Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement » (1st Edition)

Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Relations is an inspiring manual for arts practitioners concerned with the relationship between business, the arts and wider society, and particularly those engaged in fundraising.

Julia Rowntree gives a fascinating account of her experiences forging the business sponsorship campaign at the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Faced with a funding crisis in the early 1990s, LIFT responded with a radical experiment in business arts relations - the LIFT Business Arts Forum - in which young students and people from private and public sectors are invited to attend the theatre together and imagine how they might do their work differently as a result of this shared experience.

This book proposes that fundraising for the arts is much more than simply a function for generating income. It fulfills an ancient social role of connection across levels of power, expertise, culture, gender and generation. Rowntree describes why these dynamics are vital to society's ability to adapt. Raising intriguing questions about common ground between artistic, social and commercial innovation, this book offers a new model for the theory and practice of financing the arts.