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ROLEX PLAY
20.12.2011 / Funding / 0 Comments
Every two years Rolex gathers the arts mentors and protégés it sponsors, past and future, for a weekend. This time it was in New York, and Sebastian Scotney was there
Rolex facilitates, oversees and supports the leading net- work of major figures in the arts. As the American theatre director Peter Sellars said at the Rolex Arts Weekend in New York: "No museum, no festival, no literary jour- nal has anything to match this net- work. The conversation is thrilling. It is absolutely necessary. And after a decade it has depth."
The Geneva-based watchmaker also provides contexts such as the two- yearly Arts Weekend for them to meet. As a bystander, one can witness – as in a dream - unlikely juxtapositions and encounters between people from dif-ferent branches of the arts or parts of the globe: Anish Kapoor (sculptor) chatting casually with Hans Magnus Enzensberger (poet), or Jessye Norman (singer) and Gilberto Gil (a different kind of singer), carried by the moment to busk through “Girl from Ipanema”.
The principles behind all of Rolex's philanthropic activities are the company's values - “quality, know-how and individual achievement”. Rolex start- ed making awards in conservation, exploration and science in 1976. In 1999 the company decided to establish an international programme which would support individual artists.
According to Rebecca Irvin, who runs philanthropy at Rolex, they wanted to build a programme which could “have an impact, and be different and useful”. A two-year reflection/incubation process led them to establish the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, across six disciplines: dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts.
The network of advisors is given the task once every two years of selecting six emerging artists as protégés. The sixth round of mentors was announced last month [see box over- leaf]. Each mentor is given a shortlist of three potential protégés, meets them, and chooses one. The protégés are under no obligation to produce work. The experience is designed so that they have “time to learn, create and grow”. They spend a minimum of six weeks with their mentors, all the practical arrangements being overseen by a specifically assigned member of the Rolex philanthropy team. The mentors receive an honorarium, protégés receive a stipend.
“It was a such a nice surprise, the way they deal with artists, work the particularities of each person, the respect they give you” said the young Lebanese theatre director Maya Zbib who in 2010 was partnered with Sellars. “Bree Jebson from the programme just said to me 'The important thing is for you and Peter to spend time together'”.
And how was working with Sellars? “From the first moment I felt I had met a great gift. Peter is a per- son who opens doors. He under- stands things about you which you don't understand yourself, great perception, intuition.”
The first initiative Sellars took was to invite Zbib to join him working with Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula “The travel agents said don't go. I just said yes” she told me. The visit turned out to be a powerful experience for her - “the memory of pain and blood- shed stays in the bone marrow of a city” she said.
And what about the long term impact of this year working with Peter Sellars? “The relationships and repercussions are not going to stop” she told me. “It's like planting seeds”
There have been shifts in the programme's emphasis, most notably in music. Mentor/protégé relation- ships were first tried in classical music, but pathways for the elite in classical music are well defined and supported, so Rolex has shifted to world and experimental music, working with artists such as Brian Eno and Youssou N'Dour.
Rolex is a private company with- out external shareholders to answer to. The permanent team, mostly based in Geneva, is stable. High lev- els of dedication, professionalism and pro-activeness run through the whole activity. They encourage the protégés to get to know each other. “The whole experience was remark- able” Maya Zbib said. “It was fascinating to meet people from different disciplines, it sparked useful conversations”. An unqualified commendation, then.
In the hard-pressed world of British arts, where public sector is the rock and philanthropy a very hard place, such generous funding might seem a dream-world.
From a British perspective, how- ever, one can speculate how differently things might have turned out. Rolex's founder Hans Wilsdorf was happily married to an Englishwoman and running Rolex's forerunner company with a staff of 60 from London - until Lloyd George’s government slapped hefty import duty on watch mechanisms, forcing him to emigrate and to found Rolex in Geneva in 1919.
In the context of how much it all costs, it is certain that Rolex's entire worldwide arts philanthropy activity costs just a fraction of the £20m the taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland lavishes annually on Six Nations rugby. The oasis of calm of a profitable private company that is determined to assert such positive values provides a model of what can be achieved if belief and commitment are matched with consistent support over time.
www.rolexmentorprotege.com/
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