CEC: Kevin you’ve dedicated your career to supporting BAME social entrepreneurs, but this fund is a new venture. Why now and how do you think it will make a difference to resolve the disparity of funds distribution?

The confluence of Covid, Black Lives Matter Movement and the macro economic challenges ahead we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the existing funding structures; to redistribute power. Both the demand and the need are at peak. It’s the perfect time to try. As you say, it’s been my life’s work so I can’t pass up the chance to at least try.   

The aim of Create Equity is to campaign for equitable funding by 2031. We are asking all the major arts and social enterprise funders to commit to this. Using Arts Council England as one example; if they were to implement the pledge today, instead of distributing c.£15m per year to BAME organisations it would be c.£87m per year, were they to fund in proportion to the BAME population. That’s an underinvestment of £72m every year. This under investment has gone on forever and it’s not just Arts Council. Every Arts Council and social investor across the UK under invests to the same extent, in percentage terms.

If the Create Equity 2031 pledge is successful then hundreds of millions more each year will be distributed fairly to BAME organisations. Of course given finite resources the question is where might the money for such a significant redistribution come from? This is the challenge I’m trying to address through the Create Equity Fund, a pilot investment fund for BAME entrepreneurs. The intention is to use public money to make equity investments. Given current public funding regulations this comes with the world of challenges, which maybe we’ll get into when we chat.     

CEC: Kevin what are some of the practical actions we as mere civilians can take to create real change?

Change your mindset. Equity doesn’t have to be seen as a zero sum game. If black communities get their fair share of funding, for white communities to see this as a loss, because this funding is no longer available to them is the biggest hurdle to change. Inequity inevitably ends in social fragmentation and this comes at a massive cost to us all.  We have to understand that equity is always going to deliver a net gain (perhaps not to you personally) but to society. 

CEC: Kevin in addition to your incubator and your new fund you’ve also got a pretty impressive blog called Skin in the Game which looks at current affairs, popular culture and issues in society through the lens of race, identity and power. Can you tell us more about it and your aspirations for this three-pronged approach?

There’s a social consequence to underinvesting in any community be it BAME communities, women or working class people. It means that we don’t harness the full potential of our society and it’s this waste of human potential that drives me crazy. And this waste of human potential has a cost in terms of underachievement, in education, employment, business and as we’ve seen during Covid in health outcomes. People die because of this shit; it’s real.  

Skin in the Game is a space for me to explore this reality, to try and make some kind of sense out of it and then use that understanding to make real change happen. By making the link between my own experience and the systems that have underinvested in me I’m hopefully able to develop social enterprises and businesses that will make a difference. Skin in the Game is the source of Create Equity 2031 campaign and it’s also the source of the Create Equity Fund.  

My aspirations for this three-pronged approach is very simple; equity!

NB. We have used the abbreviation BAME. We recognise the diversity of individual identities and lived experiences, and understand that BAME is an imperfect term that does not fully capture the racial, cultural and ethnic identities of people that experience structural and systematic inequality.

Go to Creative Entrepreneur’s Website

Several people have challenged my continued use of the term BAME. I remain ambivalent about this change.

The fight to end the use of the BAME acronym seems won. A key recommendation from the government’s report by the Commission on Race and Racial Disparities (the Sewell Report) is to disaggregate the term BAME. Arts Council and other funders have already dropped their use of the acronym, instead writing the words in full (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic). The aim of disaggregation is to recognise differences in experience and therefore performance (against various metrics) between the different communities represented by the acronym. Like so many others, I don’t like the term BAME. But as a social entrepreneur involved in the practicalities of creating new and fairer structures for diverse communities, I believe timing is everything. Arguments right now about the use of the term BAME are a distraction and the transition away from its use may take us down a path with far reaching and unintended consequences. Our primary goal must be to create a fairer distribution of power; or as the Sewell Report put it: ‘Create Agency’. 

Context to my thinking

I have spent much of the last four months writing a business plan for the Create Equity Fund (a BAME-focused investment fund for the creative industries). Part of this work includes research into the past distribution of arts funding to BAME communities. My research highlighted two issues in relation to changing the BAME acronym: i) disaggregating BAME communities may cause infighting between communities over resources; and ii) changing terms could make measurement more difficult and so make it harder to build statistical evidence of long-term structural issues. These challenges need careful consideration, mature debate and potentially more campaigning.

The potential for infighting between different BAME communities in the arts

Disaggregating the BAME acronym should, in theory, lead to disaggregated data sets. This will highlight inequalities between BAME communities which will inevitably lead to internal wrangling about who gets what. Most of the 2.4% of arts funding to BAME communities goes to ‘Asian’ organisations. With only 2.4% of arts funding shared between us (instead of the 15% which would be in line with the BAME populations), to start a debate on how we distribute equitably amongst ourselves is, in my view, folly. The saying goes, ‘A house divided cannot stand’. ‘We’, as diverse communities, have specific identities, yes. But we still share a common purpose and should not waste energy arguing over the crumbs currently being distributed to us. The worthwhile struggle is for equitable funding to our communities as an aggregated whole. Then and only then can we have a debate about who gets what in terms of disaggregated communities.

Changing BAME makes it more difficult to measure progress and reduces accountability of funders 

My research for Create Equity Fund confirmed that in the last ten years only 2.4% of arts funding went to BAME communities, I was unable to find data going back more than ten years because the term used for measuring ethnically diverse communities before 2011 had changed. If we change the term again, to something which doesn’t exactly correlate to the term BAME, we lose the ability to establish longitudinal data that we desperately need to make our case. What scant data there is on racial inequalities in the arts becomes harder to analyse and easier to contest or dismiss altogether. In changing the meaning of the BAME acronym we may unintentionally diminish our ability to keep policy makers and funders fully accountable. With less useable data we reduce our power to change things. If the government (and by extension bodies like ACE) decides against using the term BAME, in favour of something materially different, we would need to ensure that sufficient resources are in place to maintain data continuity. 

But why spend time on that campaign? In the wake of Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, macro-economic uncertainties and climate change, there is a more immediate and bigger prize up for grabs. Our focus must be on an equitable and timely redistribution of resources and power. Only through resolving this do we get to build our own structures – our own ‘houses’ – rather than simply moving the furniture around the existing structures. Then we get to use our own language and truly define for ourselves what matters.

Article published on Arts Professional

Huge energy has been expended by Arts Council England (ACE) on distributing the £1.7 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF). There is a clear need for this distribution of funds at pace: the money has provided life support to many large institutions that would have struggled to survive lockdown measures without it. However, distributing this amount of money in a matter of months, rather than the 2/3 years it would take under normal circumstances, has left ACE fully stretched and with little (if any) capacity to focus on much else. As a result, other priorities including diversity, innovation and enterprise have slipped down the agenda.

Diversity

The passionate calls by ACE to do better on diversity, from Darren Henley and Nick Serota, in the wake of George Floyd and the rise Black Lives Matter movement have inevitably played second fiddle to seismic effort invested to preserve larger cultural institutions. BAME organisations, typically individual freelancers or 2/3 person businesses, have not benefited equally from the bailout so far. 

It is not too late, but urgent action is needed

Innovation and enterprise

The emphasis on recovery has also meant that in addition to the CRF, all of ACE’s unrestricted budget including budgets for enterprise and innovation has been diverted to the bailout, a decision which if left uncorrected could have a disastrous impact on our sector for years to come. With the economy in crisis, an inevitable sustained tough macro-economic environment ahead of us and the major shifts in practice on how arts and culture are being created, distributed and consumed, we need to grasp the opportunity to re-divert budgets to finding solutions to these major, more medium-term problems. ACE and DCMS need to analyse and reflect on the shifting cultural landscape and double down on investment in enterprise and innovation to respond to these shifts. 

Where do we go from here?

It is not too late, but urgent action is needed. Oliver Dowden has been able to secure another tranche of CRF funding (c.£418m) from the Treasury. This, combined with a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel on Covid-19, makes it the perfect time for DCMS and ACE to raise their respective heads and look beyond what is to be recovered. They must look forward to what needs to be cultivated, including a more equitable funding system. Now is the time to redress any long-term funding imbalances, broaden access to all the UK’s best creative talent (including those from BAME communities) and to focus attention on shaping the new arts and culture landscape that will emerge out of this Covid period. Sector recovery, diversity, enterprise and innovation priorities should never be seen as competing priorities. They are inextricably linked in my view. Focusing on one at the expense of the others is folly.

The education, retail, technology, hospitality and business sectors are being reshaped as we speak. DCMS and ACE need to quickly come to terms with the fact that arts and culture will not be immune and that the sector, as it was pre-Covid, will not be recovered in its entirety. Some organisations who have received CRF cash will unfortunately not survive lockdown measures. They need to be let go and space must be created to explore what the new future looks like. We can then invest in new systems, new structures, and new organisations to deliver this. Some smaller and not yet formed organisations will emerge and thrive in a post-Covid world. They will be the engine for growth of the UK’s new creative and cultural industries. For us not to invest in these organisations would put at risk the UK’s position as an international creative powerhouse and, in my view, would be cultural suicide. 

I am asking that £209m, half of the new CRF funding of £418m, be targeted at this more forward-looking and sustainable agenda. One which acknowledges that all will not be as it was in our sector and embraces innovation, enterprise, and diversity to build a more dynamic and resilient sector going forward. This is less than 10% of the total already invested by DCMS and ACE so is proportionate and affordable. We should act now. 

A decade to change what should have changed decades ago

I have been in discussion with Arts Council England, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Nesta and the British Film Institute (BFI) amongst others about Create Equity’s campaign to get the sector funding equitably (in proportion to the BAME population) by 2031. Based on today’s population, this would represent an estimated increase of c.£104m p/a. Conversations are ongoing with funders about the measurement criteria and the best strategic approach to achieve our goal. We are now seeking public engagement on the 2031 campaign pledge outlined in the article below.

We believe that

• There is significant untapped BAME creative, entrepreneurial and leadership talent in the creative sector.
• The arts funding system has underinvested in BAME talent.
• We need a systemic change in the funding system to correct this imbalance.
• The impact of a global pandemic – coupled with persistent racial injustices – make this the ideal moment to make arts funding equitable.

By committing to the Create Equity 2031 Pledge we will

• Help cultivate the untapped BAME creative, entrepreneurial and leadership talent in the creative sector.
• Share arts funding in proportion to the BAME population of the UK by 2031*.
• Encourage government bodies, local authorities, public funders, trusts, foundations and major commercial sponsors to distribute their funds equitably and challenge them if they take no action. 
• Be accountable for our actions and track our progress in terms of the projects we back and the creative talent we support.
• Share our learning with the wider sector to make the change visible, help reframe the funding conversation and level up the funding landscape.
• Advocate for all sectors of the arts and creative industries to join us as signatories to this Pledge.

* We will use Office for National Statistics data for population statistics.

For more information and updates on the Pledge visit our website Create Equity.

NB. We recognise the diversity of individual identities and lived experiences, and understand that BAME is an imperfect term that does not fully capture the racial, cultural and ethnic identities of people that experience structural and systematic inequality.

Our most powerful motivations are often rooted in our lived experience.

In this 60 second video, I share personal motivations which have driven my work over my career as founder of Tribal Tree, MeWe360, Skin in the Game and Create Equity.

These projects are about cultivating human potential through personal development, community building and system change.

Malcolm X perhaps sums it up best:

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”

Original article written by James Hurley, Enterprise Editor of The Times. 15th February, 2021

Kevin Osborne helped launch urban music stars such as Plan B. Now the entrepreneur plans a new investment in talent from minority backgrounds.

As a musician, Kevin Osborne played in bands that supported the likes of Prince, Chaka Khan and Curtis Mayfield. As a social entrepreneur, he has helped a new generation of stars to become the headline act.

Tribal Tree, which Osborne set up in 1999, was a programme that helped youngsters with an interest in music who were unemployed, had dropped out of school or had been involved with crime. It was credited with helping to launch urban music stars including Plan B, Rudimental and N-Dubz, as well as Anita Blay, the songwriter. “What excited me was there was this talent on the street just not getting found. It’s funding stuff that others weren’t and developing it,” he said.

Having seen at first-hand the hurdles that people from minority and working-class backgrounds face in pursuing a career in the arts, for his next act Osborne, 51, is securing backers for Create Equity Fund, a new investment vehicle that will focus on investing in black, Asian and minority ethnic entrepreneurs with fledgling creative businesses. He hopes to raise £25 million to “transform the small business funding landscape for thousands of budding entrepreneurs who are currently systematically disadvantaged”.

Arts Council England, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation have provided seed funding and Osborne is looking for public and private backers to support the venture, while LEK Consulting and KPMG, the professional services firms, are helping to hone the business plan. The fund is due to be launched towards the final quarter of this year. Osborne expects it to make an average investment of between £250,000 and £500,000 that will be put in alongside other funders to support BAME entrepreneurs and creatives with equity capital.

The need for the fund is underlined by Arts Council research that shows only 2.4 per cent of regular funding from the leading arts funders goes to BAME-led organisations, a figure that would be closer to 15 per cent if funding were distributed in proportion to the BAME population. A host of well-meaning grant-funded initiatives have failed to make a dent in the issue and it’s time for a more commercial approach, Osborne argues — one that he hopes will improve the diversity of leadership, creative talent, creative content and audiences in the arts.

“The idea was to create a fund [and] run it commercially so you are not reliant on grants. The idea is you would invest in an up-and-coming Michaela Coel [creator and star of the widely acclaimed BBC and HBO drama I May Destroy You that has a predominantly black British cast] or somebody creating the next Hamilton. It’s commercial content that can gain mass attention. That’s the kind of thing we want to be investing in.”

Osborne grew interested in community work after tiring of his career as a musician and producer. “It was probably the richest I’ve ever been, but wasn’t that satisfying. My aspirations for what it would be like to have a semi-successful [music] career wasn’t how it panned out.”

However, music seemed the obvious way to make a connection with youngsters who needed a hand. “Having grown up in a north London estate in Finsbury Park, I guess [Tribal Tree] was about me having used music as my way out.”

Tribal Tree, which was based in Chalk Farm, north London, was grant-funded and its demise in 2007 made Osborne determined to make his next ventures more commercial.

Funding for the scheme dried up when The Roundhouse, a live venue and studio with similar goals to Tribal Tree, set up over the road. “In a commercial setting, if you’re doing something right, you sell the units and you’re rewarded. With Tribal, you can be knocking it out of the ballpark, but because you’re within that grant-funding system, you can be defunded because something with a bigger power base sets up near you.”

After Tribal Tree’s closure, Osborne completed a master’s degree in sustainable business practices as well as the Clore Leadership Programme, a scheme for aspiring arts, culture and creative sector leaders. Part of the motivation was to build a network. “Unless you have networks in the charity sector, it’s hard to have a voice.” In 2012, he set up MeWe360, a not-for-profit venture that helps “untapped talent”, particularly those of BAME origin, to start creative businesses by providing workspace, mentoring and introductions to potential investors.

“My whole thing was, there’s just this raw talent sitting on the street, none of the record companies are picking it up.

“And we could do that, not just in the music industry but right across the creative industries, in television, film, whatever was there to be picked up to be developed.” MeWe360 is yet to produce its Plan B moment, but Osborne says that a number of projects are “just starting to blow up”, such as the Snapchat-backed Dose of Society, which provides a video platform for young community activists that is notching up millions of views.

“I’m just as proud of people that have shown the resilience [to survive]. We had a guy who had a music production company who was hit by a bereavement and an issue of mental illness. He disappeared for a couple of years to deal with stuff, but he’s back and we support him.

“Being there for the life of the entrepreneur is what I’m all about. If you come from a middle-class background, you have back-up and the fall is far less and the bounce back is faster because you have the resources and network. For the black entrepreneur I’m talking about, the fall was complete.”

Create Equity Fund will focus more squarely on projects that it thinks can be commercially successful so that eventually it can be self-sustaining. “Most grant funding is short-term, project-based funding and the shape of your projects can be determined by the priorities in government at the time.”

He hopes that the fund can succeed in making a dent in underrepresentation where previous projects have failed. “We are not going to move from 2.6 per cent to 14 per cent overnight because we are in a recession and there is a structural funding bias. But it means the talent coming through would be more diverse, the content would be more diverse and the audiences would be more diverse.

“If you have a more diverse creative sector and more diverse companies, it will deliver increased economic benefit. Part of it is about social justice; part of it is, this is just good business.”

‘The funding system has been biased forever, I don’t think anyone denies that now’

Kevin Osborne says that arts institutions had been merely “dabbling” with diversity before the Black Lives Matter movement (James Hurley writes). Now that there is a focus on systemic racism across society, “the great and the good in the arts sector” have “woken up”.

“I was speaking to somebody who runs one of the big arts venues recently. She just said, ‘You know, we got caught with our pants down.’ It is the way to describe it. People had plans, there are always plans afoot, but there has never been the momentum and impetus to make it work.

“The funding system has been biased forever, I don’t think anyone denies that now. They’ve tried everything and they don’t quite know what to do about it.” That has left arts funders “exposed” and “looking for a solution”, one that he hopes his BAME fund will be part of.

Previous efforts to improve the diversity of the arts have floundered partly because they lacked commercial drive, he believes. “[Arts funders] aren’t very commercially minded and there’s almost an ideological backlash against success rather than seeing it as value for money.

“We’ve probably wasted hundreds of millions trying to diversify the arts. The investment model working is very important.”

Backing a more diverse creative industry will mean a richer cultural environment, given the disproportionate amount of funding that goes to traditional areas of the arts that may have small and generally elite audiences, such as classical orchestras.

“There is a whole values thing about what counts as culture. There’s a broad audience for more popular forms of culture and with the tech revolution we are going to be digesting content in different ways. Most of the funders are still trying to get their heads around this.”

THE FOUNDER of Tribal Tree and MeWe360, Kevin Osborne, has written an open letter to the Arts Council England in an effort to bring about an autonomous £25m investment fund to support black/BAME creative enterprises. – The Voice Online

Here you can read the Open Letter to the Arts Council England the interview is referencing to:

Dear Darren / Sir Nicholas,

Arts Council England (ACE) has tried everything it can think of to improve diversity. The effort has been immense (this should be acknowledged) but the results, in your own words, have been ‘disappointing’. Your recent calls for the Arts Council to do better on racial inequality going forward are welcome. It’s in all our interests that this time we succeed. Ongoing failure hurts us all. It is with this in mind that I write to you.

No doubt you have both been overwhelmed with advice on the best way to improve diversity in our sector. But I am compelled as someone who has worked on issues of power, race and identity for 25 years, and as founder of a Sector Support Organisation (MeWe360) which represents one of the largest BAME networks of creative entrepreneurs in the UK, to add my voice to the mix. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

I make the case below for a greater delegation of power through a £12.5m BAME-led investment fund as the quickest and most effective way to change the longstanding racial inequalities in our sector. That is our first ask. This figure is only 3% of ACE’s £409m spend on National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). To put this in context, if I suggested investing in proportion to the size of the BAME population, the figure would be £57.6m (or 14% of ACE’s NPO spend). The size of the ask means that creating a BAME-led fund can be delivered within ACE’s existing diversity and innovation budgets.

Once this investment fund delivers success, we need to increase the spend to reflect the need. The second ask is that upon tangible success – which we think can be delivered within 3 years – the sum of £12.5m be doubled to £25m. That would still leave it far short of the proportional £57.6m but would provide compelling momentum towards solving an issue that has proven persistently stubborn for far too long.

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

Racial equality in the arts should not just be an aspirational hope. It needs to be a practical ambition, underpinned by deep understanding of the issues and by tangible action. We propose a solution which is within your power to implement, delivers far better than current strategies and has the potential for lasting and powerful impact. My call is for ACE to take up its responsibility and use what influence it has to redistribute power and resources to those who have, for so very long, been marginalised and silenced.

Why a Black-Led Investment Fund Will Deliver a Fundamentally Different Outcome

In short because ‘autonomy’ delivers better and is more important than access or money.

The sad truth is that we are wasting our spend on diversity. We use that money on setting or meeting quotas by “mainstream” institutions on the diversity of their audiences, or by investing in large BAME cultural institutions; or on various diversity programmes. This approach is not delivering and needs to be replaced by one that will.

Photo by IIONA VIRGIN on Unsplash

In my view, there can be no better manifestation of diversity nor any better driver for progress on inequality than autonomy. A BAME-led Enterprise and Innovation Fund delivers this.

Why We Will Need to Invest More In Time

There is clear evidence (including from the recent culture bailout) that BAME-founded organisations are systematically under-funded because they are pitted against the interests of the major museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses. ACE has not invested at all in proportional funding which would require significantly more cash to BAME NPOs, c. £34.5m.

The average grant of our largest institutions is four times that of 12 of the UK’s best BAME-founded organisations combined. To pick one example (out of many), the ENO grant of £12.38m p.a. would pay for 25 Akram Khan Dance Companies; or 29 Phoenix Dance Companies; or 49 Punch Records; or 56 Ballet Blacks; or 59 Tomorrow’s Warriors; or 63 organisations like MeWe360.

These BAME-founded projects are part of ACE’s National Portfolio and deliver excellence, value for money, drive innovation and create small businesses which will diversify the sector and be the heritage of tomorrow. Yet the annual budget of the largest institutions could fund 12 such BAME NPOs (collectively) nine times over.

If at every 4-year spending review, ACE were to increase funding to all these BAME organisations by four per cent (more than twice the current rate of inflation) it would take 140 years for them, collectively, to match the grants of our larger institutions. We would not accept this rate of change to fix the inequalities in the criminal justice or education systems. It is equally intolerable for us to wait so long to root out structural inequalities in the arts.

We never ask any of the major arts institutions to deliver excellence on a shoestring. Yet, in terms of relative funding, we ask BAME-founded organisations to deliver excellence whilst surviving on crumbs.

The rate of attrition on BAME leaders and their organisations is high, and, as a result, diversity and equality becomes a mirage. This is what David Olusoga meant when he said: “Diversity is cherished, only so long as it doesn’t upset or challenge the values and beliefs of those with power. So in the end it comes down to this … does our industry [sector] have the will to genuinely share power with those who have, for so very long, been marginalized and silenced.”

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Summary

I have tried to outline two main issues that have held back progress on the issue of race. The first is the ineffectiveness of current approaches. And the second is the scale of racial inequalities in arts funding, i.e. that on our current trajectory we are several generations away from a fair solution.

And I have outlined two solutions. The first is to delegate investment to a separate BAME-led fund as the means by which to enable the autonomy that will deliver a fundamentally better outcome. Such a fund would demonstrate a real commitment to delivering on the powerful statements made by you both, e.g. in the introduction to ACE’s Diversity Review by Sir Nicholas, and the Black Lives Matter blog by Darren. And the second is to double the budget allocation once this approach is shown to work. It would still leave the sector short of racial equality but would make a very substantial contribution towards the outcome we need to realise.

These solutions are practical and within your power to implement. They will deliver far better than current strategies, will enable enduring change and will deliver lasting and powerful impact. We should act now.

Yours Sincerely,

Kevin Osborne

Founder & CEO,

MeWe360

From the Nesta: Creativity, Culture & Capital‘s essay collection.

Racial inequality in arts funding will not be resolved by grants alone. A BAME-led investment fund would be a pragmatic and transformative solution.

It is widely acknowledged, including by the UK’s large arts funders, that our funding system is racially unequal. In September 2020, I wrote an open letter to Darren Henley (CEO) and Sir Nicholas Serota (Chair) at Arts Council England (ACE) highlighting funding inequalities and suggesting a solution.

There are two main issues that have held back progress on the issue of race in the arts. The first is the ineffectiveness of current diversity strategies. These have focused on either getting the major cultural institutions to meet staffing, leadership and audience quotas; or creating large BAME cultural organisations, often mimicking existing arts institutions in terms of scale and governance, but also in their funding model – grant dependency. Both strategies have failed. In cash terms, just £13 million (2.6 per cent) of regular funding from the major arts funders goes to BAME-led organisations; this would be £70 million (14 per cent) if funding were distributed in proportion to the BAME population. 

The second issue is that the scale of this disparity means that, on any reasonable plan for increasing funding to BAME organisations, it would take several generations (140 years by my calculations) to arrive at a fair solution.

We need to invest in future-facing enterprises that will create new sustainable jobs, and rebuild our economy while at the same time creating a fairer and more inclusive society 

It is clear that grant funding on its own will not improve things in an acceptable timeframe. A more pragmatic approach is to bring together the benefits of grant funding with impact investing. The benefits accrue not only in terms of the different (but interlinking) purposes the two mechanisms seek but also in terms of the different mindsets they each engender. This diversity of purpose and approach can be harnessed to tackle our deepest social, environmental and economic problems. I have successfully used it in setting up MeWe360, a business incubator for BAME creative entrepreneurs, and will use the same approach for my new initiative to reduce racial inequality in the arts. 

My goal is to improve the diversity of leadership, creative talent, creative content and audiences in the arts. Grant funding cannot on its own deliver this. So, I want to set up a £25 million BAME-led investment fund. Initially, it will be a blended impact fund with grant and impact investors. The fund will support BAME entrepreneurs and creatives, providing access to seed and venture capital. It will generate profits, which can then be reinvested in future BAME enterprises. 

While the fund is not a silver bullet and it will still leave the sector short of racial equality, it will make a very substantial contribution towards the vision I would like to realise: a more equitable and diverse arts sector. The fund is in the early stages of development. Key principles in its design are that it will be: 

BAME-founded and led so that BAME art forms, which are often newer, won’t be discounted as less valuable. 

Operationally independent of its investors to allow for innovation. Across the world, where BAME entrepreneurs and artists have had more autonomy, new forms of creativity and culture have emerged and new models for financing have evolved, as in Nollywood in Nigeria and Bollywood in India, and Afrobeat in Ghana/Nigeria. 

Aimed at BAME entrepreneurs and creatives with scalable ideas – providing development support and structured to support experimentation and risk-taking. 

The talent exists and there is a demand for investment. Last year, MeWe360 turned away 450 BAME creative entrepreneurs and demand continues to grow.

Since my open letter, I have received clear indications of genuine appetite within the sector to engage with the idea. Sir Lenny Henry has publicly endorsed it. I have also received public support from Lord Chris Smith (former culture secretary), Lady Sue Hollick (former chair of ACE and philanthropist) and Matthew Taylor (CEO at the RSA), who said that the argument for the fund is ‘powerful and timely [and] deserves a clear and positive response from ACE and government’. 

Nesta has agreed to advise on financial modelling for the fund and I am building an advisory group, which includes Sir Peter Bazalgette, Lady Sue Hollick (former chair of ACE and philanthropist) and Althea Efunshile (non-executive director at Channel 4 and former deputy CEO at ACE). I have secured seed funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action and Arts Council England for research & development and business planning.

The four-month planning phase will include creating terms of reference for the fund and writing a governance framework. Inevitably, this will raise important and sensitive policy questions and I don’t underestimate the difficulty of the conversations ahead. But these are issues that need to be resolved and can be resolved, and I am determined to convert the current momentum into genuine action and lasting change.

Beyond the planning work, I am looking for a coalition of different sponsors and my aim is to secure an anchor sponsor by April 2021.

My solution is about both enterprise and diversity. I believe that entrepreneurship is the solution to diversity. But it is also the solution to another existential crisis: the state of the creative economy itself, in light of the Covid pandemic. Ongoing bailouts of the cultural sector as a single strategy will not work. If we are facing a new normal then we need a creative sector that reflects this. We need to invest in future-facing enterprises that will create new sustainable jobs, and rebuild our economy while at the same time creating a fairer and more inclusive society. A BAME investment fund will do this – and blended impact investment is the means by which it can happen.

The model, when successful, can be replicated to support other underrepresented groups and so success will have an even wider impact on the sector and society. There is a growing movement here and across the world for impact investment in the arts to change the status quo. There seems to be an emergence of not just a network or a community, but something deeper; the emergence of a culture: like-minded people in the UK and across the world who share the aspiration for a new way of being and in turn a new way of doing. A BAME fund would be another step in this direction. It’s long overdue. Let’s make it happen.

Dear Darren / Sir Nicholas,

Arts Council England (ACE) has tried everything it can think of to improve diversity. The effort has been immense (this should be acknowledged) but the results, in your own words, have been ‘disappointing’. Your recent calls for the Arts Council to do better on racial inequality going forward are welcome. It’s in all our interests that this time we succeed. Ongoing failure hurts us all. It is with this in mind that I write to you.

No doubt you have both been overwhelmed with advice on the best way to improve diversity in our sector. But I am compelled as someone who has worked on issues of power, race and identity for 25 years, and as founder of a Sector Support Organisation (MeWe360) which represents one of the largest BAME networks of creative entrepreneurs in the UK, to add my voice to the mix. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

I make the case below for a greater delegation of power through a £12.5m BAME-led investment fund as the quickest and most effective way to change the longstanding racial inequalities in our sector. That is our first ask. This figure is only 3% of ACE’s £409m spend on National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). To put this in context, if I suggested investing in proportion to the size of the BAME population, the figure would be £57.6m (or 14% of ACE’s NPO spend). The size of the ask means that creating a BAME-led fund can be delivered within ACE’s existing diversity and innovation budgets.

Once this investment fund delivers success, we need to increase the spend to reflect the need. The second ask is that upon tangible success – which we think can be delivered within 3 years – the sum of £12.5m be doubled to £25m. That would still leave it far short of the proportional £57.6m but would provide compelling momentum towards solving an issue that has proven persistently stubborn for far too long.

Racial equality in the arts should not just be an aspirational hope. It needs to be a practical ambition, underpinned by deep understanding of the issues and by tangible action. We propose a solution which is within your power to implement, delivers far better than current strategies and has the potential for lasting and powerful impact. My call is for ACE to take up its responsibility and use what influence it has to redistribute power and resources to those who have, for so very long, been marginalised and silenced.

Why a Black-Led Investment Fund Will Deliver a Fundamentally Different Outcome

In short because ‘autonomy’ delivers better and is more important than access or money.

The sad truth is that we are wasting our spend on diversity. We use that money on setting or meeting quotas by “mainstream” institutions on the diversity of their audiences; or by investing in large BAME cultural institutions; or on various diversity programmes. This approach is not delivering and needs to be replaced by one that will.

A BAME-led investment fund is an idea whose time has come. It works because black leadership can focus the investment on the black enterprises that can make a real difference in changing the landscape. A slate of successful black-led initiatives and enterprises will not only deliver excellence in themselves but also provide role models and case studies of what successful diversity looks like. It will both directly address the race issue and provide a compelling catalyst for change across the whole sector.

In my view, there can be no better manifestation of diversity nor any better driver for progress on inequality than autonomy. A BAME-led Enterprise and Innovation Fund delivers this.

Why We Will Need to Invest More In Time

There is clear evidence (including from the recent culture bailout) that BAME-founded organisations are systematically under-funded because they are pitted against the interests of the major museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses. ACE has not invested at all in proportional funding which would require significantly more cash to BAME NPOs, c. £34.5m.

The average grant of our largest institutions is four times that of 12 of the UK’s best BAME-founded organisations combined. To pick one example (out of many), the ENO grant of £12.38m p.a. would pay for 25 Akram Khan Dance Companies; or 29 Phoenix Dance Companies; or 49 Punch Records; or 56 Ballet Blacks; or 59 Tomorrow’s Warriors; or 63 organisations like MeWe360.

These BAME-founded projects are part of ACE’s National Portfolio and deliver excellence, value for money, drive innovation and create small businesses which will diversify the sector and be the heritage of tomorrow. Yet the annual budget of the largest institutions could fund 12 such BAME NPOs (collectively) nine times over.

If at every 4-year spending review, ACE were to increase funding to all these BAME organisations by four per cent (more than twice the current rate of inflation) it would take 140 years for them, collectively, to match the grants of our larger institutions. We would not accept this rate of change to fix the inequalities in the criminal justice or education systems. It is equally intolerable for us to wait so long to root out structural inequalities in the arts.

We never ask any of the major arts institutions to deliver excellence on a shoestring. Yet, in terms of relative funding, we ask BAME-founded organisations to deliver excellence whilst surviving on crumbs. The rate of attrition on BAME leaders and their organisations is high, and, as a result, diversity and equality becomes a mirage. This is what David Olusoga meant when he said:

‘’… diversity is cherished, only so long as it doesn’t upset or challenge the values and beliefs of those with power. So in the end it comes down to this … does our industry [sector] have the will to genuinely share power with those who have, for so very long, been marginalized and silenced’’.

Summary

I have tried to outline two main issues that have held back progress on the issue of race. The first is the ineffectiveness of current approaches. And the second is the scale of racial inequalities in arts funding, i.e. that on our current trajectory we are several generations away from a fair solution.

And I have outlined two solutions. The first is to delegate investment to a separate BAME-led fund as the means by which to enable the autonomy that will deliver a fundamentally better outcome. Such a fund would demonstrate a real commitment to delivering on the powerful statements made by you both, e.g. in the introduction to ACE’s Diversity Review by Sir Nicholas, and the Black Lives Matter blog by Darren. And the second is to double the budget allocation once this approach is shown to work. It would still leave the sector short of racial equality but would make a very substantial contribution towards the outcome we need to realise.

These solutions are practical and within your power to implement. They will deliver far better than current strategies, will enable enduring change and will deliver lasting and powerful impact. We should act now.

Yours Sincerely,

Kevin Osborne

Founder & CEO

MeWe360

The renewed energy and publicity across the world being poured into the fight for racial equality is colliding with the Covid crisis, taking us to a crossroads for arts funding in the UK.

All funders – especially Arts Council England (ACE), given its responsibility to help distribute the £1.57 billion of emergency funding to the arts and creative sector – have to reconcile their renewed commitment to racial justice and the need to support what is disproportionately a white arts, cultural and creative industry.

Covid and Black Lives Matter may just be moments of crisis and the bailout could be used to simply get us back to life as normal. Or, together with the looming financial crisis and climate change, this may all be a tipping point into something new, and the bailout used to shape the future we want to see for our sector, our country and perhaps the world.

The funding fault lines

As a black leader with 30 years’ experience in the arts and creative industries, I have hopes and fears for the bailout as a moment of change.

There is little research on diversity funding policy specifically relating to race; we don’t capture this history sufficiently well. There are valuable case studies, but the opportunities to learn from these have too often been missed. As a result, diversity arts funding policy and practice has made little progress. Funders, including ACE, still have a systemic bias against the funding of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) organisations. For the avoidance of any confusion let me give an example.

In 1996, I founded Tribal Tree (Tribal), a not-for-profit programme for music artists. Located in Camden, opposite the Roundhouse, Tribal targeted disadvantaged young people, mainly from BAME communities. The programme, arguably the most successful of its type, helped launch artists like Plan B, Amir Amor, Richard Rawson and Anita Blay. Others became community leaders emulating the work of Tribal, and one became a therapist with a special interest in youth violence.

3 years after launch, Tribal won the PRS Foundation’s Outstanding Contribution to New Music Award. Four years later Tribal closed. Tribal’s funding slowly dried up as funding was redirected to the £27m development of the Roundhouse, which was supported with private investment from Sir Torquil Norman and grants from the Arts Council amongst others.

The story highlights the fault lines in our funding system. No one set out to close Tribal; I doubt Sir Torquil knew Tribal existed, and there was no question that ACE valued Tribal’s work. So, what went wrong?

Two for the price of one

The reason a potentially flagship BAME organisation got trampled under the wheels of a major heritage project was due to the systemic bias of funders, who, with good intentions, prioritise preservation of heritage (often associated with excellence), value for money (i.e. match funding and scale) and diversity, in that order. When resources are limited, genuinely delivering on all three priorities becomes difficult. Embedding the delivery of diversity targets into ‘heritage organisations’ like the opera houses and the major museums and galleries, allows funders to get ‘two priorities for the price of one’. There is then less impetus to fund BAME-led and BAME-focused initiatives.

I worked with the Roundhouse in developing its community programme. It was a good project, which served the whole community, but it was not BAME-founded nor BAME-led. In my view BAME ‘foundership’ and leadership matters. For ACE and others to fund the Roundhouse at the expense of a grassroots BAME-led project, which was exceeding all performance targets, was at odds with best diversity practice. However, when a large project came along with matched funding, great connections and a strong heritage angle, the smaller organisation, with its grass roots character, had no chance – no matter what its track record.

Inconsistent

It’s worth saying, that the ‘value for money’ argument is not consistently applied. For example, the Royal Opera House and English National Opera (ENO) deliver a more similar product than Tribal and the Roundhouse, yet both continue to receive a lot of public funding, despite all the debates about value for money. Why? Because the arts funding system in the UK values heritage even more than value for money.

Changing this will not be easy, but equally, it is not that difficult either. My guess is that ACE will again bailout the ENO and other large institutions that are arguably surplus to requirements both in terms of their value for money and, in my view, their heritage value. ENO’s grant of £12.38m would pay for 63 organisations like MeWe360, the sector support organisation I run for BAME creative entrepreneurs in the UK. If as a society we value organisations like ENO 63 times more than MeWe, then it is unsurprising that BAME-led organisations which deliver excellence, value for money, drive innovation and create small businesses which will diversify the sector, struggle to survive at moments of crisis.

Waiting for equitable distribution

Undeniably, we are at a moment of crisis and the distribution of the bailout will reflect (in pounds, shillings and pence) how far we’ve come on diversity. So far, ACE’s emergency funding programme has not reached the number of BAME organisations it should have. The equitable distribution of the £1.57 billion bailout of the arts and creative sector could be an opportunity to change things.

Where should we start? ACE needs to create a £12.38m BAME investment fund that will support creative enterprises and entrepreneurs through this crisis and delegate management of this fund to those with a track record of accessing and supporting BAME talent. The £12.38m figure for the BAME fund is the same as the annual ACE grant to ENO. It is not about a tradeoff between ENO and a BAME fund – this would be a distraction. The number focuses attention on what we genuinely value; and the extent to which black lives really matter to decision makers in our sector.

Our government delegates arts funding to the Arts Council, and the Arts Council now needs to delegate down another level again. It has done so before. If managed in the right way, this will be an equitable way to support diverse creative businesses out of the current crisis and stimulate the more inclusive sector we all want to see. If successful, we can create the heritage of tomorrow, owned and valued equally by us all and housed more in cyber space than in crumbling buildings.

Genuine diversity should not just be an aspirational hope. It needs to be a practical ambition, underpinned by tangible action. We know what we need to do. And, if crises are opportunities for change, we now have a once in a generation opportunity to act.