We rely on our commercial activities
Auro Foxcroft
Instead on relying on government funding we rely on the commercial activities and we use that money to fund not-for-profit activities, arts activities, social activities. So the whole model is sustainable and in England there is a really big drive for this approach under the name of social enterprise. We call ourselves the social enterprise and in that way we are safe from a lot of funding cuts and a lot of the trends and fashion in grant funding that are apparent across a lot of sectors in the not-for-profit world.
There is always the negative side to everything that means that we cannot be creatively risk taking as we might like to be. We always have to make sure that we have enough commercial work in before we put out a cultural programme into place. And we are a little bit less free than if we had a lots of money available to us.
However I think that with the grant funding you are never free anyway. You always have to hit targets and achieve certain outcomes that the various grant funders want from you. So it is similar sort of world, similar sort of set of problems and challenges to creative freedom.
But I feel that without model relying on commercial work rather than relying on funders we just have a little bit more control of our own destiny and a little bit more direction and we can make a few more choices that perhaps grant funded organizations cannot make. And I think that is particularly true in a current economic climate that we are in at the moment.
There is a little a bit of support in kind of from the municipality in terms of rent that we pay in here. However it depends on which way you are looking in because the building was so destroyed when we took it over that we had to spend several hundred thousand pounds of our own money renovating the building but if you spread that over the ten years that we have the lease then the building is not such a amazing deal.
However for the area and the location it is still quite good and it does still allow us to operate a little bit more flexibly and little bit less commercially that we would have done if we take another building locally to here.
Related fights
- Economic self-sufficiency vs public interest
- Sources of funding
- Courage is more important than money
- Umbrella model
- We want to stay as free as possible
- Creativity Zentrum - non-profit private association
- Sources of income of A38
- Source of income in Media Evolution City
- Funding Framework of MitOst
- Companies are happy in here
- Questions that will lead you to money
- We are only 7% dependent on grant money
- We rely on our commercial activities
- Umbrella model of the ufaFabrik
- Sources of income of Meet Factory
- Sources of income of Linnalabor
- Aparaaditehas want to be a host
- Business model of Aparaaditehas
- Sources of income of Halle14
- Economy of Arts Printing House
- Sources of income of Uzupis Art Incubator
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