‘Crucial’ business partnerships still challenging for most cultural organisations in Scotland – survey

Collaboration with business is becoming increasingly crucial for Scotland’s cultural sector – but most cultural organisations still find it challenging to forge successful partnerships with businesses, according to new research.

The two key conclusions have been drawn from a major new survey of Scottish arts and heritage organisations carried out by independent Scottish charity Arts & Business Scotland.

In total, 65 individuals representing cultural organisations of all types and sizes and located throughout Scotland completed the survey.

On a scale of zero (not at all) to ten (crucial), participants were asked to rate how important they think it is today for their organisation to secure partnerships, sponsorship and funding from the business sector and how important they think such collaboration is likely to be for their organisation in three years’ time.

On average, those responding to the survey rated the importance of collaboration with business as 7.6 today, rising to 8.3 three years from now. Giving a score of nine or ten out of ten, just over one third of respondents rated the importance of such collaboration very highly today, rising to more than half of all participants who predict such collaboration will become “crucial” or “near crucial” for their organisation in three years’ time.

Participants were also asked to indicate how difficult their organisation finds it to secure partnerships, sponsorship and funding from the business sector, rating their response from zero (impossible) to ten (extremely easy). The average rating from all organisations taking part was 3.7 with only twelve respondents giving an answer higher than five. Organisations in the heritage sector appear to find successful collaboration with business comparatively harder, returning an average rating of 3.4 compared to an average score of 4 for those arts organisations contributing to the survey.

The survey’s findings follow an exclusive public opinion poll commissioned by Arts & Business Scotland in March this year which found more than half of Scots would be more likely to buy goods or services from a business if they knew it was supporting cultural projects in their local area. 70% of respondents to the poll said they thought it was important for businesses to help support local cultural projects while three quarters said supporting such projects would reflect well on a business.

Arts & Business Scotland recently launched the new Culture & Business Fund Scotland, specifically designed to promote collaboration between the business and cultural sectors by match funding business sponsorship of cultural projects pound for pound. The new fund replaces the New Arts Sponsorship Grants Programme which, between 2006 and 2017, successfully generated more than £7.5 million in public and private investment to help realise more than 500 individual cultural projects throughout Scotland. Building on the success of its predecessor, the new fund has been expanded to include a dedicated heritage strand while also offering projects that have already received grant support in a previous year the opportunity to benefit from second and third year sponsorship.

Commenting on the results of the new survey, Arts & Business Scotland chief executive David Watt said: “With public sector funding under sustained pressure, these continue to be challenging times for the cultural sector. In this environment, it’s more important than ever for cultural organisations of all sizes and types to find ways of forging successful partnerships with the business community to help make projects happen. These survey results suggest that most cultural organisations recognise the importance of collaborating with business – and that doing so is likely to become increasingly crucial as public sector sources of funding face ongoing cuts. But the survey also shows that developing partnerships with business is something many cultural organisations still find difficult to do.”

Mr Watt concluded: “The Culture & Business Fund Scotland is a programme specifically designed to help cultural organisations overcome these barriers to partnering with business. It does this by matching business sponsorship of cultural projects pound for pound. We are now offering dedicated support to heritage sector organisations as part of the programme. The option for projects to access ongoing match funding during their second and third years should also help to further strengthen partnerships between business and culture and place those partnerships on a sustainable long-term footing. I would encourage any cultural organisation yet to do so to take a look at the Culture & Business Fund Scotland as an opportunity to start opening a dialogue and building those important relationships with business.”