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John Holden
New Statesman, UK
April 12 2006
The Back Half
Arts funding - John Holden on the unusual charitable foundation that
has made Britain a better place.
The UK arm of the Portugal-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Without the Gulbenkian, as
it is usually known, Britain would be a poorer place. The foundation
has led the way in transforming many fields: the arts, social welfare,
education and Anglo-Portuguese relations. The list of organisations
that it has supported includes the Samaritans, Shelter, Voluntary
Service Overseas, the Runnymede Trust and Snape Maltings.
It has backed social entrepreneurs since before the phrase was
invented, lending assistance to figures such as Lord Young of
Dartington and Chad Varah, as well as the energetic community that
transformed Coin Street on the South Bank in London in the 1980s
and 1990s.
Like most charitable bodies, the Gulbenkian has not always avoided
controversy. In the 1980s, its oppositional stance in the face of
government retrenchment over funding for the arts earned it as many
critics as admirers. More recently, it was widely mocked in the press
for lending its support to a campaign to ban smacking. However, for
an organisation that has sought to play a pioneering role in bringing
about social change, the criticism it has attracted has been small.
The foundation's money came from the legacy of Calouste Sarkis
Gulbenkian, an Armenian and naturalised British citizen who was also
one of the 20th century's boldest art collectors. He was known as
"Mr Five Per Cent", because the source of his immense wealth was a
stake of that amount in the income of the Iraq Petroleum Company -
although the foundation wisely diversified into a broad portfolio of
assets early in its history.
Equally early on, the Gulbenkian adop-ted an approach that has
become the model for arts funding and social enterprise. A team of
experts is assembled, including on-the-ground practitioners as well
as members of the great and the good. They investigate an issue, draw
up a policy and publish a report which, very often, has an influence
far beyond its immediate purpose. This method was applied at first
to small-scale matters: in 1959, for example, when a committee led
by Brigadier E T Williams addressed the question of what to do about
"The needs of youth in Stevenage", its conclusion was that, rather
than build a new youth club, it would be better to appoint a youth
officer. ("Blokes are more important than bricks," as the report
rightly said.) Shortly afterwards, the 1959 Bridges report, Help for
the Arts, changed the face of the cultural industry in Brit- ain,
making it less metropolitan and less mandarin, and making space for
the flowering that would distinguish the 1960s.
Other ground-breaking reports followed, addressing everything from
community work to local broadcasting. Some, such as Ken Robinson's The
Arts in Schools (1982) and John Myerscough's The Economic Importance
of the Arts in Britain (1988), are still required reading.
It is impressive how often an organisation of the Gulbenkian's meagre
size has managed to prod politicians and bureaucrats into action on
matters that now seem obvious. In 1992, it sent an anti-bullying pack
to every school in the country, raising the profile of an issue that
politicians had largely ignored.
While the foundation has led developments in many fields, its role
has also been shaped by the political and social contexts of the day.
In the immediate postwar years, the Gulbenkian did much to assist
official policy in building up support for the arts and social
welfare. In the 1960s, it cham-pioned experimentation in the arts and
community self-help in social life. During the economic and political
upheavals of the 1970s, it became more critical of governments;
this turned to outrage in the face of the Thatcher government's
determination to shrink the responsibilities of the state. As the then
director of the Gulbenkian, Peter Brinson, put it: "The relative calm
of the past 25 years is over and huge changes are certain."
Those changes affected every area of the foundation's concern. For
example, it had spent the previous two decades helping to build up
contemporary dance in the UK, but between 1980 and 1982, a quarter
of small-scale dance companies went out of business. Thatcherism
also ended the unwritten concordat between charitable bodies and
governments - that foundations such as the Gulbenkian would do the
initial risk-taking, and then the public sector would take over when
innovation had proved successful.
Naturally, not everything the foundation has tried has worked. It
expended a great deal of effort and energy during the 1970s in an
unsuccessful attempt to create a national centre for community work.
The Community Challenge conference in Liverpool in 1981, organised
by a youthful Charles Clarke, was hijacked by hard leftists who
questioned the Gulbenkian's right to organise the event at all.
Today the Gulbenkian is probably best known for the annual £100,000
Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries and for the Atlantic Waves
festival, which has brought Portuguese culture to the attention of
the British public. Many relationships started in the 1950s have
survived to this day - the Tate being one of the most important (the
Gulbenkian is funding the current Tate Triennial show, "New British
Art", just as it funded the seminal "54/64" show in 1964).
As the 50th anniversary approaches, the Gulbenkian can pride itself on
its history of supporting innovation in culture, education and social
welfare. It has done this as much by adapting itself to circumstances
as by challenging the status quo. In seeking to help others while
weathering the storms of the past half-century, it has fashioned for
itself a role resembling one of the first projects that it funded in
the 1950s: the self-righting lifeboat.
http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200 604170032
--Boundary_(ID_Z27fUGFwEpBiaoHghfwm4w)- -
John Holden
New Statesman, UK
April 12 2006
The Back Half
Arts funding - John Holden on the unusual charitable foundation that
has made Britain a better place.
The UK arm of the Portugal-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Without the Gulbenkian, as
it is usually known, Britain would be a poorer place. The foundation
has led the way in transforming many fields: the arts, social welfare,
education and Anglo-Portuguese relations. The list of organisations
that it has supported includes the Samaritans, Shelter, Voluntary
Service Overseas, the Runnymede Trust and Snape Maltings.
It has backed social entrepreneurs since before the phrase was
invented, lending assistance to figures such as Lord Young of
Dartington and Chad Varah, as well as the energetic community that
transformed Coin Street on the South Bank in London in the 1980s
and 1990s.
Like most charitable bodies, the Gulbenkian has not always avoided
controversy. In the 1980s, its oppositional stance in the face of
government retrenchment over funding for the arts earned it as many
critics as admirers. More recently, it was widely mocked in the press
for lending its support to a campaign to ban smacking. However, for
an organisation that has sought to play a pioneering role in bringing
about social change, the criticism it has attracted has been small.
The foundation's money came from the legacy of Calouste Sarkis
Gulbenkian, an Armenian and naturalised British citizen who was also
one of the 20th century's boldest art collectors. He was known as
"Mr Five Per Cent", because the source of his immense wealth was a
stake of that amount in the income of the Iraq Petroleum Company -
although the foundation wisely diversified into a broad portfolio of
assets early in its history.
Equally early on, the Gulbenkian adop-ted an approach that has
become the model for arts funding and social enterprise. A team of
experts is assembled, including on-the-ground practitioners as well
as members of the great and the good. They investigate an issue, draw
up a policy and publish a report which, very often, has an influence
far beyond its immediate purpose. This method was applied at first
to small-scale matters: in 1959, for example, when a committee led
by Brigadier E T Williams addressed the question of what to do about
"The needs of youth in Stevenage", its conclusion was that, rather
than build a new youth club, it would be better to appoint a youth
officer. ("Blokes are more important than bricks," as the report
rightly said.) Shortly afterwards, the 1959 Bridges report, Help for
the Arts, changed the face of the cultural industry in Brit- ain,
making it less metropolitan and less mandarin, and making space for
the flowering that would distinguish the 1960s.
Other ground-breaking reports followed, addressing everything from
community work to local broadcasting. Some, such as Ken Robinson's The
Arts in Schools (1982) and John Myerscough's The Economic Importance
of the Arts in Britain (1988), are still required reading.
It is impressive how often an organisation of the Gulbenkian's meagre
size has managed to prod politicians and bureaucrats into action on
matters that now seem obvious. In 1992, it sent an anti-bullying pack
to every school in the country, raising the profile of an issue that
politicians had largely ignored.
While the foundation has led developments in many fields, its role
has also been shaped by the political and social contexts of the day.
In the immediate postwar years, the Gulbenkian did much to assist
official policy in building up support for the arts and social
welfare. In the 1960s, it cham-pioned experimentation in the arts and
community self-help in social life. During the economic and political
upheavals of the 1970s, it became more critical of governments;
this turned to outrage in the face of the Thatcher government's
determination to shrink the responsibilities of the state. As the then
director of the Gulbenkian, Peter Brinson, put it: "The relative calm
of the past 25 years is over and huge changes are certain."
Those changes affected every area of the foundation's concern. For
example, it had spent the previous two decades helping to build up
contemporary dance in the UK, but between 1980 and 1982, a quarter
of small-scale dance companies went out of business. Thatcherism
also ended the unwritten concordat between charitable bodies and
governments - that foundations such as the Gulbenkian would do the
initial risk-taking, and then the public sector would take over when
innovation had proved successful.
Naturally, not everything the foundation has tried has worked. It
expended a great deal of effort and energy during the 1970s in an
unsuccessful attempt to create a national centre for community work.
The Community Challenge conference in Liverpool in 1981, organised
by a youthful Charles Clarke, was hijacked by hard leftists who
questioned the Gulbenkian's right to organise the event at all.
Today the Gulbenkian is probably best known for the annual £100,000
Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries and for the Atlantic Waves
festival, which has brought Portuguese culture to the attention of
the British public. Many relationships started in the 1950s have
survived to this day - the Tate being one of the most important (the
Gulbenkian is funding the current Tate Triennial show, "New British
Art", just as it funded the seminal "54/64" show in 1964).
As the 50th anniversary approaches, the Gulbenkian can pride itself on
its history of supporting innovation in culture, education and social
welfare. It has done this as much by adapting itself to circumstances
as by challenging the status quo. In seeking to help others while
weathering the storms of the past half-century, it has fashioned for
itself a role resembling one of the first projects that it funded in
the 1950s: the self-righting lifeboat.
http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200 604170032
--Boundary_(ID_Z27fUGFwEpBiaoHghfwm4w)- -