How to save Scotland's arts industry

A sell-out for Scottish Opera’s Wagner Ring Cycle this year - but the arts minister under fire for lack of funding.

A record 81 billion spent by households across Britain last year on recreation and culture - but the arts establishment up in arms.

What explains this bizarre paradox? Money is cascading into arts events, yet nothing is more wearisomely familiar at this time of year than ferocious in-fighting among arts organisations and angry rhetoric about "mean" and "philistine" politicians starving theatres, opera houses and galleries of vitally needed funds.

Yet, all around, more money than ever is going into the arts. So what is going wrong?

There was no sign of a cash shortage at the besieged Royal Lyceum box office this week. It has been overwhelmed by demand for tickets to see a fresh re-telling of Muriel Spark’s vivid story of life at the Marcia Blane School for Girls. The theatre has been swamped with calls for tickets and record numbers of messages left on its answering machine.

Some 11,000 tickets have already been sold out of a total of 20,000, but the speed and volume of the sales point to a sell-out.

The box office is taking about three to four times the usual daily amount and on Tuesday alone took 8,890 from 874 people, or more than 10 a head.

At Scottish Opera spending per head is at least double that, for its forthcoming production of Gotterdammerung. The curtain goes up in April - but already all tickets are sold.

We may be struggling under a rising tide of cheap celebrity culture and trash TV. Despite that - perhaps because of it - the public’s hunger for top-class theatre and opera has never been greater. Indeed, most would regard paying 10 a ticket for Jean Brodie cheap at the price.

So why the arts funding "crisis"? The Scottish Arts Council’s budget is up 2.8 per cent to 36.9 million, an all-time record. Add to this the 20 million from the Lottery Fund, and the grand total for government arts spending this year in Scotland comes to just over 57 million. Yes, the money has to be spread across ever more organisations and activities. And it has been tough, with a fall in corporate and business support - from a peak of 16 million in the 2000-01 Millennium Year.

Economic slowdown and corporate retrenchment has brought this down to 8.3 million.

But the ferocious turf wars among the arts cognoscenti suggest a blinkered approach to fundraising.

Where the arts battle needs to be fought is not in the corridors of the Scottish Executive but in the wider arena: to gain a larger slice of that 81 billion household spending pie. There are all sorts of ways in which extra money can be brought in for the arts, and where much more effort is needed than is currently on show. Building up regular individual patronage is critical. In the 2000-1 financial year, arts organisations’ friends schemes, charitable trusts and foundations and individual donations and legacies brought in 240 million to arts organisations across the UK.

On top of this should be added 68 million in the form of Give As You Earn revenue.

Give As You Earn schemes, which Gordon Brown supported in his 2000 budget, have yet to succeed as a significant source of income for the arts. But the responsibility for that lies partly with the arts organisations themselves.

Over a quarter of arts organisations surveyed by Arts & Business said they were not aware of the changes made in recent budgets to encourage tax-efficient giving.

In the US, where government support for the arts is dwarfed by individual and corporate giving, sophisticated marketing techniques are deployed to encourage regular attendance - and giving through Friends’ membership schemes.

The Metropolitan Opera has tiers of support groups. Another big funding source for the Met is "front of house" shops and franchises and large bars and restaurants maximising opera goer spend. By contrast Edinburgh’s Usher Hall is like a classical night out - Stalin style.

In this country, corporate support is often sneered at as marginal, small change funding. But it is the Bank of Scotland that has made Scottish Opera’s acclaimed Ring Cycle possible; the Royal Bank that has supported the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland; Lloyds TSB Scotland the exhibition of Rembrandt’s Women. And business sponsorship doesn’t have to be in cash to be effective. Rodger (Builders) in the Borders provided imaginative and flexible sets for Opera Galactica’s comic trilogy Star Wars: a creative response to an urgent need.

Building support direct from business, customers and the public is far more socially inclusive than anything the arts minister can offer.