The creative hub will use our loan to acquire a new, larger-capacity building and scale up its incubator programme for BAME creative entrepreneurs.
MeWe360 is a creative hub with an ambition is to find and test new and more effective approaches to driving diversity in the arts and creative sector.
It combines a not-for-profit development house for arts practitioners and creative entrepreneurs (MeWe Foundation) with a wholly-owned trading arm (MeWe Trading CIC) that offers work and events space for hire to commercial clients in the sector, ploughing profits back into the charity.
By investing both in the development of BAME creative talent and in the growth and resilience of their enterprises, MeWe360 not only creates benefits for its individual beneficiaries but equally supports new artistic creation that better meets the needs of people from diverse communities.
Our investment of £150,000 will help MeWe move into a new site at 13 Soho Square without depleting its cash reserves, and enabling it to focus instead on re-accommodating its members and scaling up its activity.
The new site will offer the organisation almost double its current space, which means that it will be able to support even more creative entrepreneurs and businesses as well as increase its profit. This will provide some much needed medium-term stability for MeWe, while it continues to search for more long-term, self-sustaining premises.
Going forward, the organisation will build on its current success and focus its efforts on opening a second, regional hub for arts and creative entrepreneurs in Manchester, responding to increasing demand from the sector.
Read the full case study on MeWe360 on the Arts Impact Fund website.