New enterprise centre for the arts

5 August 2004

- Birkbeck teams up with five colleges to form new centre for the arts in the heart of London

The new London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise (LCACE) is a collaboration between six universities for the purpose of exchanging knowledge and expertise with the capital's arts and cultural sectors. The Centre will be set up in Somerset House in the heart of London.

LCACE has been made possible through an injection of £1.45 million from the Higher Education Funding Council's HEIF fund (Higher Education Innovation Fund). The fund is to enable greater collaboration between the university sector, industry and the wider community.

This particular initiative has been awarded the largest amount given to a project that is aimed at the arts and culture and is part of the government's drive to boost the UK's innovation performance and productivity across all sectors.

The collaboration is between King's College London; Birkbeck, University of London; City University London; Goldsmiths, University of London; Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London.

These institutions have a well-established reputation for working with the arts and cultural institutions, including, among others: Shakespeare's Globe, Royal Opera House, BBC, National Theatre, TATE, Geffrye Museum, Group for Education in Museums, Museum of London, Royal College of Music, BFI, Film Council, Science Museum, British Library, the Poet Laureate, RADA, English Heritage, V&A, Wallace Collection and Royal Academy, Free Form Arts Trust, Handel House Trust and the George Piper Dancers.

The Clore Leadership Programme, which is already developing and delivering enterprise training to arts practitioners is one of the Centre's key supporters, its Director, the Rt. Hon. Chris Smith MP said: "The Clore Leadership Programme is proud to endorse the formation of the Centre. Pooling the experience, skills and resources of six academic institutions in this way enables maximum benefit to be obtained; and exploiting the strengths of each to the best benefit of students and participants makes a lot of sense. Our own Programme concentrates on those with the potential to take on senior leadership roles within the broad cultural sector, and we are excited about the possibility of collaboration and partnership between our two programmes."

By working in partnership the Centre will deliver activities to support this sector in London, encouraging and enabling innovation.

The Centre will:

- Engender a culture of innovation through enterprise teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate arts and humanities courses across the partnership to provide intelligent and business-minded arts practitioners of the future. For example, in the form of short courses for humanities students in business planning, team building and financial systems; annual business plan competition.

- Develop bespoke continual professional development, networking opportunities, business advice and mentoring for the sector. For example, networking events where practitioners, academics and business sponsors can meet to discuss specific areas of mutual interest to generate research projects, collaboration and develop awareness of the different sectors, courses run for practitioners on how to write a business plan and mentoring schemes between artists and businesses.

- Provide a platform in the heart of London to create ties between the university and cultural and art communities that are essential to the long-term strength of the UK economy.

Contact:
Catherine Doherty, Media and Publicity Officer
External Relations, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX
Tel 020 7631 6569
Fax 020 7631 6351
Email c.doherty@bbk.ac.uk

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