Sandy Richardson was trying to raise £12.6 million towards the £46m cost of refurbishing the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh’s Chambers Street when he was stopped in his tracks. The financial crisis came pretty much out of the blue and several large banks including Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were revealed to be teetering on the brink of collapse.
Richardson, then the NMS’s development director, remembers it quite vividly. He said: “We’d got to the point where we could see that we would reach our target well in advance, but then suddenly everything just froze up for quite a long period. The thing that paralyses philanthropy more than anything else is uncertainty. At times of extreme financial unrest, when people don’t know which financial institution is going to be the next to collapse, they just don’t want to make any decisions.”
During the next few months, until about May 2009, the financial panic refused to abate and Richardson and the NMS fundraising team had to “focus on building relationships, conserving relationships and affirming existing relationships.”
Once calm had been restored to the markets Richardson got the show back on the road, persuading philanthropists including Walter Scott, who sold his eponymous asset management company to America’s Mellon Financial for some £400 million in 2006, to give generously.
In the end Richardson exceeded the NMS’s target by a seven-figure sum, and the reconfigured Chambers Street museum re-opened last July. The remodelling, carried out by Gareth Hoskins Architects, has been widely praised with the architectural critic Jonathan Glancey writing: “Director, curators, designers and architects have revitalised a superb building that you will surely want to experience for its own sake.”
Given that Scotland remains in a state of post-crisis economic trauma one might be excused for thinking this magisterial achievement was a one-off. But Richardson is on track to pull off a similar fundraising success in Dundee. Last September he was appointed by Design Dundee, where he is spearheading plans to raise £45 million for a Victoria & Albert Museum on the north shore of the Firth of Tay.
Even though there are fewer wealthy aesthetes in post-industrial Dundee than there are in Edinburgh — whose New Town is stuffed with well-heeled bankers, asset managers, lawyers and accountants — Richardson is in no doubt that the ambitious fund-raising target will be met. He said: “There is a huge commitment to giving to the cultural sector in Scotland. The pool of potential donors is definitely getting larger but what is absolutely essential is that they understand the vision behind each project.”
Philip Long, director of the V&A at Dundee, believes that, even at times of great national austerity, donors are willing to back capital projects – provided these are inspirational or have the potential to transform the prospects of surrounding regions.
“Scotland has a substantial tradition of raising money for such projects in straitened circumstances,” said Long. “In addition to the National Museum of Scotland’s extraordinary refurbishment, the Burns museum has opened, the Scottish National Portrait gallery has reopened, and the transport museum in Glasgow has opened, all in the past year.”
He also pointed out that the NGS recently raised £20m to save a second Titian masterpiece – Diana and Callisto – for the nation. Separately Joanna Baker, managing director of the Edinburgh International Festival, said the annual arts extravaganza has raised £2.7 million more this year than it did last year.
Long said the V&A at Dundee is founded on the premise that “design and creativity can solve wider problems.” Goals include acting as catalyst to re-energize the Dundee economy and to “showcase Scotland’s design creativity around the world.”
The V&A at Dundee project grew out of a conversation between Sir Mark Jones, the art historian and former director of the V&A Museum, and Dundee University. A formal business plan was developed by 2010, which was sufficient to persuade the SNP government to commit to financial support. Mike Russell, the culture secretary at the time, quickly recognised the project’s potential to transform Dundee.
An architectural competition launched in January 2010 fired the media’s and the public’s imagination. The contest attracted 120 entries which were whittled down to a shortlist of five including designs by Tokyo-based Kengo Kuma & Associates, REX of New York, Olso-based Snøhetta, Steven Holl Architects of New York and Edinburgh’s Sutherland Hussey.
In the end, the jury plumped for the iconic and angular design of leading Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.
“The publicity proper started after that”, said Long, adding that a model of Kengo’s design, which the architect said was inspired by the cliff forms along the coast between Arbroath and Montrose, and with a floor area of 6,230 square metres, went on tour. The model was seen by thousands in Dundee, in the Scottish Parliament building, in the Lighthouse in Glasgow, and at the V&A in South Kensington.
The Scottish government also played a critical role. When last September it formally confirmed it would provide £15 million towards the building’s construction costs – one-third of the V&A at Dundee’s £45 million budget – it came as a major shot in the arm for the fund-raising team. It reinforced the project’s credibility and enabled Richardson to step up his quest for private funding. So where does it expect to raise the missing £30m?
One long-standing trend in arts fundraising over the past decade has been the slow decline of corporate giving. The EIF’s Joanna Baker believes this is principally because, as a result of mergers and acquisitions in the business world, there are fewer companies about. “There have been a lot of mergers – the Festival used to be sponsored by both Scottish Widows and Lloyds TSB but I don’t think that sponsorship has ever increased when two organisations have merged.”
Baker also believes that corporate donors are taking a different approach to arts sponsorship. “Ten or 20 years ago it was often the case that the chief executive or his wife thought it was a good idea. Today it is more business focused, and in a way that is more useful.”
Richardson (pictured right) said another disadvantage facing the V&A at Dundee is that corporate donors tend to be more enthusiastic about “revenue projects” than “capital projects”. While he has not ruled out tapping corporate donors – he highlights how the eponymous software company helped to fund the £70 million Sage Gateshead – he expects most of the remaining £30 million to come from other non-corporate sources.
Overall Design Dundee anticipates half the missing £30 million will be raised from statutory bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and European regional development funding, with the remaining £15 million from private-sector donors including charitable trusts, benefactors and individuals. Here, as with the NMS’s Chambers Street museum project, the building of relationships and evangelising about what the building might achieve are key.
The Design Dundee team wants to ensure the final design brief and construction programme are firmly ‘nailed down’ before the project goes ‘on site’. Both Long and Richardson see this as critical, as it gives potential donors – who, according to contemporary custom, are entitled to have their names emblazoned on the building – the impression this is a serious project which is certain to come to fruition and which will not exceed its budget.
Long said: “We acknowledge that the economic backdrop is challenging but we have a pretty extraordinary proposition, an outstanding building, and an amazing site, which is not on land but intended to be in the river itself. We’re finding it’s capturing people’s imagination.”
An edited version of this article was published in Issue One of The Arts Journal on May 29th, 2012