Culture Makes… A Nationwide Call to Action

The Cultural Philanthropy Foundation is inviting every cultural and heritage organisation in the UK to join the Culture Makes… campaign. To join, click here.

Culture Makes… is a UK wide campaign bringing together cultural and heritage organisations to celebrate the value and impact of culture at this critical time. As a sector, with state funding in real term decline, almost £500m in cuts to local
authority funding, and charitable giving falling to less than 1% of all giving for the first time in more than a decade (2023 UK Giving Report) we cannot simply rely on any political party to represent our interests. Now is the time to make our case and in doing so address the historic challenges of articulating the impact of culture and heritage. We need to move beyond the binary arguments of intrinsic value and social benefit and acknowledge that whilst culture and heritage do have economic value, to define them in this way is limiting and drives the commodification of culture.

Achates, has employed the The 8 Types of Impact of Culture and Heritage©, with more than 100 cultural organisations from across the UK to offer clear and simple linguistic tools with which to express the impact organisations are creating through their work. No single organisation creates all 8 impacts, nor  should they attempt to do so. It is as an ecosystem that we create all 8.

The aim of the Culture Makes… campaign is to celebrate all 8 types of impact and as result to influence decision makers and audiences, whilst creating opportunities to enable individual organisations to highlight the impact of their own work specifically. With pre-made social media posts ready to use the campaign is simple and makes limited demands on precious time, whilst also offering a platform to showcase your work.

I should add that we hope to be able to include a ninth type of impact, environmental benefit, in due course, but at present when most organisations are focused on mitigating their negative environmental impact as opposed to
driving real benefit to claim this impact would be to undermine the value of other impacts. So that’s a great future achievement for us all to work towards. And of course, whilst diversity and inclusion isn’t a type of impact in itself, it cuts across all of the types of impact and is at the centre of the outcomes created.

To announce the campaign, the Cultural Philanthropy Foundation attempted to convene a representative body of cultural organisations across the UK – all forms, locations, size and protected characteristics to act as an invitation to all
UK cultural and heritage organisations to join the Culture Makes… campaign. This list is now more than 100 strong and growing, but we want as many culture and heritage organisations as possible to join us.

Proudly sponsored by Achates, with design by the international design agency, Pentagram, Culture Makes… will launch in May 2024 and run through to the end of the year with a shared toolkit of resources to enable us all to celebrate the
value of the sector as a whole as well as the impacts each institution makes. The campaign will give us a unified language and voice to advocate to policy makers and government, as well as our audiences, as to the impact culture makes. And
at the end of the campaign there will be the option to join a mass fundraising drive.

As we approach a general election, there is everything to play for. Join us, raise your voice and let’s ensure that we as a sector set the agenda for culture. Now is the time.

Caroline McCormick
Director, Achates
Chair, Cultural Philanthropy Foundation

 

Achates is a proud sponsor of the Cultural Philanthropy Foundation and its new campaign Culture Makes… a UK-wide campaign celebrating the 8 Types of Impact of Culture & Heritage. The campaign is free to join, open to all culture and heritage organisations in the UK and goes live on 1 May.

Read about it in The Stage here: Arts organisations create ‘united voice’ in run up to general election

Read about it in The Guardian here: ‘We’re barely hanging on’: England’s cultural jewels fall into the red

Read about it in Museums Association here: ‘New campaign to make case for investment culture’