Today, we are delighted to launch the first Walpole Culture Week. In the run up to the 20th anniversary of Frieze in London, we wanted to celebrate and showcase the incredible cultural institutions, art scene, music and performance that are so central to the attractiveness of the UK, and essential to our luxury eco-system.
Walpole Culture Week kicks off with a party at The Langham this evening, featuring the incredible talent of musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra (we'll have all the pictures on-site tomorrow), and continues with an exciting and stimulating programme of cultural happenings.
You can read the new Walpole Cultural Calendar 2023 here and I hope you’ll get involved with as many things as you’re able.
However, the purpose of Walpole Culture Week is about more than driving awareness about the events and institutions that make up the cultural fabric of our nation. According to the Arts Council, “Art and culture contributes £10.6 billion to the UK economy - the UK has a creative economy worth £27bn and culture brings £850m to the UK, through tourism, each year.” Its appeal for luxury customers, both London residents and high value visitors is something we highlighted in our inaugural State of London Luxury Study earlier this year - and do sign up for the State of London Luxury webinar tomorrow if you’d like to hear more. If we don’t protect and support our cultural institutions and our arts scene, particularly at a time when other sources of funding are diminishing so dramatically, we risk damaging one of the most important things on which the long-term strength of UK luxury depends.
I’ve always believed that luxury and the arts are inextricably linked, brought together not only by a shared customer but by an innate creativity: culture generators as well as culture facilitators. It’s something that the current sell-out exhibition at the V&A, ‘Gabrielle Chanel, Fashion Manifesto’, brings into focus, not only the content of the exhibition but its context at the museum. As V&A Director Tristram Hunt said at the Cliveden Literary Festival this weekend, “We take fashion very seriously, we know it’s of aesthetic importance in and of itself we know that archival research, historical display and our Fashion in Motion series … provide an essential resource for makers and creators. And that was always the mission of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prince Albert wanted us to be a storehouse, a treasury of science and art, to inspire the makers and designers of today.”
With that in mind, it has been encouraging to observe a bumper year for luxury’s commitment to the arts in the UK: the Chanel Culture Fund’s support of the National Portrait Gallery allowed that space to revolutionise the representation of women in its collection with ‘Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture’. Cunard and Garrard backed ‘From Crown to Couture’ at Kensington Palace, bringing a contemporary perspective to the historical idea of court dress. Alexander McQueen’s sponsorship of 'Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion' at The Design Museum is a collaboration with the BFC, highlighting the BFC’s NEWGEN programme and focusing on the radical creativity of young designers in Britain. Last Wednesday, ‘Happy Gas’, Tate Britain’s Sarah Lucas retrospective opened with the support of Burberry, building “on the brand’s legacy of supporting British arts and culture, from partnering with international exhibitions and cultural institutions to funding creative arts scholarships”. That same evening, Marina Abramovich presented the inaugural Claridge’s Royal Academy Schools Art Prize to Daria Blum: an annual bursary of £30,000 awarded each year to a graduate student of the RA schools to allow them to develop their work. Next week, dunhill will partner with Frieze Masters (11th to 15th October) to bring the ‘Frieze Masters Talks’ curated by Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, back to the fair for the first time since 2019.
These are just a few of the most recent examples. Many of our most beloved cultural institutions are Walpole members, standing alongside the UK’s finest brands, showing that this country’s most extraordinary superpower is creativity.
Walpole Culture Week is our way of shining a bright light on the role our cultural members play and the beauty they bring: I hope you will enjoy it. And perhaps we should all adopt the words of one of Britain’s most beloved artists, Grayson Perry, as our motto, “Culture is a collaborative exercise, and I think everybody will do their bit to help it grow.”
