Announcing our third round of investments!

Today we’re pleased to announce eight new additions to the Arts Impact Fund portfolio, who will share £2.4m of social investment. We’ve also written up detailed case studies on each investment – click the organisation name to go to the case study. The new investees are:

• Birmingham Royal Ballet (£215,000) –  to help diversify income streams, its production of The Nutcracker will be adapted for performance at The Royal Albert Hall for the first time.
• Fuse Art Space (£150,000) – grassroots art and performance venue in Bradford to launch pioneering residential arts training programme taught by world-class arts practitioners.
• Make it Sustainable (£300,000) – community studio and maker-space for  designer makers and artists in Birmingham to invest in preserving an industrial heritage building, The Old Print Works; creating opportunities for creative community engagement in a deprived area of the city.
• MeWe360 (£150,000) – to create a new, long-term workspace and mentoring development hub for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic creative entrepreneurs in Soho.
• Studio Wayne McGregor (£500,000) – to complete the construction of a new studio space for the multi-award winning choreographer and his dance company; making it the first cultural organisation in the Olympic Park.
• Walk the Plank (£170,000) – leading UK outdoor arts organisation to create, and relocate to, a new outdoor arts creative hub in Salford; contributing to regeneration of the local area and strengthening its cultural infrastructure.
• Village Underground (£600,000) – iconic London music venue to acquire new, larger multi-arts venue in Hackney and partner with an arts charity, Community Music, to deliver social programmes.
• V22 London (£300,000) – to acquire a listed heritage building in Orpington and create new affordable artist studios; refurbishing it for the benefit of creatives and local community.

These investments bring our total portfolio size to 16, with over £5.4m committed. Our final investment decision meeting will take place at the end of September, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to explore the possibility of taking on a loan.

You can read more about our activities in this Nesta blog.