Peter Bazalgette outlines the Arts Impact Fund, a £7m pot lending money from commercial and public sources that proves the arts sector is “successfully diversifying”.
Arts Council England recently announced that it was jointly launching a new sort of finance for culture: the Arts Impact Fund. It has £7m to lend and the money comes from a mixture of the commercial sector, from charities and the public purse (even despite the reassuringly small reduction to arts and culture in George Osborne's latest round of savings). More about this new form of social investment shortly, but it's the latest example of a sector successfully diversifying its sources of revenue. This is something that cultural entrepreneurs have been driving for some years in order to maintain and expand our world-renowned arts and culture.
The larger organisations funded by Arts Council England are called National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). You can take a constant sample of their finances since 2005, derived from the half of them that have reported on a like-for-like basis over that time. It's a revealing picture. They have driven their commercial income, such as ticket sales and hospitality, up by around 60 per cent in real terms over the period. It now represents more than half of their total take. They have also almost trebled their fundraising, albeit from a low base – it's still only 13 per cent of the total...Keep reading on The Independent
Arts Council England recently announced that it was jointly launching a new sort of finance for culture: the Arts Impact Fund. It has £7m to lend and the money comes from a mixture of the commercial sector, from charities and the public purse (even despite the reassuringly small reduction to arts and culture in George Osborne's latest round of savings). More about this new form of social investment shortly, but it's the latest example of a sector successfully diversifying its sources of revenue. This is something that cultural entrepreneurs have been driving for some years in order to maintain and expand our world-renowned arts and culture.
The larger organisations funded by Arts Council England are called National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). You can take a constant sample of their finances since 2005, derived from the half of them that have reported on a like-for-like basis over that time. It's a revealing picture. They have driven their commercial income, such as ticket sales and hospitality, up by around 60 per cent in real terms over the period. It now represents more than half of their total take. They have also almost trebled their fundraising, albeit from a low base – it's still only 13 per cent of the total... Keep reading on The Independent