Talking to strangers:

Building relationships to support the arts

Julia RowntreeFestLab Academy, Munich

January 2011jrown@dircon.co.uk

Programme

• Combination of talk and group work

• Practical examples

• A performance

1 Motivations

2 Obstacles

3 Principles of good conversation

4 Practical examples:

• commercial sponsorship;

• building a community of supporters;

• co-learning.

5 Your turn: Will we support you?

• Not about secret rules or a rigid methodology,

• More about principles and values.

• Learning by trial and error.

• Different in every place for every person/    organisation subject to events and external    environment.

• An imaginative, social and adaptive process.

LIFT from 1986-2006

Responsible for relationships with business and sectors other than public funding.

Also worked freelance for the Place Theatre and other contemporary arts organisations.

Now working on international clay and ceramic education project.

Introductions:

What’s your ‘elevator pitch’?

How do you describe what you do in less than 10 seconds?

What motivates/ or might motivate

individuals to support what you do?

• sense of belonging

• their friends are doing it

• sense of meaning

• making a difference

• giving courage to a younger generation

• love of artform

• their children/partner is/are interested

• civic pride

• sense of responsibility

• to see what will happen

• admiration

• sense of making history

• alter ego

• fun

Many obstacles….

real and imagined

• bad economic situation

• don’t know anyone rich

• the timing doesn’t work - too soon, too far in the future

• it’s not happening in the right location

• the artistic programme keeps changing

• “we just need the money!”

• too desperate!

• too shy…

Money is important but ideas and ways to engage people are more important still.

The aim is to get people to support you not from ‘pity or piety, but from admiration’.

You only need a few supporters to make a big difference.

Conversation

Principles of good conversation

• establishing common ground

• not just talking about what you want

• finding a way to connect people to things that    interest them

• exploring possibilities in the external world

• making people feel good about themselves

• making sure everyone has their say.

• making out no-one hogs the limelight.

• fixing arrangements

Widening support involves talking to strangers

First step is to engage allies and champions, formally and informally.

Board members and development council.

Lift’s legal status - a charity limited by guarantee.

Before approaching strangers, know who your friends are.

Supporters need to know what they’re plugging into.

Board: Legal status, practical expertise, figurehead chair with passion for arts and sense of public life.

Development council: no legal status, meets occasionally as council, way to call on one-to-one advice.

People from different working backgrounds gives access to and understanding of other worlds.

Rich and powerful in society inevitably involves business…

Why did LIFT engage with business?

• Expense of international visits

• Public subsidy at standstill

• Only way to diversify income

• and keep ticket prices accessible

Relations with business based on directly commercial motivations

• Reaching new markets - logo on publicity

• Senior level networking - receptions

• Image - press and broadcast media coverage

• Entertainment - Tickets to performances

• Client/employee entertainment

• Corporate Social Responsibility

• Product sampling by influential people

Know your audiences

To extend your own markets but also to describe to potential supporters.

LIFT audience more like a rock and pop audience than average theatre-going audience.

“Early adopters”, risk-takers and “taste-makers”

in marketing jargon.

Many different activities some more ‘sponsorable’ than others

Many different businesses

Many different dilemmas

How much?

Costs of sponsorship:

£5,000 - £50,000

No real market!

Commercial sponsorship in 2001 approx 17% of overall budget of £1.5million.

Process of engaging with businesses

• Research: Who are they? Precise information about individuals and companies.

• Building allies and champions

• Building internal solidarity and entrepreneurial outlook.

• Contact: Getting past the switchboard

• Engaging individuals - always a second, personal, reason.

Talking to strangers and making friends

•  Research, research, research•  Walk in other worlds• Have courage•  Enlist champions•  Devise proposals/negotiate deal• Follow up, send thank yous• Build a community• Keep in touch with individuals even if they    move jobs.

But business and arts exist in a bigger picture

Compelled to change the conversation and address civic issues

London’s local government abolished by Margaret Thatcher 1986By 1991, the effects were felt by many.

Lift’s motivations for lateral thinking

• Low morale

• Need for a new conversation

• Need to build different forms of support

• Need for celebration rather than complaint

Taking a ‘helicopter view’, we had:

An ability to bring people together across levels of power, working role and experience.

The power to shape the conversation in a spirit of curiosity and celebration.

Our idea was to raise morale in the capital.

To celebrate London and engage others in an understanding of exceptional projects happening in different walks of life.

LIFTING LONDON CONFERENCE 1991

Setting the stage for stories of success:

• Housing• Education• Culture • Business

Deliberate move to convene a cross-sector conversation:

• civic organisations• business (Financial Times) • public sector• education• the arts• NGOs

What we learned

• Interdependency between sectors but need for neutral     space: i.e. a space for public collaboration beyond the     market and the state to imagine creative responses to     issues of common concern.

• A cultural commons made through a shared project.

• Role of the arts - imagination, celebration, reflection, critique.

• Starts by taking a lead without formal authority.

• The power of invitation and ability to change it.

Sponsorship still an almost impossible job!

• Competing with other demands for funding.

• Fitting with corporate plans - too short, too long.

• Recession.

• Uncertainties of Lift programme.

Only approach through creating communities of support

Individual giving schemes

Call on the art for inspiration

Be a Brick, buy a BlockReal concrete blocks with different designs stencilled in red, dark blue and royal blue

£10 for peasants£100 for bourgeoisie£1000 for Aristocrats

Project champions:

Melvyn Bragg, television - peasant

Stuart Lipton - developer - bourgeoisie

Richard Rogers - architect - bourgeoisie

Lord Palumbo - Aristocrat

Stuart Lipton’s address book:

Architects, builders, individuals etc

£8000

Remove the risk - sponsor the choice of the audience!

The Place Portfolio - London’s centre for contemporary dance.

Project champion, Tony Elliot, Time Out director.

A party to show choreographers’ work.

Guests asked to donate £50 in future work of choreographers. 100 donations at £50 = £5000.

Framlington, Financial company, matches that investment with £5000.

Public Arts fund matches that with £5,000.

New work performed in autumn. Guests invited to return.

Crowdfunding:

http://www.wefund.co.uk/

http://www.thebiggive.org.uk/about/

Factory of Dreams

Cash support from:

Eurostar (business)

Brixton challenge (Economic regeneration)

Charitable donations (X 3 foundations)

CENTEC (employment support)

Support in kind from:

Central London Buses

Raised status of the project with supporters by bringing business group to learn from the project in the school

Another challenge…….

How we understood that business has a lot to learn from the arts

Even that we might have something to learn together

Baring’s Bank crashesBT sponsorship of Lift’s Education Programme ends

Ascendancy of market values

A new form of relationship with business?

Lift’s motivations for changing the game

• All-pervading commercial values undermining our    sense of theatre’s sacred role.

• Desire to critique commercial values.

• Feelings of powerlessness.

• Boredom with being a supplicant.

• Need for celebration rather than complaint.

Set out to discover what business might have to LEARN from the arts

Aim to change a commercial relationship to one of co-learning

First steps in what became

The Lift Business Arts Forum

Project champions:

Brian Eno

Prominent people in business

Financial Times

Open question: does business have anything to learn from the arts?

Introductory evening at Financial Times

Business people, public sector, students and artists in small groups with facilitator

Small groups attend together at least 4 events in Festival programme

Organising question:

What did you see? What would you do differently in your work as a result?

Lift Business Arts Forum 1995

Motivations for business participation in Lift Forum

- Sensing strategic change via contemporary performance- Insight into creative and innovation management- Personal and leadership development- Openness, challenging assumptions, cultural sensitivity, the big questions- Lack of job status- Connection to people you would otherwise never meet

• vision and an ability to take responsibility.

• an ability to draw on a full range of skills and potential.

• an ability to overcome fear and prejudice.

• an awareness of different cultures and value systems.

• managing diversity, fostering skills and potential in     others.

• an ability to grasp and articulate complex relationships.

• an ability to regard chaos and ambiguity as positive and    creative.

• openness and trust.

• learning individuals in learning organisations.

• a continuous search for excellence.

Attitudinal changes sought in large organisations

Privatisation of state industries

Lift Business Arts Forum what happens?

1 Organising question or theme negotiated

between all parties

2 Attend events

3 What did we see? What did we learn?

Play, try, test, reflect

4 Stories of our own learning, action and

change

What did people learn?

• ‘It made everyone step out of their comfort zone and led me to think differently about the process of change.’

• ‘We really explored the idea of a multicultural company, acknowledging that everyone sees things differently.’

• ‘We must hear a minority view, even if we don’t like it.’

• ‘All the financial regulations in the world are worth nothing if you don’t understand the cultural context in which they are set. Lift helps sensitise you to just how complicated culture is.’’

• An artist has a view of how to reflect and shape the world; it matters not at all where the material comes from.’

• ‘The idea that you can achieve something from nothing and it comes from chaos.’

No logos requested, no outcomes demanded

• Relationships of trust vital, civilities and actual     people who facilitate very important for     bringing strangers together.

• No grandstanding. No experts.

• Diversity of gender, age, culture and working    perspective.

• Qualities of physical space and welcome    important: natural daylight and good food.

• The more controversial the production the better    the conversation.

How did the money work? A snapshot from 1999

40 participants in Forum from business, public sector, arts, students

Development funds up front £31,000generated from different size companies from 5,000-10,000

Participants’ Fees from private and public sectorgrant from arts funders.

Total : 54,000

Costs approx 24,000

Surplus to Lift 30,000

So what?

The ‘helicopter’ view…..

Most of our institutions focus on the politics of delivery which provide us with the services we want.

Lift is experimenting with the politics of invention and the skills of agreement needed to survive an unpredictable future

Barbara Heinzen, geographer, Forum Adviser

Inventive societies begin on the doorstepand spring from qualities of neighbourly engagement and experiment

The process of arts, business and civic engagement much more than a function to raise money - it’s a way of bringing together power, art, ideas, people and money, vital to process of change.

How will we move beyond oil?

•   None of us has the complete picture

•   Technology is not enough

•   Process over generations

•   Aesthetic exploration

•   Relationship to cosmos and specifics of place

The Lift Forum: engagement and experiment

A new neighbourliness in a global performing space

Rehearsing global connections at local level.

• Intimacy

• Diversity - age, culture, working experience, men    and women

• Working together on equal terms project by project    over time

•   Altered approach to social security deficit!

•   Informed a joint working project between the Home     Office and criminal justice system to tackle risks to the     public of severe mental disorder.

•   Inspired knowledge transfer scheme for Museums,     Libraries and Archives.

•   Helped lay foundations for Tipping Point - joint working     between artists and scientists.

• Artists included in East African futures projects.

Outcomes

Group working

• Decide on a project with potential to secure a    sponsor or other backing.

• Put together a five-minute presentation to    a potential sponsor.

• Name the company/organisation to whom you are    presenting.

• The rest of the group will take on the role of this    organisation.

• We will decide whether to sponsor or partner with    you.

•  Taking inspiration from your art, create an individual     giving scheme at different levels.

•  Say who your champions are.

•  Devise an event or series to generate interest.

Individual giving scheme

What have you learned?

Some thoughts…..

•  If it isn’t working, try a new direction. Experiment. Try    turning a crisis or dead-end on its head.

•  Starting by not knowing is an asset. Ask people’s    advice. Walk in other worlds to make friends. Start with    project champions.

•  What’s the invitation? Think collaboration, not    supplicancy or competition.

•  Start with the art. Look for a different form of invitation.

•  Timing? It may not be right now, but...

•  Think cultural commons… what are the big questions    that are common to arts, business and civic interests?

•  How do you take a lead without formal authority?

Trust in the convening power of art.

The power of good conversation.

The power of good ideas.

Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement, Julia Rowntree, Routledge 2006.

The Turning World: Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre, Rose de Wend Fenton and Lucy Neal, Gulbenkian 2005.

Feeling for Stones: Learning and Invention When Facing the Unknown, Barbara Heinzen, 2003, www.barbaraheinzen.com

The Living Company: Growth, Learning and Longevity in Business, Arie de Geus, 1997, Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Two books about LIFT