UK’s rich foreigners “should give more” to arts

Dame Vivien Duffield, one of the UK’s leading cultural philanthropists, on Thursday urged rich foreigners living in the UK to play a greater part in supporting the arts as she pledged more than £8m to embattled arts bodies across the country.

Among the 11 recipients are the National Theatre and Tate Britain, which will each receive £2.5m; the Royal Shakespeare Company (£1m); the Donmar Warehouse and Kensington Palace (£500,000 each).

Dame Vivien has earmarked the money, via her Clore Duffield Foundation, for new “creative learning spaces” for children and young people among the cultural institutions.

She said it was the duty of philanthropists to support projects that the state was not able to finance, although recent government cuts had increased pressure on her foundation to plug funding gaps.

“We should be providing the icing on the cake - but we are beginning to get down to the cake,” she said at a press conference at the National Theatre on Thursday.

She also called for the UK’s newly-rich foreigners to continue the tradition of cultural philanthropy established by previous generations.

“The old philanthropists are going to go on giving. But a lot of the new rich are foreigners and [the future of cultural philanthropy] depends on whether they are going to cough up or not.”

She said there was an established tradition of philanthropy among the wealthy Jewish community of which she was a part, but wasn’t sure whether the same applied to Indian, Russian and Arab counterparts living in the UK today.

Amanda Saunders, director of development at the Royal Opera House, said cultural organisations were supported by a “relatively small but gently expanding number of exceptionally generous families and individuals”.

“Philanthropy on the scale of Dame Vivien’s requires a significant time commitment as well as exceptional generosity. It may be that people newer to London, or to significant wealth, have not yet had time to consider giving to charities,” she said.

Sir Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, said there was scope for more philanthropic giving from the “many young people who have made an absolute fortune in the financial sector” in recent years.

“It would be great to see the new Sainsburys, the Clores, the Carnegies, the Fricks emerging,” he said, citing some of the most generous supporters of the arts from the past.

Jeremy Hunt, culture secretary, described Dame Vivien’s latest donations as a “stunningly generous package of funding” and said she was a “role model for philanthropists”.

Wednesday’s Budget introduced measures to increase philanthropic giving, including a 10 per cent reduction in the inheritance tax rate if individuals left 10 per cent or more of their estate to charity.

That move came on top of an £80m package announced last December in which the DCMS promised to match every £1 of private funding raised by cash-strapped arts bodies.

The boost to philanthropy comes as many arts bodies are beginning to feel under financial pressure.

Arts Council England, which had its funding cut by 29.6 per cent in the public spending review, will unveil the result of its grant allocations for the next four years next Wednesday (Mar 30).

More than 100 institutions are expected to lose their grants altogether.