Bridging the divide between business and the arts

East England Arts is the arts and culture funding and development agency for Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. One of the key activities of East England Art's external relations programme is to promote the development of partnerships of all kinds between the cultural and corporate sectors - sectors that are very often seen as unlikely bedfellows.

Focus Communications has been helping the organisation to achieve this, in particular by setting up and running an ongoing series of business and arts networking lunches hosted by the Chairman of East England Arts, Stuart Timperley. (Stuart is himself a businessman as well as a Visiting Professor at London Business School and a Fellow of the Judge Institute of Management Studies, Cambridge University.)

Each lunch was orchestrated to provide the optimum forum for East England Art's work, and to enable arts organisations to meet sympathetic business leaders. To provide a focus, each had a relevant topic with key speakers, but to attract senior business people they also needed to provide good networking opportunities. Meticulous planning was essential and started three months before each lunch. An extensive guest list was hand-picked from regional businesses and not-for-profit organisations, and calls were made to confirm the interest of senior personnel in attending the event. These were followed up with an official invitation letter.

Working closely with Aileen Muir, East England Art's Communications Officer (External Relations), we helped to select and confirm venues, organise catering, and draw up lists of arts organisations to invite. A second letter to all confirmed attendees was sent two weeks before each event, giving details of speakers, timing and car parking, a map and a fax-back menu choice. We also worked out detailed seating plans to ensure that everybody got something out of the lunches.

A delegates' pack was compiled with a welcome letter, speaker biographies, information on East England Art's activities and priorities, and current projects and literature from the guest speakers. We attended each event to help with set up, greet guests and generally make sure everything ran smoothly.

The last Chairman's Lunch, held in Norwich, was the most successful yet, with 50 guests from all sectors (finance to airports, universities to IT, solicitors to food manufacture, TV stations to councils), networking like mad, and exchanging views on the theme of Corporate Citizenship. Key arguments for this were eloquently expressed by Peter Newman of Business in the Community, Nichola Johnson, Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, and Robin Cameron, Chairman of Flag, the Cambridge-based design agency.

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