Philanthropy

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for the opportunity to debate this important topic. I will concentrate on philanthropy from the perspective of the arts, culture and heritage and so this debate is also very timely because, next week, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will be launching the department’s philanthropy strategy.

The coalition is strongly committed to the arts and heritage, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State fought long and hard to achieve what he could against the background of a very tough spending review. This includes National Lottery funding being restored to its original good causes. However, this debate is about philanthropy, and we on these Benches believe—as did the previous Government, the former Minister for Culture, Margaret Hodge, being a particular champion—that philanthropy plays an extremely important role in providing funding and support for the arts and that the role philanthropy plays can and should become even more important.

There is much to celebrate about the state of philanthropy in the UK today and we applaud the generosity of the British people who support countless good causes. Only a couple of weeks ago, more than £18 million was raised for Children in Need. So far as the arts, culture and heritage are concerned, I shall provide a few facts and figures. The sector received £126 million in donations of more than £1 million in 2008-09 and was the second most popular destination for million-pound donations after higher education. Overall, private investment in the arts and culture stood at £655 million in 2008-09. The Art Fund has saved more than 860,000 works of art through its campaigns directed at a public who have responded with their all-important pounds and pence.

The noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, mentioned the need for innovation and imagination. New and exciting forms of private support for the arts are emerging, such as All Visual Arts—set up by hedge fund billionaire Mike Platt—which aims to reinvent the age-old tradition of artistic patronage by investing in artists up-front. The artist receives money in advance that is offset against the final sale price of his or her work, with any profit split 50:50. Art dealers habitually take up to 70 per cent of the sale price, with no advance involved. This way of proceeding means that very few artists can make a living. At All Visual Arts, patrons receive a return on their investment, but the financial arrangement is much more favourable to the artist. This kind of social investment—sometimes called blended-value investment, because there is some financial return and a measurable social return—provides a different kind of support from government and should be encouraged further.

Another scheme at the other end of the philanthropic scale is called crowd funding. It involves encouraging large numbers of people to give small amounts of money through the web. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has already mentioned my noble friend Lady Barker—here I declare an interest, because she is a real friend as well as a noble friend—who is involved in a website called “See the Difference”, which is dedicated to the charity sector. In the arts sector next year there is to be launched a site called “We Did This”, which will focus on the arts. This is citizen philanthropy, and may have been inspired by the Art Fund’s brilliant campaign back in 2007, which successfully saved Turner’s “The Blue Rigi” for the nation, when members of the public were asked to pledge their support by buying “a brushstroke”. Both schemes promote the involvement of the giver with the cause they are donating to.

The Government need to do more to help organisations raise money so I make some suggestions, some of which have been mentioned. As a nation, we are not good at celebrating private giving. More should be done to make donors and their contributions more visible, which would demonstrate publicly the impact that they have on the organisations and individuals who receive them. The director of development for the National Galleries of Scotland has found that donors need to see a link between their gift and the projects that get released in the country. Gift Aid has been mentioned, as has the acceptance in lieu scheme being extended to cover lifetime gifts of works of art. We should also look at match funding, which has been hugely successful in helping to raise money for UK universities. Organisations that are looking to reduce their reliance on public funding by expanding their activities and developing their business models will need help during the transition period. Returning to universities, a crucial lesson learnt was the importance of investing in fundraising skills at all levels from vice-chancellors to new graduates.

The role of philanthropy in the area of arts and culture is emphatically to complement, rather than to act as a substitute for, government funding. Public money dispensed by arm’s-length bodies free from political or commercial considerations is a key part of the equation, and one that the generosity of individuals cannot and should not replace. Different sources of funding will work for different organisations, and we want a funding structure for the arts and culture that enables the greatest variety of artists and art forms to flourish. This includes supporting the risky and challenging and allowing the right to offend. With that thought in mind, I end with Oscar Wilde:

“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic”.