About us

Central to our strategy are the following principles:

Our resources, energy and assistance are first and foremost for the benefit of British arts organisations and professionals.

We favour long-term strategies for cultural cooperation. Grants for one-off projects are important but should be balanced by projects aiming to lay the foundations and provide a framework for long-term collaboration.

In today’s international context, it isn’t relevant or productive to try to promote a “national image” or support artists solely based on country of residence. On the other hand, there are very strong economic, social and cultural arguments for greater collaboration between professionals on either side of the channel. Our approach is to provide the resources, both financial but especially human, to help professionals capitalise on those benefits.

Equally, our approach is to aim for multilateral cooperation. With this approach we aim to move away from setting up bilateral Franco-British projects (what we call “face-to-face”) towards multilateral cooperation (a “side-by-side” approach). Past, bilateral initiatives have tended to be inward-looking; focusing on comparing, confronting and contrasting working methods and emphasising the differences between the UK and France. A new approach is to provide opportunities for British and French arts professionals to work together within a broader international context. The ability to work internationally is a priority for both countries and we believe this outward-looking approach opens up more possibilities for collaboration and provides economic and cultural benefits for the arts both in Britain and France.