About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Who are we investing in?

Culture24 is a Brighton-based charity and sector support organisation that supports museums in the UK to develop their digital capabilities and connect with audiences more meaningfully. Alongside this, since 2009, the organisation has been working hard to create a museums Lates culture in the UK by coordinating the national Museums at Night campaign. More than a 1,200 venues have taken part to date, programming 4,000+ events and attracting over 2 million people.

What are we investing in?

Building on its expertise in this area, it has developed a new festival model of museum Lates: the Emerge Festival. The idea is simple: bring together an all-star creative cast of emerging talent - musicians; dancers; DJs; poets; performers; speakers and visual artists - across many different cultural venues over the course of two nights. The first edition of Emerge, which will be held in London on 27th & 28th September 2019, will see over 30 venues take part, from The Natural History Museum to The Royal College of Music.

If successful, the Emerge Festival will transform the Lates business model from one reliant on public subsidy to one that is more commercially viable, funded by ticket sales and sponsorship. This allows for reinvestment of any profits back into the festival, whilst also making a financial contribution to participating venues.

Read the full Culture24 case study on the Arts & Culture Finance website.

London

Museums

£150,000