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I agree entirely that arts sponsorship should be transparent (Tate and oil – does the art world need to come clean about sponsorship?, 8 October) and I find it puzzling that a charity’s audited accounts do not make them so. However, I was surprised to see Mark Ravenhill say of the Royal Court “we’ve been in this world since the 1980s, and there’s never been a serious discussion about the ethics”. When I was deputy director of the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts (now called Arts & Business) between 1988 and 1992, I remember sitting on many panel discussions, one, as it happens, at the Royal Court with, inter alia, Jonathan Miller, on this very subject. I also wrote ABSA’s Guidelines for Good Practice in Arts Sponsorship (c 1990), which encouraged cultural organisations to think precisely in this way and to have clear sponsorship policies and strategies: the easy example being the approach of an arts education programme to fags and booze sponsors. Other similar publications are available.
I hope and expect that these ethical matters are in fact considered as carefully today as they were 20-odd years ago. If any boards (and artistic directors) of arts organisations are not discussing their own ethics seriously, they cannot cite lack of material.
Caroline Kay
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
