BMW’s Dr Thomas Girst on philanthropy, brand building and the role of corporate art sponsors

BMW and Sky Media recently announced Sky Arts’ biggest-ever sponsorship deal highlighting the innovation, design, performance, and sustainability inherent in its technology. The truth is that BMW’s partnership with the arts goes far beyond big-budget sponsorship. In the second of our three-part series covering sponsorship of the arts, we caught up with BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement, Dr Thomas Girst, to discuss how and why BMW partners with the arts.

“I take issue with the word itself, as I've done before. To me, sponsorship is a word that has a somewhat negative connotation, in German maybe more than in other languages. In terms of this just being a monetary transfer from A to B, I would always like to argue that anybody can throw money at cultural institutions. I do not mean to be cynical here; I am aware that most of them are in constant need of extra budget to even survive. At BMW, we speak instead of partnerships, of co-creation and collaborations. Our initiatives all imply the long term. The monetary transaction is certainly part of it – but so is interaction and an exchange of ideas between the partners.