, with the assistance of the Quay Brothers as artistic directors. Opera North, Northern Ballet, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Phoenix Dance, Yorkshire Dance, Leeds Met Gallery, Situation Leeds, Leeds Art Gallery are all working with Leeds City Council.

One in the EYF for Tate, BFI, British Library, British Museum and Stonehenge

The “black hole” in DCMS funding that appeared to have ended hopes for a series of important cultural capital developments has been more than filled after negotiations between the department and the Treasury, it has emerged.

Tate Modern, the British Film Institute, the British Library, the British Museum and Stonehenge are all to benefit in a £160.5m package announced by culture secretary Ben Bradshaw.

The shortfall reported in the summer transpired because of a Treasury shift in the rules covering what is known in Whitehall as “EYF” – end year flexibility. Public bodies are usually allowed to shift money unspent at the end of a financial year to other projects or keep it for future use, but this year the Treasury because of the recession told all government departments EYF would not apply. This meant that capital funding already promised to the Tate, the British Library and British Museum were no longer guaranteed.

There followed intense negotiations with between Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, and the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, when the case was won on the grounds that the capital development would mean important work for the building industry, and that enhanced cultural facilities had a proven economic benefit.

In the package announced by the Prime Minister, there was a new commitment to establishing the BFI’s National Film Centre on the Southbank and for a visitor centre at Stonehenge.

But the decision will mean some pain. The Treasury has only guaranteed £60m for the current financial round and DCMS will have to find £10m savings across its budget, and the burden of that will fall on culture. One resultant economy is likely to be the delay of the move of ACE West Midlands into new premises. The British Museum’s money would not be called on until the next financial round.

The projects
National Film Centre, £45m. This will showcase the best of British and world cinema across five screens, as well as creating an innovative new space for exhibitions, cultural events, research and study, on the Hungerford car park site. The total cost is expected to be £166 million with the London Development Agency is providing £5 million and the British Film Institute will fundraise to meet the balance. The project should be completed by 2015.‪

Stonehenge Visitor Centre, £10m. Planning permission has been applied for and will be considered in the next few weeks. At a cost of £25m, the long awaited new centre is expected to be open in 2012 in time for the extra visitors engendered by the Olympics.

Tate Modern extension, £50m. Costed at £215m, the extension will create a new building, increasing the gallery’s size by 60 per cent and to allow it to display more of its permanent collection. The hope is for completion in 2012.

British Museum exhibitions and conservation centre, £22.5m. An on-off project, it is now on again but will cost £100m and he government is not expected to be called on until 2011-12 rather than 2010-11.

British Library newspaper storage, £33m. This will shift the unique collection from its home in north London, where already 15% is beyond saving, to Yorkshire and an e efficient, high-density, low-oxygen storage.

News focus

Arts Council England close the books today, October 9, on their Sustain programme, devised to help arts organisations survive the recession, after just four months.

With a week’s notice, today is the last date for applications to the £40m fund from lottery money, but it may not be the end of ACE’s rescue mission. When the last grants are made in November the council will assess whether more help, and perhaps a Sustain 2, will be necessary, and if so where the funds would come from.

“The speed at which Sustain’s funds are being awarded is indicative of just how much the fund was needed” said Alan Davey, ACE’s chief executive. “And there are still big challenges ahead – we need to look beyond the recession to the long term future of the arts in this country and to maintaining and developing their world class quality through continued high levels of public and private investment.”

ACE chair Dame Liz Forgan announced the scheme in April this year, to provide extra financial and technical support over and above existing funding. “Of course, we understand that the national debt has to be tackled, but a few million off the arts budget is going to make no appreciable difference to that task” She said then. “On the other hand, it could undermine years of creative and financial investment. The Arts Council will do all it can to keep that investment in place.”

In the fourth round of awards there are 16 beneficiaries with grants ranging from £940,000 to £84,900, most of them to help with falling box office revenue and disappearing income from trusts and foundations but also, as in the case of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, education, community and audience development work.

The money is paid over two years and projected to cover the estimated period of the effects of the recession, “meaning the positive effects of the programme will continue to be felt up to March 2011” said the ACE’s spokeswoman, adding that the indications were that applications were diminishing and that those organisations most in need were being helped.

To date ACE has handed out £17m from the National Lottery fuelled fund in 52 awards from 151 applications, and there are applications still being considered worth £35m for the last £23m. The last tranch of grants from Sustain is expected to be made in November.

The latest beneficiaries from the Sustain Fund are:

Northampton Theatres Trust, £940,000
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, £568,000
Salisbury Playhouse, £400,000
Northern Stage, Newcastle, £376,000
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, £350,000
Battersea Arts Centre, London, £295,000
The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury £261,300
Almeida Theatre Co., London, £175,000
St George’s Bristol, £171,000
Eastside Educational Trust, London, £150,000
Camden Arts Centre, £140,000
Barbican Theatre, Plymouth, £135,300
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, £117,700
The Poetry Trust, Suffolk, £102,000
Music Beyond Mainstream, North Yorkshire, £94,000
Arts Depot Trust, London, £84,900