Impact Investing in the Cultural and Creative Sectors: Report Launch

We are delighted to be celebrating the release of a new report commissioned by the UK’s Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council,  Impact Investing in the Cultural and Creative Sectors: Insights from an emerging field. The report is available for download via this link.

The report has been produced as a collaboration between Fran Sanderson and Seva Phillips in the UK, from Arts & Culture Finance by Nesta, and David Maggs in Canada, who is Metcalf Foundation’s Fellow on Arts and Society. The report is intended to serve as an introduction to the intersection between the burgeoning movement of investing for impact and the opportunity and need to examine new funding models for the cultural and creative sectors globally.

We hope the report will appeal to cultural and creative sector practitioners and entrepreneurs, public and private funders of and investors in these sectors, and policymakers looking to stimulate new funding paradigms for these vital sectors. We are also keen that the cultural and creative sectors start to move from the wings towards centre stage within the theatre of impact investing, and therefore are keen to engage those already investing with and for impact more broadly to come and learn about the potential of the cultural and creative sectors.

Three online launch events were held, designed to cover all time zones, to introduce the report and open up the conversation about this exciting field. The report authors and commissioners discussed with regional experts the profound social impact and potential of the cultural and creative sectors, and how new investment models can support and boost this impact, while also providing the incentive and capital required to develop and scale new business ideas. We also looked at some of the challenges around building new investment models for the sector, and how to create the conditions to ease these.

The launch events also host Q&A and live discussion with attendees – one of the key recommendations of this introductory report is the development of a global community of practice, so we are particularly keen to engage with other intermediaries or funders currently making impact investments in the cultural and creative sectors.

Recordings of two of these events can be found below, closed captions are available by clicking on ‘Subtitles/ closed captions (c)’.

 Launch Event 1: Featuring Francesca Sanderson, Seva Phillips, David Maggs, Hasan Bakhshi, Judah Armani and Teresa Azcona

 Launch Event 3: Featuring Francesca Sanderson, Seva Phillips, Laura Callanan and Audu Maikori