Our Story

Why We Exist

The cultural and creative sector plays a vital role in UK society, in the forging and understanding of our identity and values. As part of the economy, it drives growth, creates jobs and generates valuable income for our communities. It can also transform lives, with arts, culture, heritage and other creative organisations doing important work to engage diverse audiences and promote personal, social and environmental wellbeing.

Despite this, the sector has faced significant challenges over the past decade, seeing unprecedented falls in public investment, a drop in corporate sponsorship for arts and culture and a more competitive philanthropic grant-giving environment. Organisations are under pressure to increase their earned income in order to survive, while their impact-driven programmes – essential to their missions – often run at a loss.

Figurative exists to address these challenges. For many years, members of our team have led efforts to support and transform the sector via a series of funding and innovation initiatives leading up to our establishment as an independent not-for-profit in 2024.

Our Origins

Nesta and Arts & Culture Finance (2015 onwards)

In 2014, Nesta – the UK’s innovation agency for social good – published The New Art of Finance report, looking at ways to bring new money into the sector and to make existing funding work harder. Among other innovations, the report proposed the use of social impact investment, which fills the space between purely commercial finance and grant subsidy, and considers the social return of an investment alongside the more traditional pursuit of financial return.

To test the idea, in 2015, Nesta joined forces with Arts Council England, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to launch the Arts Impact Fund (AIF) pilot, providing unsecured loans of between £150,000–£600,000 to the sector. Over the course of its three-year investing period, the fund made over 20 investments across England and demonstrated how motivated repayable finance can be used to develop financial resilience and grow social impact.

In 2018, Arts & Culture Finance was formally established to manage and develop Nesta’s cultural initiatives. Building on the success of the AIF and responding to market research, the team launched the Cultural Impact Development Fund (CIDF) to provide £3.5m in small-scale repayable finance to socially driven arts and culture organisations working with the people and communities in greatest need. This was followed in 2020 by the Arts & Culture Impact Fund (ACIF), the world’s biggest impact investment fund for the creative arts, which brings together a mix of public, private and philanthropic investors – Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Big Society Capital, Bank of America, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Nesta. ACIF offers £18m impact investment for the UK’s arts, culture and heritage social enterprises, and is currently open to applications.

In addition to managing the three investment funds, Arts & Culture Finance developed pioneering innovation initiatives including the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts (2015-17), Digital Arts and Culture Accelerator (2017) and Amplified (2018) programmes, which supported cultural and creative organisations to test and scale ambitious digital ideas. They also pursued important research and collaboration projects, emerging as thought leaders in the world of cultural funding. In 2023, for example, they were commissioned by the UK’s Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre to produce the report, Impact Investing in the Cultural and Creative Sectors: Insights from an emerging field, which explores how impact investment can be a transformative tool for the CCS. At the same time, the team collaborated with Upstart Co-Lab in the USA and the Fundacion Compromiso in Argentina to launch the Creativity, Culture & Capital essay collection, which provides case studies of how impact capital is supporting innovation in the creative economy.

These and other projects allowed ACF to amass important data and insights into the potential – and limitations – of social impact investing in the CCS, and to emerge as a crucial player in the UK’s cultural ecosystem.

New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture (2019 onwards)

In June 2019, New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture (NPAC) was established as a cause-related network of arts philanthropists under the chairmanship of Sir Vernon Ellis. NPAC’s early focus was on researching and developing means of attracting new philanthropy into the arts and culture sector. It operated initially under the umbrella of Beacon Collaborative, supported by Arts Council England, and its work was designed to complement Beacon’s other projects and research into philanthropy more broadly. The founder steering group of NPAC are all generous supporters of the arts, aware of the significant potential of new sources of private funding, in particular from individual donors, to support and sustain the arts and culture sector.

NPAC created three resource hubs:

• Support for the arts and culture sector, which provides resources to assist in attracting gifts for organisations.
• Support for arts supporters and would-be supporters through the formation of a series of place-specific partnerships to attract new arts supporters; these partnerships have included networking events and strategic planning.
• Research into arts philanthropy; what motivates arts donors and how the sector model might evolve to attract new supporters.

In 2023, NPAC entered into a new relationship with the Big Give, to run a major new matched funding programme for the arts and culture sector. This led to a campaign which, in March 2024, raised £2.85 million for 238 arts organisations across the UK, with a primary focus being on mobilising philanthropy through the social benefit of each participating organisation. Approximately 50% of funds raised were either from new contacts or as first financial contributions from known contacts.

Figurative

In 2023, after consulting with its partners and network, ACF decided to spin out from Nesta to become an independent not-for-profit. In addition to managing the existing ACF funds, the new organisation would expand its programmes, research and advisory services with a view to offering full-spectrum impact, investment and innovation support tailored to the cultural and creative sector. In 2024, a merger was agreed between ACF and NPAC. The move would significantly strengthen their combined network of public, private and philanthropic funders, and consolidate both team’s extensive expertise in the field of impact planning and measurement.

Figurative launched publicly in September 2024 with a focus on three main pillars of work: the Arts & Culture Finance funds and development of new ones; innovation programmes supporting organisational development and capacity building; and research and advisory services developing thought leadership in the UK and overseas.

We work with dozens of inspiring cultural organisations and a host of investors and funders committed to creating a vibrant, inclusive and thriving cultural sector, and are always looking for new partners and new ideas to test, develop and deliver for the sector. If you’re interested in working with us, get in touch and help us shape our next chapter!