Chit chat - Sponsorship up in smoke

Published Tuesday 1 July 2008 at 11:00 by Tabard

Tabard was pondering the muddy, murky waters of corporate arts sponsorship this weekend while leafing through a copy of the Independent on Sunday (well, somebody has to).

The newspaper’s front page article was a story about a number of Tory frontbenchers who held shares in companies which have been accused of ‘propping up the violent - and now illegal - regime’ in Zimbabwe.

The emotive headline read ‘Blood money - the MPs cashing in on Zimbabwe’s misery’. Strong stuff.

The list of companies in which the MPs are accused of holding shares includes mining giant Anglo American, Barclays, Shell and BP. They also included Rio Tinto - another mining company.

While - the Indie stresses - the holding of the shares is not illegal, the work that these companies are undertaking in Zimbabwe is, it argues, essentially helping to fund Mugabe’s regime.

So, where is this all going, you ask? Please bear with me.

Flipping away from the front page and into the body of the paper, Tabard stumbled across another apparently unrelated article by Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall.

In it, Hall was explaining why the Royal Ballet has been right to tour to China. Nothing particularly surprising in that. However, the final line of the piece read ‘The Royal Ballet tour to China is supported by Rio Tinto’.

Yep - that same mining company which the Indie was highlighting, a few pages previously, as continuing to operate in Zimbabwe, it argued, immorally.

It brought to mind a similar situation, many years ago, when the Royal Shakespeare Company was forced to drop its principal sponsor from a production of Macbeth - interestingly Barclays, which also features in the list above - because the actor lined up to play the title role, Jonathan Pryce, objected to the bank’s links with the then apartheid South African regime. Pryce threatened to walk from the show and the sponsor was dropped, its money given back.

Pryce’s issue was, if memory serves, the connection which was implied by his name (and face) being linked to the bank on relevant promotional material. It appeared to be saying that he was supportive of the company - when, quite clearly, he wasn’t.

One wonders whether anyone at the Royal Ballet might have similar qualms.

All this corporate sponsorship malarkey can clearly be rather problematic. Just ask the Glyndebourne Opera which was recently forced to back out of a sponsorship deal with British American Tobacco after numerous complaints and a Trading Standards investigation.

Although, really, they should have seen that one coming. Opera and lung cancer. Not really a good fit.