The new Wigmore Hall season just dropped, and as you’d expect, it’s mouth-watering. More than 550 concerts, including Judith Weir, Birtwistle and Helen Grime world premieres; a Schumann series with Christian Gerhaher, a Beethoven cycle from the Jerusalem Quartet…are you reaching for your credit card yet? Well, keep it handy, because the Hall’s director John Gilhooly would also like to talk about money. He’s announced the launch of the Director’s Fund: a “statement of intent to secure the future of chamber music in the UK and for the hall itself”. Supporters have already pledged £7 million; the aim is to reach at least £10 million by 2027 and £20 million within a decade.
Does Wigmore Hall's new private funding model herald in a new era of philanthropy in the UK?
It's impossible not to wish them well, and equally impossible not to suspect that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in the very near future. Sizeable endowment funds – allowing an arts organisation to earn an annual income from interest alone – are a feature of classical life in the USA. They’re more common than you might think in the UK too, but compared to America, the sums involved have historically been pitifully small.
Philanthropy has never been terribly fashionable over here. Big donors in the States splash their names all over major concert halls, but we’ve always found that sort of behaviour a bit…well, vulgar, wouldn’t you say? Meanwhile corporate sponsors who believe they’re helping the arts are increasingly likely to find themselves with a pot of orange paint in their face.
A response to dwindling public funding of the arts
Regardless: musicians need to be paid, and if ticket prices are to be affordable to every level of society – and I don’t know a single music-lover who disputes that – they need to be subsidised. This isn’t time to debate the mistaken belief, in some spheres, that public money comes with fewer strings attached than the privately-raised variety. Or, indeed, to discuss why local government and the national Arts Councils are slashing subsidies to classical music and opera. The fact is, they’re dwindling, and they’re not likely to bounce back any time soon.
So there’s an urgent need to swell those endowments and get fundraising (or in any case, to put rockets on the fundraising efforts that almost every classical music organisation already has under way). “We are currently 97% self-funded” says the Wigmore Hall, adding that “this target will allow Wigmore Hall to become 100% self-sufficient, if necessary”. Good on ‘em, and who can doubt that an institution as beloved and excellent as the Wiggy will succeed?
- Simon Rattle speaks out on Arts Council cuts and BBC classical music funding
- Welsh National Opera: open letter laments Arts Council funding cut
The challenges in private funding models for regional arts organisations
My worries are for the organisations that might be every bit as beloved and excellent but aren’t – and sorry, there’s no way to gloss over this – located in or near London. The other night in Newport, South Wales, I caught a volcanic performance of Verdi’s Macbeth by Mid Wales Opera. They were touring it to Wrexham, Llanelli, Newtown, Bangor – places that don’t see much live opera and certainly aren’t awash with blue chip philanthropists and music-loving financiers. £250k would fund MWO’s entire programme for three years: as it is, they’ve lost their entire public grant and without urgent help they’ll close at Christmas.
True, no-one’s in classical music to make money – but when I think of some of the (yes, also excellent) country house operas I’ve attended in the M25 corridor, the contrast is painful. The one where Joanna Lumley glided on stage, looking (of course) absolutely fabulous to ask for a mere five-figure donation (the rustle of hands diving for chequebooks was almost louder than the brass section). Or the one that’s managed to raise £12 million (nearly double the CBSO’s entire endowment) in a couple of years for a nice-to-have new rehearsal suite on a billionaire’s estate.
What can we do to improve arts fundraising outside London?
Arts fundraising is simply not a level playing field: and the time has come to cough up for the sort of future we want for classical music in the UK – the whole UK. Make that donation; arrange that bequest; buy the best ticket you can comfortably afford. Lobby government – whichever government – to make philanthropic giving easier and more tax-efficient (and while we’re about it, let’s drop the sniffy comments about big corporate donors).
And keep badgering the Arts Councils and local government to reverse short-sighted, destructive defunding policies. There will always be classical music organisations that simply cannot survive in a brave new privately-funded world: public subsidy, in one form or another, will always be essential. And as we all know, the musical experiences that cost the least can sometimes provide the greatest value of all.
