My Motivation (video)

My Motivation (video)

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.”

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The Times: Tribal Tree founder who gave stars chance to shine lines up new act (article)

The Times: Tribal Tree founder who gave stars chance to shine lines up new act (article)

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.”

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Covid-19 and the Experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Creative Entrepreneurs (article)

Covid-19 and the Experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Creative Entrepreneurs (article)

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) creative entrepreneurs existed in an invisible space between the public and private sectors. Both sectors had consistently undervalued what they do. In this space, innovation, creativity and optimism forge a resilience that is necessary for their ability to survive; and in a few cases, thrive. This resilience is partly born of necessity and partly of humanity; the natural drive for security, identity, status and creative expression. Covid-19, like other major crises before, has tested this resilience. For the first time, our report intends to give voice to this group, and capture, in all its complexity, their various experiences.

As a second round of money is being distributed to support the arts and creative industries through the government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund, we need to ask ourselves:  what is it that is being recovered? The murder of George Floyd, and the global fight for racial justice which followed, produced arguably the biggest response to racial diversity the sector has ever seen. This has reduced the impact of Covid-19 on BAME creative entrepreneurs. Many of the people we spoke to have had their best year ever, either in terms of business growth, personal recognition or job satisfaction. Their fear is that the heightened interest in diversity will slowly evaporate, and that ‘recovery’ will mean giving up any gains made – a return to business as usual in the invisible gap between the public and private sectors.

Even with the positive impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, inevitably, some of the entrepreneurs have businesses that could not be insulated from Covid-19 and the lockdown measures. However, even amongst this group there is strong acknowledgement of a positive shift in recognition and perception of BAME entrepreneurs within their industries. They had found a voice, and colleagues, as well as some of those in power, were opening their doors to listen.

Our paper – covering 20 case studies – is not claiming to be statistically significant. It does provide different stories of life during Covid-19. Collectively their experiences point to enduring themes, supported by the reality on the ground.  The fact that, on aggregate, the entrepreneurs we interviewed performed better during the pandemic than before means we have made progress, of a sort, and that we should aim to build on any gains made. To do this we should invest in regeneration (i.e. creating new systems, new structures and new leaders), not just recovery of the sector as it was pre-Covid-19. This is not a time for self-preservation by the gatekeepers of our current system; a system which allowed underinvestment over the last 75 years, since the launch of the Arts Council.  It is a time for them to cultivate something new. Entrepreneurial creativity is required, the very qualities our participants have in such abundance. 


This is the start of a conversation. Many of the themes raised need further exploration. The experience over the pandemic, and in the last year, is mixed. But if I were asked to draw a single conclusion, it is that consciousness has been raised, aspirations have been elevated and nobody wants to simply go back to life and business as we knew it pre Covid-19 and pre-George Floyd. None of the people we interviewed want to believe that moving beyond lockdown will mean moving back to being less visible and having less of a voice (a return to their invisible space). Their collective hope is that these various crises will be the catalyst for the regeneration of our sector, to one that is more equitable and as a result more resilient. It is a hope they are willing to fight for.


Thank you to Sue Barnard and the Arts Council for their timely support of this research. Thank you to James Doeser, not only for his work on this but for his guidance. Thanks to those on the MeWe team who helped in pulling this together. But mostly I want to thank the 20 people for the time they took to share their inspirational stories which formed the source material of this report.  

Kevin Osborne

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Interview with The Voice Online (video)

Interview with The Voice Online (video)

“With an inherent interest in the arts sector, one businessman is drawing attention to the inequalities in the current system and presents a practical and achievable solution”

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

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.”

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

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Racial Fluidity (article)

Racial Fluidity (article)

A few weeks ago I shared post on my LinkedIn, exploring the concept of racial fluidity. This sparked quite a lot of interest and there were some stimulating responses, so much so that I am organising an informal group discussion about it in late February / early March. Here’s the LinkedIn post: 

“There is an increased presence of identity politics in my life. I have noticed my response to the language of gender fluidity and my resistance to the use of new pronouns. I want to do the work to understand my emotional resistance to it and shake it off.

I find it helpful to see gender fluidity through the lens of race. The concept of racial fluidity has formed – maybe, as with gender, racial identity is part of a spectrum?

Whether we define gender as biological, physical, cultural or emotional states of being, it is obviously fluid. Similarly, if we define race by these measures, it must also be fluid.

If an NHS form can offer ‘I prefer to use my own term’ for gender and sexual orientation, why not for race? If you have resistance to this idea then perhaps, like me, you have work to do too? ”

Here is a comment thread between Akin and me:

Akin: Our ‘common values’ are currently in flux. Also our society is less monolithic ( certainly cultural, socio-political and religious) than it was say, a hundred years ago. So, pretty much everything is up for grabs. This is the one of the reasons why our society is currently divided. When Neitzsche said “God is dead”. It seems he meant it as a warning of the consequence of the loss of a common ‘beacon’, but what we heard instead was a celebration. Potentially, racial fluidity might be the next battle ground 5-10 years from now. When I say racial fluidity, I mean ‘self identifying’ as a different race to the race that you were born. That’ll be fun! My personal question is as a society, who is in the driving seat of our common values and who is navigating? This is crucial as our values is what binds us together. My fear is that It is always tends to be the same small pocket of people who control what we see, when we see it and how we see it. They are the new clerics.

Me: ….Part of racial fluidity is ‘self identifying’ as a different race. But for me it’s also about just us acknowledging racial fluidity as a reality, whether we choose to self identify or not. I.e. that most of us, in one way or another, sit on the spectrum between ‘black’ and ‘white’. My last post ‘Letter To My 16 Year Old Self’ illustrates this. I’m wondering if a general acceptance of racial fluidity, as a fact of life, would have allowed me (and others) a more ‘free’ (comfortable) process for exploring racial identity; one that would be less driven and navigated by others and as a result less loaded with shame. Just a thought. Thanks for your response.

Akin: but ‘racial fluidity’ isn’t a fact of life (unless we make it one. Again, what do we define as race? ). People are bi-racial, tri-racial. Thats a fact of life. Could you Kevin self identify as Chinese? I am not sure. Esp If you don’t have any Chinese admixture and ancestry. Again, we aren’t the total sum of reality. We are a part of society and are a reflection of society at that point in time. Every society has its own quirk. Where I grew up in Nigeria, a white person who is fully absorbed into the culture and speaks the language would be pretty much considered African and Black and treated as such, knowing that the acceptance is not in any way erasing their ‘whiteness’. They do not swap one race for the other, or jump between races They are fully adopted in one, while ‘retaining’ the race of birth.

Me: Yes, it does depend on how we define race, which is a whole debate, as definitions change from place to place. For that reason, I mainly speak about the UK / European experience which I know. I was using the criteria for race mentioned in my original comment and which I think, apply to gender ID. The criteria are up for debate. My assertion is if they apply to gender they also must apply to race. And if gender fluidity is a fact of life in the UK then so must racial fluidity. That said, you example of how things operate in Nigeria is really interesting and would perhaps prevent the need for race fluidity as a concept, as people are just accepted whatever their colour, heritage etc if they naturally assimilate. This approach would probably be the ideal. I can see how it would happen in Nigeria / Africa but I’m less optimistic about this happening anytime soon in the UK / Europe. We will likely need to go down the identity politics route at least initially (because it’s already being adopted ) perhaps as a step towards what you describe happens in Nigeria.

Akin: What is race? I have heard some people define everything from muslims to french people as a race. My thinking is that the definition of ‘race’ should or could be framed around it’s original definition at its conception ( from round about the enlightenment ), because that is the construct that we are still grappling with today. It’Il be odd to suddenly change the rules of a football game into basketball rules, while still playing the football game. Using that definition ( or one not too far from it) I think race and gender are totally different. Certainly from a scientific point of view there is very little similarity. Certainly, the history that underpins our experience and understanding of race and gender aren’t the same. Sure there are similarities (esp in the realms for the struggle for equality). But oranges and apples are both fruits, but no one would argue they are the same fruit. I understand we are made to believe what applies to one applies to the other, but that’s a totally different conversation. When this Covid thing is over, it’ll be interesting top have a proper conversation about the subject of identity politics and the broader picture of how we navigate forward as a people.

Me: Again, really interesting about whether race or gender or any other identity label has remained a static concept or whether they have been a moving targets over the generations as knowledge has changed. Would love to set up a conversation. I’ll have someone at my end try to organise a small group conversation to chew the fat on this. Perhaps on Zoom in first instance. Will see what if any appetite there is. Thanks

Akin: that would be cool.


Shortly after the post was published, there was an interesting conversation on the BBC Today Programme on Jan 14th, – The segment starts at 1:49:50 and is about 7 minutes long –  about the need to ask for both your sex and gender on the census; i.e. is important to include a question on biological sex or is it enough to just ask about the gender that people identify as?

It’s only a matter of time before the same question is asked about race, which will be an interesting debate.

This is a topic that interests me, and I want to keep exploring. If you have any views or suggested reading on the idea of racial fluidity I’d love to hear from you. Find me on Linkedin, Twitter or Instagram, mention me on your post and tag  #racialfluidity let’s keep the conversation going!

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Impact investment and diversity in the arts: Outlining the challenge I want to solve. (article)

Impact investment and diversity in the arts: Outlining the challenge I want to solve. (article)

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.

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