Dr Nguyen Van Huy, deputy director of the Centre for Research Support and Development of Culture, spoke to Culture Vulture about ways businesses can support cultural development.
You are a specialist in cultural research and have travelled extensively around the world. How much do businesses in other countries take responsibility for cultural development?
In developed countries, people, especially businesspeople, always pay close attention to cultural heritage. Entrepreneurs believe that culture has a strong relation to their business and helps it develop and prosper. Therefore, when they succeed, they express their gratitude towards the culture and society. At the same time, funding cultural development is also an effective way to market their own trademarks and establish a good reputation.
In some countries like the US, the governments encourage entrepreneurs to invest in and sponsor cultural events through tax policy. It's another reason why many organisations are willing to invest in culture.
Can you give us some examples of how specific enterprises have supported cultural events?
Starting business as a railway transport company, Meitetsu has become a prosperous economic group in Japan, operating in many fields. The owners of Meitetsu, who are now millionaires and billionaires, believe that they need to express their gratitude to the people who use their railway services by spending money to build a museum called the Little World Museum of Man. It's a huge project covering an area of hundreds of hectares.
The Viet Nam Museum of Ethnology has co-operated with Toppan Printing Group in Tokyo, Japan. When they set up an office in a new building, they dedicated one floor to a museum of printing industry history. That's the cultural way to pay tribute to their ancestors and introduce the public to their work.
There are many culture sponsors and foundations named after famous businessmen, such as the Rockerfeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Toyota Foundation. They control large budgets for developing and preserving culture, and many are investing in preservation and development of culture in Viet Nam.
How successful have domestic organisations been in these efforts?
Vietnamese businesses have been playing a very important role in national development. They have made a great contribution to building and restoring pagodas and temples in recent years. They don't hesitate to donate large amounts for spiritual constructions.
However, in some cases, investors have thoughtlessly interfered with the integral part of the work and thereby ruined it altogether. For instance, a company agreed to support the restoration of the Tam Van Citadel in the northern city of Dien Bien. The citadel was originally made of earth, but it was restored as a brick citadel. I have to say that this was a kind of rude interference in the work of culturalists.
In Viet Nam, businessmen also spend money to fund art performances or sporting events such as football, tennis or golf tournaments because they will receive benefit immediately through advertisements and media mass publicising the events.
Some people say that Vietnamese cultural souvenirs are very poor and unattractive. Do you agree?
Making and trading in souvenirs is a weak point for Vietnamese businesses. If you go to museums and heritage sites in Viet Nam, you will see that there are only generic souvenirs available, the kind of products that you can find everywhere else. Museums and heritage sites do not have specific products of their own. Therefore, the products are uninspiring and unattractive to tourists.
What needs to be done is for businesses to spend money to create new designs with higher quality, although there is then a new problem which arises, with new designs copied by other producers. Therefore, producers have no motivation to create anything new or innovative.
The Museum of Ethnology put on an exhibition of life under State subsidisation. This was one of the most successful exhibitions when I worked there as its director. We displayed simple objects, nothing valuable, nothing extraordinary, but people still felt and understood this period of history. — VNS