Arts & Business (A&B) is holding briefings across the UK for arts organisations interested in taking part in its ‘Big Arts Give’, which aims to “reanimate individual cultural philanthropy” and generate support for arts projects from wealthy individuals and the public. Details of the scheme were first announced in March, before the election (AP214), but matching private donations with funding from A&B chimes neatly with the new Government’s vision for the future of UK arts funding as a mixed arts economy through which public funding is used to leverage private support. At the scheme’s official launch in May, the new Culture Minister Ed Vaizey described it as “a terrific idea and I hope, in particular, that it will unlock additional funding for some of our smaller cultural bodies”. The scheme is now being described as a pilot project, and aims to create a fund comprising £2.5m in donations and £500,000 of public funding by Christmas 2010. To be able to access this money, arts charities will have to raise a set sum of money themselves before being able to claim a match-funded figure from the fund. The process bears some similarities to the Pairing scheme, which was run by A&B under its earlier identity as the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts, but which matched sponsorship cash raised by arts organisations with public money.
