The arts must resist corporate sponsorship

There's an apocryphal story about Joan Littlewood. In 1955 the Theatre Workshop Company were invited to represent England at the Théâtre des Nations festival in Paris. They were the first British theatre to have that honour.

Without an Arts Council grant and lacking funds for transport costs, they were offered money by a bank in exchange for a hefty poster credit. Joan, who did not favour usury, told them to bugger off. The actors took the ferry carrying the set, props and costumes for Arden of Faversham and Volpone with them.

This seems to me to be entirely correct behaviour.
When the Tories were last in power in the Eighties they insisted that Leftie arts organisations become market driven and entrepreneurial. Public-private partnership was the order of the day: fundraising departments were created and development consultants engaged, often recruited from the crime scene that is the City. These then demanded higher salaries than the artists they were supporting. Now you get paid more to raise money for a play than to write one.

The fundraisers' preoccupation with corporate finance was then allowed to subordinate all other values. Arts development departments competed with each other to climb into bed with the most unsuitable commercial partners. Thus we find ourselves with major arts organisations like the Tate, Royal Opera House, National Gallery and National Theatre reliant on support from BP, Shell and some of the biggest polluters in the land.

It is common practice among development managers to seek out companies with an "image problem" and offer, in exchange for sponsorship, respectability by association. So in exchange for what, for the companies, is little more than change down the back of the sofa, they get seats for the opera, a private view, a vol-au-vent with Diana Rigg and a clean, altruistic corporate image makeover.

It's called "reputation management" and it's a con. The fundraisers may think they have got a result. But it's the corporations that are exploiting the arts, not the other way around. Their sins (and oil) are washed away by the healing balm of culture, and all for less than a millionth of the cost of a deep-sea oil rig. It's the culture industry's version of the medieval practice of selling indulgences.

Does anyone really believe that Shell and BP underwrote the National Theatre Connections scheme because of a desire to encourage Mark Ravenhill or Jack Thorne to write pithy new drama for teenagers?

But with 25 per cent cuts in public spending, who cares who we take money from? What's a couple of pelicans when you can do The Magic Flute?
What fundraisers and development consultants don't realise or choose to ignore is that reputation management works both ways. By consorting with polluters, arts organisations are polluting their own reputations. Their integrity is compromised.

The arts are the custodian of the soul of the nation. They are not to be bought and sold in the marketplace. The arts must remain beautiful, honest and true. They should not be prepared to sell off their reputation to the highest bidder.
Be brave like Joan Littlewood. Tell them to bugger off.

Mike Bradwell is a theatre director. His The Reluctant Escapologist: Adventures in Alternative Theatre (Nick Hern Books) is published this week.