Have you a 'bonkers' idea? Sky Arts wants to hear from you

“The bonkers projects – that’s what excites us,” says Alyssa Bonic, arts manager at BSkyB, of the criteria for the Sky Arts Ignition fund, which is set to award £200,000 (€230,000) to an Irish arts organisation and work with them to bring the project to a wider audience.

On Monday, more than 70 people from the Irish arts world assembled in the Project Arts Centre to hear the broadcaster’s information briefing on what Business to Arts marketing manager Rowena Neville says is “almost like a blank cheque” for the winning applicant.

This third round of the fund, open exclusively to Irish arts organisations and collaborating artists, is part of BSkyB’s ongoing bid to boost its credentials in a sphere in which it has not traditionally operated – support for the arts in the broadcasting sector is more typically seen as the earnest duty of public service broadcasters than an attractive genre for a commercial subscription-led television company.

The big picture

Premium sports packages may be how the BSkyB makes its margin, but low-ratings channels that appeal to an elite audience help it make “noise”, explains Sky Ireland director of corporate affairs Mark Deering.

“It’s part of what we call the big picture programme,” he says, citing BSkyB’s €1.25 billion investment in Ireland over the next five years and its plan to invest £600 million in original programming across Britain and Ireland by 2014.

It’s not just cold hard cash. Sky Arts will work with the winning organisation to promote their project “on air, on-demand, online and on the ground”.

The closing date for applications is April 2nd and Sky Arts will announce the result in July.

Visual arts

“When arts funding is in short supply, what can be funded is the sure bets. What we want to invest in is the risks,” says Bonic.

Ultimately, the winning applicant will be “the project that is the best fit for the channel”.

The first two of what will be a total of six Sky Ignition funding awards were both awarded to visual art projects.

At Tate Liverpool, contemporary artist Doug Aitken explored the source of creative ideas with cultural figures such as musician Jack White and actor Tilda Swinton as part of the 2012 Liverpool Biennial, while later this year London’s V&A museum will present Memory Palace, a “walk-in story” bringing to life a new work of fiction by author Hari Kunzru.

For Business to Arts, Ignition is a welcome intervention at the birth of a project.

“This is lovely, because it’s Sky Arts coming in right at the start,” says Neville. So many ideas “end up on the cutting room floor” because of the difficulty in raising large sums.

“We’re very dependent on public subsidies, especially from the Arts Council,” says the Project Arts Centre’s artistic director Cian O’Brien. “Something like this is an incredible opportunity.”

The name Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire News Corporation owns 39 per cent of BSkyB, has rarely been seen as synonymous with “highbrow”, but for the theatre, dance, opera and other arts organisations at Monday’s briefing, the key issue is the same as it is with any funding partner – the desire to retain artistic control.

Both Neville and O’Brien are satisfied that the Sky Arts funding doesn’t come with a catch. “I think there’s always a concern that a corporate will come in and dictate the content,” says Neville.

“For me, as a programmer and a presenter and producer of work, it is something that you think about, that you need an arms’ length distance,” says O’Brien. “It didn’t feel like a branding exercise in the conversation we had today,” he says of BSkyB’s motivation for the investment. “It felt like more of a partnership.”