Sponsorship needs lyrics

Sponsorship needs lyrics

Cause4 and Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy are pleased to to be working in partnership with the European Sponsorship Association (ESA) to offer the first-ever dedicated arts and culture certificate in sponsorship – The ESA Arts Sponsorship Certificate.

The three month distance-learning course course will enhance knowledge of how sponsorship works and will assist the arts sector in generating funds from the commercial sector in this much changed environment for corporate sponsorship.

The course will be supported by several evening seminars where leading industry figures will reinforce and demonstrate the content that is available via the course syllabus.   A range of case studies will be covered such as BP and the arts, The Orange Prize for Fiction, The Science Museum, The Edinburgh International Festival and The Hay Festival.

On Monday 7th September 2015, we had a great taster session for the course, held at Havas Sports and Entertainment, to give a flavour of the course content and structure.  If you were unable to attend the session in person, you can watch the video here.

Here are the personal views of Course Director, Peter Raymond:

Peter Raymond image for blog post
I live in Hammersmith.  My local theatre is the widely admired (and much loved) Lyric.  Last week I took some friends to see the brilliant and joyful Bugsy Malone (not for the first time!) which was chosen as the perfect celebratory production to accompany the launch of the new Reuben Foundation Wing in the theatre.  This development has propelled the Lyric into the stratosphere as one of the country’s leading learning temples for young people interested in the creative industries.  A tour de force all round and a tumultuously affirmative evening.

However, I was struck while perusing the programme and seeing no mention of any commercial partners for this momentous stage in the Lyric’s burgeoning lifecycle, that a sponsor would have adored such a nurturing partnership.  For a theatre that has just been through a cycle of exhaustive and never-ending fundraising (and whose need for ongoing financial sustenance has been further exemplified by the indefatigable efforts of Jessica Hepburn, the stellar superwoman CEO, who has just amazingly swum the English Channel to raise further funds) which totalled £30m for its new facilities, it seems strange that sponsorship wasn’t incorporated into the marketing strategy.

Clearly the marketing department might have tried, but this production seems to me to be an example of a sponsorship slam-dunk.  Who wouldn’t want to be involved in such a triumph at the end of such a restorative period in the theatre’s history?!

It is with this in mind that I embark on being the Course Director for the forthcoming ESA Arts Sponsorship Certificate, a course which will clearly define the role that sponsorship can play in arts organisations’ fund-raising efforts as well as spelling out how such relationships can be sustained and nurtured.  I urge you to enrol as we will unlock much needed sources of revenue and de-mystify the misnomer that this is an impenetrable marketing jungle.  It isn’t!

I hope someone from the Lyric will enrol…………….

Full details of the ESA Arts Sponsorship Certificate including details of how to enrol are on the ESA website. Please note: you must enrol by Thursday 17 September to be part of the 2015 intake.