Independent grant-giving trusts and foundations play a vital but understated role within the economy of the arts in the United Kingdom. To understand how they might benefit the arts in the future, it is important for policy makers, arts organisations and potential donors to learn more about how they currently operate. Written by Paul Glinkowski, Rootstein Hopkins Research Fellow, this report sheds new light on this underscrutinised sector of the arts infrastructure. The aim is to begin to map and to analyse the bigger picture within which support is given to the arts in the United Kingdom by independent grant-making trusts and foundations. Drawing on the literature and data available from a wide range of sources, augmented by interviews with experts and practitioners in the field of arts funding and philanthropy, the paper considers, with a particular focus on the visual arts, the following questions:

• What is the current state of the funding economy for the arts in the United Kingdom?
• Where do trusts and foundations sit within this overall funding economy?
• What is the present climate for philanthropy and for grant-making trusts in Britain, and for private giving to the arts?
• What are the key issues that the independent grant-making sector currently faces?

The essay concludes by offering some reflections on how a number of grant-making trusts and foundations which support the arts are positioned in relation to some of the important questions and debates that seem currently to be preoccupying the independent funding sector; questions such as: Should the arts be funded primarily for art’s sake? And, to what extent should trusts and foundations adopt a developmental rather than simply a reactive role? With a constant turnover of grant programmes and priorities, and with new trusts and foundations starting up whilst others wind down, the independent grant-making sector is highly fluid and idiosyncratic. Contents include

• The arts economy in the United Kingdom: a precarious boom?
• The climate for philanthropy (including The United States versus the United Kingdom: different cultures of giving)
• Trusts and foundations and the arts in the United Kingdom: current issues
• Autonomy or instrumentalism: funding to support the arts, or funding to achieve something else?
• Catalysts or reactors: to what extent should the contemporary foundation have an active, developmental role?
• Future directions: some recommendations

http://195.194.24.18/~gsedek/wwwContextualProofedPG_finalok.doc