Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director, Barbican Centre

INCREASING THE FLOW OF CAPITAL FOR GOOD - INVESTING AND GIVING

Sir Nicholas Kenyon
Magazine article

The Action Plan is such a great idea: it’s just a pity we didn’t action it a bit sooner.  

If a case for philanthropy – supported by new flexibility in tax arrangements, enabling endowments, and making the most of the committed enthusiasm of our non-doms as well as residents – had been pitched by government in the good years for the arts, when funding was rising and activity thriving, everyone would have got the message that we were building on success, a success that has made the arts in the UK the envy of the world.

That vitality of the arts is still there, on a huge scale: audiences flock to what we offer across music, theatre, cinema and the visual arts; halls are sold out and response to great art is passionate, as we have found at the Barbican with events from the stunning Black Watch, the innovative exhibition of live zebra finches, and the power of the LSO under Gergiev and Colin Davis.

Jeremy Hunt will say, as he did, that philanthropy is not there to replace public funding. But the fact is that now the idea has to be pitched into the most challenging period for the arts, where public spending cuts will impact drastically not only on the Arts Council as a source of funding, but also on local authorities, arts and humanities teaching, and all the other elements which make up the delicate balance that enables the infrastructure of the nation’s arts to hang together.

No-one wants to give money to fill a black hole. No-one wants to give money against an impending deficit. We all want to be associated with success and we want to make a difference, enabling new activity to happen and new projects to thrive.

At the Barbican we have many such plans as we develop our vision for Creative Learning and our partnership links with East London, creating the model of tomorrow’s international arts and learning centre. But we are aware that we are privileged to be in London, able to draw on the capital’s resources, and really should be able to flourish: elsewhere there are major challenges.

There is much food for thought in both the excellent reports by Alan Davey and Neil MacGregor, and both make clear that endowments and philanthropy, both for the performing or the visual arts, cannot be the only answer. They must be underpinned by a secure mixed model dependent on public funding which is endorsed and supported both by government and by people around the country.

In this new artistic world we argue for collaboration and partnership, drawing organisations together into alliances which we embrace as a new model of the way forward, sharing resources and artistic aims. It is worth being aware that the single most sensitive area on which to collaborate is fundraising and development, since there are real questions of ownership, long-term loyalties, friendships and opportunities to be addressed.

A renewed emphasis on audiences and what they need, what they respond to, may well have profound consequences for institutions like ours, and for what we provide. A new deal for the arts that puts our audiences first, and institutions second, could lead to a vigorously radical period for the arts – with the Government’s active support of the philanthropy agenda driving a sector that has always been highly creative in responding to change.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon
Sir Nicholas Kenyon became managing director of the Barbican Centre in October 2007. He was Director of the BBC Proms from 1996 to 2007. As a music critic he wrote for The New Yorker, The Times and Observer, and was editor of Early Music 1983-92. He was appointed Controller of BBC Radio 3 in 1992. He has continued to write and lecture on the arts, publishing books on Mozart, Simon Rattle, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and early music. He is a board member of the English National Opera and Sage Gateshead, a trustee of the Dartington Hall Trust and a member of Arts Council England. He also sits on the Cultural Olympiad Board. He was knighted in the 2008 New Year Honours.

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