Fundación Autor, Spain and Latin America

The Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) is over 100 years old and is the organisation which collects royalty payments on behalf of its more than 90,000 members in Spain and Latin America. These members are creators for the performing and audiovisual arts and include world famous composers, choreographers, playwrights and screenwriters.

SGAE’s charitable arm, the ‘Fundación Autor’, has invested in the promotion of Ibero-american culture and in educational and training activities for its current and aspiring members and for arts managers. Now, the Fundación Autor has unveiled plans to invest significant sums in ARTeria, a network of 14 arts centres and production and training facilities throughout Spain and Latin America. The network includes a 3000 seat concert hall in Seville, the European campus of the renowned Berklee College of music (Boston) in Valencia, the refurbishment of a 17th century palace outside Madrid and theatres in Bilbao, Barcelona, Buenos Aires and Mexico. This seems to be the most ambitious cultural re/building project in the world at the time of writing and certainly the largest single private cultural initiative in the history of Spain and Latin America.

Although the project is fully financed, David Dixon Associates was asked to undertake a feasibility study to see whether UK fundraising methods could raise significant funds to contribute to the costs of building and operating the network. Our conclusion is that it could be done, but that the fundraising would need to be associated with advanced marketing and audience-development techniques.

DDA has now been engaged by Fundación Autor on a long-term contract to create and implement fundraising and marketing strategies for ARTeria, including the recruitment and training of fundraising and marketing departments for Fundación Autor.