To B or Not To B Corp? Rethinking Cultural Business Models
Lancashire cultural organisation, Culturapedia, on achieving B Corp certification and what it means for sustainability, creative freedom and new approaches across the cultural sector
Image credit: Culturapedia
Something unprecedented has taken place in Lancashire’s cultural landscape - and indeed within England’s Arts Council England National Portfolio. Lancashire culture organisation, Culturapedia, has become the only ACE National Portfolio Organisation to achieve B Corp certification status, marking a significant shift in how cultural organisations can understand and articulate their purpose, structure and sustainability.
This development signals more than an organisational milestone; it opens up an important sector-wide conversation about business models in the arts, challenging long-held assumptions that charitable status is the default or only viable route for publicly funded cultural work. It points instead to the growing relevance of flexible organisational structures that can support greater entrepreneurialism, resilience, and long-term creative impact, while staying rooted in strong values and public benefit.
What’s particularly significant about B Corp certification is the rigour and credibility it brings, offering a framework that aligns ethics, accountability and impact with creative practice - an increasingly vital combination for the future of the sector. This milestone also provides a visible and inspiring template for others across Lancashire, showing how flexible, values-led structures can unlock creative freedom, build resilience and sustain long-term impact.
The following article, written by Rob Howell and Sue Robinson, the directors of Culturapedia, reflects on their motivation, journey, and the thinking behind pursuing B Corp certification - offering insight into a development that may help shape future conversations about cultural enterprise, governance, and sustainability across the sector.
We’d like to offer our congratulations to the Culturapedia team for leading the way and opening up this important conversation for the sector.
The present-day challenges that creative micro-businesses face are myriad, and the non-arts partners and stakeholders we collaborate with often seek an industry standard that reassures. Bodies such as Arts Council England are keen to support entrepreneurial ideas and practice, but are adverse to financial risk. For this to work, artists and arts companies should be able to challenge and debate the status quo and explore perceptions of what constitutes a sustainable arts organisation or creative enterprise. Culturapedia’s journey to this certification enables us to open up this discussion in Lancashire.
Culturapedia began life in 2004 as Robinson Howell Partnership. In 2011, the two Co-Directors undertook a values exercise with a business coach and rebranded the company with a new trading name. Culturapedia is neither a charity nor a CIC. This is unusual for an organisation such as ours, which is also an Arts Council England NPO, but we believe our structure enables us to be efficient whilst remaining sustainable, accountable and ethical.
Gaining B Corp certification endorses this strategic decision. The B Corp certification recognises businesses that benefit people, communities and the planet, with a holistic and robust assessment framework. We are the only Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) to achieve B Corp status, and we are open to conversations around what this means for us.
We chose our model, a micro business, purposefully, not because we sought profit, but because we wanted to retain ownership of our values and have the freedom to adapt. By adopting a lean governance structure with two directors, we can respond rapidly to opportunities and challenges.
‘For-profit’ or ‘non-profit’ are legal labels, and in reality, we believe that what matters is leadership and the organisation’s real values: can we be trusted? Are we reliable? Do we deliver? We root our work in people-first practice, co-creation with communities, meaningful collaboration, creative experimentation, and a commitment to cultural equality. B-Corp certification supports our success as a community-focused, ethical, and sustainable arts business striving to deliver exceptional cultural experiences to the people of Lancashire efficiently.
Culturapedia’s integrated programme supports long-term relationships between people and culture, providing sustainable, high-quality cultural experiences in places where communities feel most at home, engaging 34,631 people across Lancashire and working with 360 artists in 2025 alone! Examples of this include our small-scale touring programme, Spot On Lancashire, celebrating 30 years this year. We support volunteers and librarians in bringing professional performances to geographically and socially isolated communities, enabling them to enjoy a great night out on their doorstep. We deliver this in partnership with Lancashire County Council, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and Blackpool Council. Spot On also collaborates with other ACE-funded touring programmes such as Big Imaginations Children’s Theatre Consortium, Rural Touring Dance Initiative, Rekindle library touring, and, latterly, Create-Tour-Connect, an action research programme that is finding new models to support sustainable small-scale theatre touring across the country.
We also run ambitious place-based cultural programmes rooted in lived experiences and shared cultural awareness, such as the Burnley Words Festival and Burnley Mechanics Presents, developed in partnership with Burnley Leisure and Culture Group. Enabling creative encounters to take place in safe, trusted places is integral to our work, and working across Blackburn and Darwen markets and town centres in partnership with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and Blackburn BID, together with our membership of the Blackburn Cultural Alliance, contribute to sustainable strategic cultural development across the borough, placing collaboration, people, experimentation, integrity and fairness at the centre of their practices.
Not being a charity or CIC has not hindered us in our ambitions. This is a decision to be made early in an organisation’s development process - altering one’s status is time-consuming and challenging once established. Many businesses, such as ours, don’t even consider all the options, assuming that funders such as Arts Council England will only fund charities or CICs. ACE has funded individual artists since its inception and is in the business of funding great art ahead of structure, as long as mechanisms are in place to ensure resources are used responsibly. We believe that our chosen corporate structure, along with our B Corp certification, enables us to maintain the trust of our partners and funders whilst delivering excellent cultural encounters in places where people feel at home.