Corporate Sponsorship a Fine Art : Governments Extol Programs, but Some Artists Wary

William Shakespeare depended on England’s noblemen for the cash to launch his plays.

Today, the name of an insurance company stands beside that of the Bard on posters advertising Royal Shakespeare Company productions.

The world-famous theater company is just one among many European arts organizations whose state grants have been boosted by funds from major corporations.

But while cash-pinched governments extol the advantages of business sponsorship, some arts organizations are unhappy about the commercial presence in their world.

“Commercial people’s judgment is now influencing the arts far more dangerously than government interference has ever done,” said Philip Hedley, director of the Theater Royal, which is situated in the poorest part of London’s East End.

“The arts need financial stability. But these private funds can be withdrawn on the whim of a company chairman.”

According to a report on private sponsorship published by the Council of Europe in September, there is a growing trend of business sponsorship in Europe.

Italian banks and companies have a long tradition of funding of the arts. Several nations, including Britain, West Germany, France and the Netherlands, run incentive schemes to encourage more businesses to participate.

The report shows that even Sweden, which traditionally ranked culture with social welfare as a state responsibility, has begun to show interest in commercial funding.

The catalyst in the increase of commercial funding of the arts in Britain over the past three years has been the Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme, which is state-funded but administered by an independent organization called the Assn. for Business Sponsorship for the Arts, or ABSA. Under the scheme, the government matches funds offered to an arts organization by a first-time business sponsor and can give one-third of funding offered by a business that has sponsored the arts before.

According to ABSA, British businesses have been quick to see the marketing advantages of arts sponsorship.

More than 220 companies have joined the association since it was founded by the business community 12 years ago. And the money put into the arts by business sponsors now totals more than 30 million pounds ($52.5 million). That compares to 600,000 pounds ($1 million) in 1976.

Companies have found that sponsoring an arts organization or event enables them to enhance their image for a fraction of their advertising budget.

“We undertake our sponsorships purely for business reasons,” said David Charlton, sponsorship manager at Mobil UK. “We like to link our name with excellence and quality.”

Government Aid Up

Mobil spends 300,000 pounds ($500,000) a year on sponsored projects, including its own touring theater company, a competition for aspiring playwrights and an annual concert season with world-famous stars such as Kiri Te Kanawa and Mstislav Rostropovich.

“We look for entertainment opportunities and we want to get the message across that we’re a company worth doing business with,” Charlton said.

Some British arts organizations fear the government wants to encourage sponsorship in order to reduce the state subsidy for arts and libraries, which totaled 339 million pounds ($600 million) in 1987.

But the Arts Council of Great Britain, the main channel of government aid to the arts, says these suspicions have been disproved by a 17% increase in the government money for the next three years.

Some people in the arts world also still feel the government is overestimating the benefits of commercial sponsorship.

“As a principle, sponsorship is fine--as a practice, it leaves much to be desired,” said Phyllida Shaw, research officer at the National Campaign for the Arts, an independent watchdog body set up by artists and arts administrators.

“Seeking sponsorship requires time and particular skills, which few smaller arts organizations can afford,” she said.

Another drawback to business sponsorship is the danger of self-censorship, where theaters and galleries play safe by putting on the kind of events they think businesses will want to see.

“Many sponsors would not want to be associated with a work which might use bad language or put forward unpopular ideas,” Shaw said.

This view is shared by Hedley, director of a theater which has a large racially mixed audience and frequently stages new and controversial work. Hedley says that although the Theater Royal was the first to stage productions that are now famous, such as “Oh What a Lovely War” and “A Taste of Honey,” businesses still refuse to fund their productions.

“A classic example,” he said, “is when a bank manager showed our fund-raiser to the door saying, ‘No, you do plays against Mrs. Thatcher.’ ”

But Bill Kallaway, whose consultancy firm arranged a 1.1-million pound ($1.75-million) deal for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Insurance Co. in August last year, says businesses should not feel under any obligation to fund work they do not want to see.

“Sponsorship is not a life belt--it is business collaboration to create a favorable environment in which to trade,” he said.