The Great Sponsorship Makeover

Here is the first of our posts on sponsorship for cultural institutions and how the financial crisis is affecting the search. Claire analyses a very French point of view…

As France has responded better than a lot of other countries to the crisis, I find it relevant to look for what the cultural leaders here have to say about art, culture and how we can overcome financial hardships in terms of finding sponsorship. This is how I came across a column written by Alain Seban, Head of the Pompidou Center in Paris in Les Echos, a notable Economics newspaper. In it, he discusses how the financial crisis will consolidate the need to look at sponsorship in very new ways.

The article clearly takes a very French attitude. Seban is extremely quick to denounce “the excesses of unleashed capitalism” and the era “of easy money-making and the frenzy for contemporary art.” He keenly advocates the neccessity of shoring up “ public power, as well as  businesses taking into account new types of logics and ethics other than sheer profit-seeking.” Public power is the good alternative and business is implicitly unethical. This attitude is perhaps a little radical but on the whole he makes some really interesting points.

First of all I am thankful to Seban for not speculating once again as to whether culture will suffer a hard blow from the crisis. The crisis is global; it’s clear by now that no one is escaping. Instead, he offers a long-term analysis which, as Head of France’s greatest contemporary Arts Center, he is bound to be concerned with. I appreciate the way that he has injected substance and meaning into a debate which currently seems to simply panic about financial cuts and a shortage of money.

Seban believes that the crisis does not hinder the search for sponsorship but rather gives an opportunity for a total change of the system, with an emphasis on social responsibility which should benefit cultural institutions: “We are not considering a ‘crisis-driven sponsorship’, funded on a small scale – which we believe to be superficial and inefficient – but a full sponsorship makeover, sealing a true socially-driven partnership between cultural institutions and firms.”

His discussion about how you can, and must, work with other sponsorship fields to create partnerships is particularly thought-provoking. According to him, cultural institutions should by now have stopped ranking relief-related projects, environment, sports and culture on a scale of 1 to 4 and getting depressed because they are languishing at the bottom of the competition.

I can only recognise that the new trends he mentions – such as the necessity of creatively merging culture and art with environement, aid projects or sports instead of letting them stay in their golden towers – already exist and are more under the spotlight than ever in this climate. Working on renewed and more integrated partnerships was the way forward before the crisis, and I think still is. In this respect, Alain Seban definitely has a point.

Yet the article gives way to new questions: if we are to consider a merging of social, environmental and relief-related projects, what forms are they to take, concretely speaking? Can charity trusts or fondations support museums? For an organisation such as the Fondation de l’Abbé Pierre, funding cultural institutions would be inconceivable because it falls outside of its legal remit. But what about the relationship between relief organisations and culture for example? Yann Arthus Bertrand’s recent exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, 1 Billion Others, enjoyed a very successful partnership with Médecins du Monde, who provided financial aid and fascinating speakers throughout the exhibition.

If museums allow themselves to think outside the proverbial box and look to new socially-driven sponsorship relationships, they will inject more and more diveristy into their programmes and visions. As Seban says, “a society open to the questions raised by its artist is more dynamic and likely to evolve, to challenge itself and to face the future.”