Culture and conscience

David Gee asks: why are so many corporations now sponsoring the arts?

by David Gee 4th May 2012

There was a minor furore last year when the Poetry Book Society, which organises Britain’s most prestigious poetry award, the T S Eliot Prize, lost Arts Council funding and a hedge fund firm called Aurum stepped in to save it.

The organisers of the prize were relieved but two of the ten shortlisted poets pulled out. One, John Kinsella, described hedge funds as ‘at the very pointy end of capitalism’ and at odds with his ethics. The other, Alice Oswald, wrote in The Guardian that her instinct was to stand with those who were questioning the practices of firms like Aurum, rather than endorse it by remaining in the running for the £15,000 prize.