Most cultural exchange between nations runs through institutions. Ministries, national theatres, festivals and cultural councils have budgets and mandates for it. Yet some of the most striking exchanges of recent decades between China and the West began with an individual who was prepared to keep pushing after the institutions had stalled. Lady Linda Wong Davies, who founded the KT Wong Foundation in memory of her father nearly 19 years ago, described several of them on Wealth Office. Her account suggests why private patrons matter in cultural exchange, and what makes them effective.

Speed and conviction

Asked whether cultural fusion depends on people like her, Wong Davies began with a practical observation.

Well, first of all, you can't be dealing with layers and layers of bureaucracy because you'll never get anything done.

— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office

The work, she added, requires passion and an absence of fear. A patron has to believe in what they are doing. Michael Macfarlane put it in terms of discretion. A private patron need not yield to a committee. Wong Davies agreed.

Her experience bringing the National Theatre's Frankenstein to China illustrates the point. The censorship bureau's forms had categories for musicals, operas, films and dance, and none for a filmed play. After three and a half years, she stopped waiting. The foundation hired a private art cinema, partnered with the British Council and screened the production itself. When the screenings were announced, demand crashed the British Council's website in China. It was, in her account, the first time the National Theatre had been presented there.

An institution bound by process might reasonably have abandoned the project. A patron with conviction and her own resources could take the risk.

Pragmatism about legacy

Wong Davies was equally clear that conviction is only the start. In the first flush of excitement, a patron creates opportunities. After that, she argued, a patron needs to stand back and ask how the work will function as a legacy for the foundation or organisation they create. That requires understanding what the other side needs, what one can bring, and whether the audience will understand the message. She compared it, without embarrassment, to selling apples.

This pragmatism shaped her choice of works. Frankenstein was chosen partly for its ideas. Mary Shelley wrote it while Britain was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, when invention was unsettling the moral and ethical compass. China, Wong Davies observed, was going through its own industrial revolution and asking what sort of society it wanted to become. The story was also familiar. Its director, Danny Boyle, was known for Trainspotting, a huge underground hit in China, and Benedict Cumberbatch was famous there for Sherlock.

Empathy before ambition

The second quality Wong Davies emphasised is empathy. A patron must understand how a project answers the needs of the people receiving it. In her view, there is no point bringing something great from one culture to another without education and an effort to find the elements both cultures can understand. A patron should first make an audience feel comfortable and at home, then introduce something that makes them think a little more.

Her production of Benjamin Britten's children's opera Noah's Flood shows the method. She asked a British opera director and designer to draw on a volume at the V&A of 19th-century illustrations by Chinese artists in Guangzhou, including animals from around the world. In place of costumes, she proposed lanterns, which every Chinese child knows. Lantern makers in China built them from paper and bamboo, sized for children from six to sixteen. The opera was performed at Belfast Zoo during the cultural programme of the London Olympics, then in Beijing and Shanghai, with Chinese children singing in English.

When you reach children, you will reach their parents and their uncles and their grandmothers.

— Lady Linda Wong Davies, Wealth Office

British people working in China asked how a biblical story had passed the authorities. Her answer was that it is a story about water. Every great civilisation has a flood story, and China's history is one of famine, flooding and rebuilding.

Beyond big names

Wong Davies warned against a common shortcut. Bringing a grand opera with the biggest names, she said, sells up to a point. It does little for real cultural understanding of why that work was brought. The same applies in the other direction.

Her measure of success is more personal. Musicians have approached her to say that a production she brought encouraged them to pursue their ambition, against their own or their family's beliefs about what they should do, and that they are now singing professionally. For her, that is evidence that a door was opened.

She does not see herself as alone. She named Pearl Lam as a pioneer in the visual arts, and described her own work as more in performance, architecture and design. She hopes many more will follow, including in Africa, which she stressed is 54 different countries, much as China contains many different minority groups.

For families weighing where to direct philanthropic capital, her account offers a clear proposition. Health and feeding people come first, she acknowledged. Beyond them, it is the soul that needs feeding. A private patron with conviction, patience and empathy can sometimes open a door that institutions cannot, and the effects may be measured in the careers of a generation.