Like everywhere in Europe, the most decisive element of private funding to culture is through citizens’ spending on cultural goods and events – see household expenditure at 6.3. Individual citizens’ donations and patronage are sporadic and irrelevant.
Citizens can express their choice through the 1% scheme, by channelling 1% of their income tax to selected nonprofit bodies – see 4.1.4.
Crowdfunding is another way of expressing the preferences of individual small sponsors but only generates insignificant sums.
Intermediate cases are private investments in culture, especially when they generate impressive values. An exemplary instance is BMC, the Budapest Music Centre, legally a limited company, financed from public and private sources. A regular exhibitor at the MIDEM in Cannes, BMC mainly focuses on contemporary music and jazz. The government contributed both to the construction and the operation of the institution. The new BMC building in the centre of Budapest has a concert hall, a smaller stage for jazz events combined with a restaurant, residence area, music archive and offices.
Another case is Orlai Productions, a private theatre enterprise with a respectable scale of performances. Art galleries, concert and festival managers, book publishers are almost all private businesses.
Conventional sponsorship is dominated by state companies with Szerencsejáték Rt (lottery and betting), MVM (electricity), and Hungarian Development Bank on top, run with little or no transparency and with tangible political bias.
Statistically difficult to detect, but most cultural projects display impressive lists with names of sponsors and donors, much of which is in nature and have not necessarily entered the budgets. The tax regulations contain certain incentive measures, but this exerts negligible effect.
A peculiar project is the Prima Primissima Award, initiated in 2003 by wealthy entrepreneurs and their companies. It includes ten categories: next to science, sport, or media there are art categories as well. Winners – mostly individuals but also organisations – are selected by juries and popular votes, and get important amounts, up to 20 million HUF.
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