Figurative has announced that the investment period for its Arts & Culture Impact Fund (ACIF) has been extended until August 2027.
ACIF is looking to deploy a further £10m to socially driven arts, culture and heritage organisations registered and operating in the UK, adding to its existing portfolio of loans to 29 organisations.
The fund’s investors are Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Better Society Capital, Nesta, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Freelands Foundation. The fund offers loans between £150,000 and £1 million, which will now be repayable until 2034.
This extension will enable Figurative to keep a loan source open to the sector, and to fully deploy capital from its investors. Transforming the funding environment for the sector by understanding the opportunity and raising the profile of repayable finance is a serious, long-term mission, which has been hampered by the pandemic and challenging economic climate. Figurative will also now be able to meet the demand from the sector, where many organisations are in need of capital in order to grow and thrive.
ACIF investees include Future Yard, Birmingham Rep, Rambert, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Pipe Factory, and many more, including innovative asset ownership structures such as Music Venues Properties and Creative Land Trust. These organisations have used investment to acquire new assets, improve built infrastructure, develop new ventures or scale up existing revenue streams.
Figurative’s mission is clear – to revolutionise funding and build financial resilience across the cultural and creative sectors. This extension will enable us to further support a sector which is grappling with a multitude of complex issues. We’re thrilled that our investors continue to support our unique work. Richard Brass, Chair of Figurative Board of Trustees
We’re delighted to have secured this extension, enabling us to deploy much-needed funds to empower organisations in the arts and cultural sector. The demonstrated ability of our funded organisations to make repayments, combined with clear evidence of sector demand, makes a compelling case for this extended investment period. The investment team is excited and ready to meet even more organisations looking for loans to deliver projects to support their cash generation and social impact. Fran Sanderson, CEO, Figurative
We have already seen the difference that access to repayable finance can make to arts, cultural and heritage organisations of all scales and across the length and breadth of the country. As they innovate, we are learning so much together about what this type of investment can unlock, and I am delighted that we have the time to do even more of this valuable work. Moira Sinclair OBE, Chair of Investment Committee
Figurative started life in 2015 as a collaborative pilot project – the Arts Impact Fund – which developed into Arts & Culture Finance, a division of Nesta, before merging with New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture and launching as an independent organisation in 2024.
It manages three investment portfolios that have supported over 60 organisations and raised more than £30 million in investment capital over the last decade. In the last 12 months alone, Figurative has approved loans to the value of £5.4 million to organisations in the cultural and creative sector and allocated £2 million in Theatre Tax Relief Cashflow loans.
The new investment period has been extended by two years from August 2025 to August 2027. The repayment period for new loans will be until 2034.
Find out more about applying for investment here.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Figurative
Figurative is a charity, company number 14818670, based in London, UK and incorporating Arts & Culture Finance and New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture. It specialises in raising and managing impact funds and designing innovation programmes and impact frameworks – all tailored to the cultural and creative sector. It also offers global advisory services and conducts research into the future of cultural and creative funding and impact. Figurative manages three investment portfolios – the Arts Impact Fund, the Cultural Impact Development Fund, and the Arts & Culture Impact Fund.
Fran Sanderson is the organisation’s CEO; the Chair of the Board is Richard Brass. Charlotte Appleyard, Sarah Ellis, Sir Vernon Ellis, Helen Goulden OBE, Shanaz Gulzar and Francis Runacres MBE sit on the Board of Trustees. Figurative began operating in August 2024.
Arts & Culture Impact Fund Investors
Arts Council England
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants. Visit our website to learn more about our work. https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/
Better Society Capital
Better Society Capital is the UK’s leading social impact investor. Our mission is to grow the amount of money invested in tackling social issues and inequalities in the UK. We do this by investing our own capital and helping others invest for impact too.
Since 2012, we have helped build a market that has directed more than £10 billion into social purpose organisations tackling issues from homelessness and mental health to childhood obesity and fuel poverty, a twelve-fold increase in 13 years. https://bettersocietycapital.com/
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation aims to improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in the UK. We unlock change by contributing everything we can alongside people and organisations with brilliant ideas who share our goals.
The Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK. In 2024, we provided £48.8m in funding towards a wide range of work in support of our aims. We also provide social and impact investment for organisations with the aim of creating social and environmental impact. www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk
Freelands Foundation
At Freelands Foundation, we believe in the intrinsic value of art and that making is fundamental. We champion art education – nurturing and fostering material literacy and making.
We do this by championing the symbiotic relationship between teaching, learning, and making art in all contexts, and encourage artists to teach and view teaching as an artistic practice. We value life-long learning as integral to artists’ work – enabling collaborative relationships between teachers, schools, and universities with galleries and museums.
To foster the development of bold and diverse approaches to teaching and learning art in all contexts, we research and explore art education at all levels: from primary to postgraduate, as well as outside the formal system. Through progressive training and development, we support teachers to expand and sustain their practices.
Our approach combines our ongoing funding, in the form of grants, awards, fellowships, and residencies, with action research. We offer and support academic commissions, workshops, discussions, exhibitions, publications, films, and partnerships, alongside a dedicated resource Library and a growing repository of informative, instructional, and inspiring online resources. https://freelandsfoundation.co.uk/
The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities. heritagefund.org.uk
Nesta
Nesta is a research and innovation foundation that designs, tests and scales solutions for the biggest challenges of our time.
Driven by a vision to improve the lives of millions of people, our focus up to 2030 is on three missions: breaking the link between family background and life chances, halving obesity and cutting household carbon emissions.
We work with partners to develop high-potential solutions and test them as they evolve, drawing on expertise in qualitative and quantitative research, data science, behavioural science and design.
Once confident in the effectiveness of a solution, we take it to scale. We create national policy proposals, develop consumer-facing products and services, build and spin out commercial ventures and harness the power of the arts.
We work with two specialised units: BIT applies a deep understanding of human behaviour to help clients achieve their goals. Challenge Works designs and runs challenge prizes to spark innovation in science, technology and society. Find out more at nesta.org.uk
