AbaF Awards
27.10.2006 
Business arts partnership prove valuable to SME’s
26 October 2006
A partnership between a small Melbourne graphic design and photography studio, GollingsPidgeon, and one of Australia’s leading contemporary art museums, Heide Museum of Modern Art, has shown that sponsorship of the arts is not just the domain of giant, deep-pocketed corporations.
Increasingly, Small to Medium Enterprise are turning to the arts as an innovative way to promote their products and services, which in turn has helped many arts organizations. Evidence of this trend was the 200 per cent increase in entries for the Sensis SME category in the annual Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) awards this year.
The AbaF Awards recognize Australia’s most successful business-arts partnerships. The Sensis SME Award was awarded to GollingsPidgeon graphic design studio and the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne last night. GollingsPidgeon has provided contra graphic design and photography services to Heide since 2003, which enabled the Museum to establish a strong new identity for its expansion and reopening in 2006.
Director of the Heide Museum, Ms Lesley Always, said the award winning Heide identity had captured the attention of existing and potential donors. In one case, an individual donor pledged $100,000 after seeing a Heide publication.
“The partnership has been a driving force behind an increase in philanthropic support and attendance figures. The number of donors has increased 50 per cent in three years and we exceeded our annual attendance target of 30,000 by 58 per cent last year,” she said.
GollingsPidgeon CEO, David Pidgeon, said the company had won significant new business thanks to the partnership with Heide.
“We estimate that 50 per cent of all our new business comes through clients who are aware of the work we did with Heide and want us to replicate that work with them. Additionally, 80 per cent of our publicity has involved the Heide brand and since the beginning of the partnership the number our work program has increased by 140 per cent.”
“The awards bestowed on us from national peak bodies have also been a direct result of the work we have done with Heide.”
The Heide Museum was founded in 1981 and is one of the largest modern art Museums in Australia, holding a collection of more than 4000 artworks. GollingsPidgeon is a multi-disciplinary Melbourne based graphic design studio, founded by architectural photographer, John Gollings, and graphic designer David Pidgeon.
