Tim Cornwell: Businesses should not be shy about financing the arts Published on Monday 27 February 2012 02:21 More corporate bodies must be persuaded to become sponsors, writes Tim Cornwell The Bloody Scotland Crime Literature Festival, a first-time event devoted to Scotland's murderously healthy crime-writing genre, announced a new corporate sponsor last week. One might have expected Simon Howie Butchers, Lothian and Borders Police or at least a local mortuary to step up to the mark for the festival's three gory days in Stirling. But no: the company embracing "brand recognition" through the new festival was Mazars, the international accountancy and business advisory firm with its head offices in France. Maybe Inspector Maigret should be on the bill. Corporations are apt to be coy about the amount they spend on arts sponsorship. Too coy, perhaps; well-directed funding that helps concerts, theatres or galleries in our communities deserves a big slap on the back. It can build brand recognition, and gets employees and clients engaged with the arts, creating future ticket-buyers too. Figures out from Arts and Business Scotland next week show that in 2010-11, arts sponsorship in Scotland dropped by about four per cent, but in the UK by six per cent. Over two years the contrast is sharper. Scottish sponsorship fell by seven per cent against a UK decrease of 17 per cent. The Scottish figure of about £10 million for business investment in the arts has stayed roughly fixed for about five years, decreasing in real terms by the rate of inflation. Not a happy picture, but it's been improved north of the Border, A&B Scotland make clear, by the Scottish Government's matching fund for first-time business backers, worth £300,000 a year. Beneficiaries have ranged from tiny local business sponsors to Virgin Money. Mazars were quite open about details of the Bloody Scotland package. It's worth £15,000 a year for three years, plus benefits in-kind, and critically will help pay a festival administrator to plan the inaugural event in September. It appears to make eminent sense. Bloody Scotland has Ian Rankin and Val McDermid among its headliners, both local and international page-turners; in the UK alone crime fiction sells more than £140m-worth of books a year. As Mazars" Peter Jibson noted, crime fiction is the single most popular genre amongst Scottish readers. The cuts in government arts spending, forcing canny arts institutions to watch every penny of their running costs, can only underline the value of business sponsorship. At best shifting markets have created opportunities as big players back away from successful sponsorships. Virgin Money laudably stepped into one gap left by the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, in backing Edinburgh's Fireworks Concert, and the Fringe. Virgin's gone for big bang, high-visibility deals, offering brand-name promotion of popular events, in the style favoured by high street banks or alcohol conglomerates. Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment management group, and a significant local employer, offers a more discreet, but equally valuable model. It carries out sponsorship in the name of good citizenship, it says, as well as getting some of the 700 people it employs in Edinburgh along with visiting clients to sample the wealth of cultural riches Scotland has to offer. BG's sponsorship list is formidable: literary, art and science festivals, galleries, opera and ballet, youth and community foundations. The company also picks individual shows; why not, if it gives sponsors more flexibility and fun, from The Peony Pavillion, a stand-out festival show last year, to Catherine the Great, this summer's offering at the National Museum of Scotland. Responsible local employers, engaged in the arts, are getting woefully rarer. In Glasgow's year as Capital of Culture in 1990, eight business sponsors gave over £100,000; it's hard to imagine the equivalent today. The likes of Diageo, Scottish & Newcastle, and ScottishPower have morphed into larger, less Scottish companies, and even key calls on RBS decision-making are very much based in London. Tesco Bank, one of the new boys, has just taken on the National Galleries Schools Art Competition. But let's do a little naming and shaming, or at least nudging. Santander haven't come to the arts sponsorship table in Scotland yet. Amazon has created three big new Scottish centres. In Edinburgh they have an office in Waverley Gate, next to Creative Scotland - art's in the neighbourhood, so get connected.