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