Monday (9/21) on Bloomberg.com, Farah Nayeri reports, “Businesses in the U.K. are cutting spending on the arts, and aren’t planning to increase it until 2011, according to a survey by the London-based nonprofit organization Arts & Business. The quarterly survey polled 240 cultural organizations and 32 businesses in July. Among arts groups, 68.2 percent reported decreased levels of business investment, and more than half of those said they suffered a drop exceeding 50 percent. Of the businesses polled, which together invested 4 million pounds ($6.5 million) in the arts last year, a total of 41.9 percent said they reduced spending over the three-month period. One in four respondents cut funding by more than 50 percent. Overall, respondents said they didn’t expect year-on-year growth in their arts spending until 2011.” Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts & Business, “whose job is to drum up U.K. non-governmental investment in the arts, said efforts must be made ‘to ensure that the private sector, which will recover from the recession long before the public sector, maintains and increases its contribution to the arts.’ ”
Posted September 22, 2009
