Survey Finds British Businesses Slashing Arts Support

Companies in Britain are cutting their arts philanthropy and don’t plan to reverse the decline until 2011, Bloomberg reports, citing a survey of 240 cultural outfits and 32 firms by the London nonprofit group Arts & Business.

More than two-thirds of the arts groups reported a decrease in business investment, and more than half said the drop exceeded 50 percent. About 42 percent of the polled companies, which collectively gave $6.5-million to the arts last year, said they had cut cultural donations, and one in four said their spending had dropped by more than half.