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By Michelle Manly

Back in 1975 a business relationship began which was to become one of Australia's longest sponsorships and see many young musicians on their way to promising careers in Australia and beyond. The partners? The Queensland Youth Orchestra Council and M.I.M. Holdings Limited, more commonly known as Mount Isa Mines. It may seem an unlikely match at first, but the way Collin Myers, General Manager Corporate Affairs at MIM explains it, they couldn't fit together more naturally.

'MIM is a company of national scale and of international reach, but it's very much rooted in Queensland. In our sponsorships we try to ensure that there's some focus on where our operations are. In the Queensland Youth Orchestra we have excellence, hard work, Queensland and Australian components all coming together & it sits very well with the way we see ourselves as a company,' he says.

John Curro, Director of Music at the Queensland Youth Orchestra has been part of the relationship, along with Collin Myers, from the beginning. He explains that MIM have supported the Orchestra in many ways over the years but their principal sponsorship has been of the National Youth Concerto Competition. This competition is for string players up to 17 years of age. Founded by Curro in 1976, it has grown to be of national importance.

'Young people 17 and under didn't really have much to occupy their talents apart from eisteddfods back then. The National Youth Concerto Competition provides them with the challenges of a broad repertoire, and finalists play with the Orchestra. Opportunities to play big works with symphony orchestra in an important concert just don't arise very often,' he says.

Over the years many success stories have come out of the National Youth Concerto Competition. This year, to celebrate 25 years of MIM's sponsorship, the Queensland Youth Orchestra Council has produced a CD spanning the years of the competition.

Richard Tognetti, now Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra won the National Youth Concerto Competition when he was a 15 year-old from Wollongong. Tognetti has acknowledged the importance of the competition in his musical education.

'The actual being there on stage with all the pressures of performance is something that can't be practiced at home. It was this, my first experience of 'high wire' concerto performing under the inspired baton of John Curro, that made the National Youth Concerto Competition an essential part of my musical education,' he says.

One of the Orchestra's most illustrious string players was Graeme Jennings, a boy from Mount Isa who was concertmaster of the Queensland Youth Symphony about 10 years ago. Today he lives in London and plays with the Arditti Quartet, which tours the world premiering new works and pushing the boundaries in the repertoire for quartet. A few years ago with some funding help from MIM one of the six ensembles comprising the Queensland Youth Orchestra visited Mount Isa. On that tour Jennings came back to play as soloist in his hometown. By all accounts it was a big hit with the local community.

Both the Queensland Youth Orchestra Council and MIM Holdings are active in other sponsorship arrangements.

Geoff Rosbrook, General Manager of the Queensland Youth Orchestra Council explains that about 25 per cent of its funding is from Government grants through Arts Queensland and the Australia Council, with another 20 per cent coming from sponsorship.

Other sponsors, Tate and Lyle Bundaberg, Comalco, NRMA, newly arrived Italian dairy company Parmalat and a number of other companies provide support for regional tours and concerts in Brisbane.

Rosbrook says that the regional tours take in many of the areas where their sponsors operate. Each year they go as far North as Weipa, location of the world's largest bauxite mine, run by Comalco, and then down the coast through the sugar milling centres in the area of activity covered by Tate and Lyle Bundaberg. Along the way the 25 piece touring chamber orchestra combines with other local musicians to form a larger ensemble, or to provide an opportunity for local talent to perform as guest artists.

'It's about musicians learning from each other and generally fostering the whole art of orchestra music both with audiences and the musicians themselves,' he says.

Collin Myers emphasises that MIM gives considerable thought to its spread of sponsorship activities. In addition to their sponsorship of the Orchestra, MIM has also sponsored tours of Opera Queensland into the coalmining regions and through to Townsville. MIM provides sponsorship across a range of human endeavour, medical, cultural, community and educational support activities. For example they fund an Indigenous Health Liaison Officer for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, to help serve the Indigenous population of Queensland's North West.

All parties benefit from the sponsorship relationship. In the case of the Queensland Youth Orchestra, sponsorship allows it to better fulfil its mission to promote 'scholarship, interest, enthusiasm and social welfare in the learning, playing and appreciation of music in orchestral and other forms by youth'. While sponsors, by supporting a local cultural organisation enjoy many benefits including local tours that reach their employees, an enhanced business profile with their customers and the knowledge that they are nurturing talent in the Queensland and wider community and giving something back to the region where they work.

REVIEW

The Art of Giving - Celebrating 20 years of the Cultural Gifts Program

Bilums, botanical watercolours, butterflies, bark paintings, Malcolm's car, Muriel's wedding dress, furniture, flying machines, jewellery and comic books - they have all been donated to public collections through the Cultural Gifts Program.

The Art of Giving celebrates 20 years of the program showcasing some of the donated works and profiling some of the collections that have been built as a result.

Some of Australia's regional collections are profiled, like the Endemic Flora of Tasmania watercolour series at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Tasmania, and the Max Jost collection at the Horsham Art Gallery in Victoria. Some of the fascinating specialist collections housed in universities are also featured.

The range of cultural heritage items in these public collections is quite surprising, and thanks to the Cultural Gifts Program, they are all accessible to the public.

The book contains background on the program's purpose - to encourage owners of significant cultural materials to donate these to the nation's public collecting institutions, with illustrations in full colour of some of the treasures that have been donated.

The Art of Giving has been produced by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Copies are available from Val Hodgson on 02 6271 1680.

Business Sponsorship of Arts and Cultural Activities 1996-97

This is the second report on corporate sponsorship of arts and cultural activities and is part of the Cultural Trends in Australia series. Produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, it builds on the earlier 1993-94 study.

There are more than 30 tables of information including:

• breakdown of sponsors by industry type;
• sponsors by business size;
• stated benefits received by sponsors;
• sponsorship as a proportion of total expenses and profit of industry;
• sponsors' reasons for sponsoring arts and cultural activities;
• types of activities sponsored;
• comparison of arts and cultural activity sponsorship compared with other activities such as sport or education; and
• comparison of government funding and private sector support of arts and cultural activities.

Arts and cultural organisation seeking to build business partnerships with the private sector will find it a useful tool in building the case for such arrangements. Business representatives too will find much of interest - the many benefits outlined by their industry colleagues are a strong recommendation for supporting the arts and cultural activities.

The report is available from Val Hodgson on 02 6271 1680.

• Document ID: 11383 |
• Last modified: 5 February 2008, 6:01pm