News that investment managers the Man Group is withdrawing its sponsorship from the Booker prize after 18 years has shocked the literary world. The hedge fund’s decision to move on was linked in the press to novelist Sebastian Faulks’s negative comments about the firm last year, made on the How to Fail podcast . The Man Group, he said, are “not the sort of people who should be sponsoring literary prizes, they’re the kind of people literary figures ought to be criticising … They’re kind of the enemy”. The prize, he said, became “terribly irritating” when Man took it over; and he himself would not be prepared to take “50 big ones” from the company, in the unlikely event of its being awarded to him. Luke Ellis, the head of the Man Group, referred to these remarks at the 2018 prize ceremony, and there has been speculation that he withdrew the company’s sponsorship in a fit of umbrage.
Perhaps disobliging remarks such as this do not help smooth the frequently uncomfortable relationship between art and commerce. But correlation is not causation, and the Man Group’s removal of support is, insiders insist, more to do with its changing priorities around corporate responsibility than anger at outspoken authors. Those close to the Booker say Man Group’s departure has been known for months, but that this year’s prizes – both for English-language fiction and its international award – will carry the Man name. A fresh sponsor will be announced in weeks. They also say the controversial decision to include American writers among those eligible for the prize is both irrelevant to the Man Group’s decision and not up for revision.
The affair brings into relief the difficulties that attend upon corporate arts sponsorship. The British Museum, Tate and others were subject to ongoing criticism and regular protests when they took money from BP. Recently, protests have been made against museums’ acceptance of funds from the parts of the Sackler family that have been enriched by the opioid OxyContin. Last year, defence company BAE Systems withdrew its support for the Great Exhibition of the North after an online petition criticised its involvement. Meanwhile, over the years, cultural organisations have accepted money from any number of individual patrons whose sources of wealth may have not been entirely savoury.
These matters are delicate. It is fair to say that corporate sponsorship is always done with at least half an eye on enhancing a brand. But it is not invariably a case of evil conglomerates laundering corporate dirt in the cleansing waters of culture. Such a binary view of the world is naive when almost nobody, and few organisations, can possibly exist untouched by the compromises demanded by life within the matrix of global capitalism. It would be equally naive to suggest that cultural organisations should accept whatever they can get, from whatever source; of course they should, and do, scrutinise potential sponsors before embarking on partnerships.
Corporate sponsorship in the arts is only going to become more difficult as Brexit creates uncertainty, especially for European firms, and, at the same time, companies begin to question the optics of gala nights and glitzy corporate entertainment packages that some (in reality only a very few) cultural organisations can offer. Long-term support is especially hard to secure in the current climate. This is territory that can be negotiated only with an open mind, a strong ethical backbone and good sense. But with public funding cuts, there is little alternative but for arts organisations to try to do so.
