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Our permanent campus, and need for resilience
For the first time in its 25-year history, the Academy occupies a purpose-fit, fully accessible campus bringing teaching, studios, and gallery spaces together at Triptych Bankside. The building offers an extraordinary foundation, proximity to cultural institutions, and a diverse local community that reflects the Academy’s ethos.
Yet permanence alone does not guarantee resilience. To ensure that this campus continues to support access, learning, and creative exchange in every season, the Academy must now strengthen its financial structures.
How much would you like to donate
How much would you like to donate
“Building resilience is therefore not about retreat or consolidation for its own sake. It is about safeguarding access, sustaining teaching excellence, and ensuring that the Academy can continue to contribute meaningfully to the cultural life of Bankside and beyond — now and in the years ahead.”
The Resilience Fund is essential
Alongside this, the Academy is taking decisive steps to strengthen its balance sheet, including progressing plans to sell its former campus at Mermaid Court. This will allow historic liabilities to be cleared and release capital to support stability. The decision also reflects our values: the former campus cannot fully meet the accessibility standards we believe inclusive education requires.
However, one-off asset realisation alone cannot provide long-term resilience. Without dedicated reserves, the Academy would remain exposed to future volatility.
Why resilience and adaptability matter now
Since the pandemic, independent higher education has faced tighter regulation, higher costs, and increased scrutiny—pressures that can make degree delivery disproportionately difficult for small, practice-led institutions.
With our students’ best interests at the centre, the Academy has made a planned decision to teach out its BA provision, ensuring every enrolled student completes their studies with full support and care. We are now re-centring our offer around the three-year Diploma, alongside modular and shorter programmes that better reflect our ethos and the sector’s shift toward flexible, skills-led learning—so we can protect quality, rebuild resilience, and keep our community thriving.
Our urgency and community impact
The urgency is real and shared across the sector. Since the pandemic, fundraising has become more competitive, grant funding more constrained, and operating costs higher. Independent institutions without reserves are increasingly exposed to short-term volatility, even where educational quality and demand remain high.
For The Art Academy, this matters because our impact depends on continuity. We provide bursaries and affordable places for students who might otherwise be excluded, maintain long-term partnerships with disability-led and community organisations such as BEAM and the Positive Ageing group at Blackfriars Settlement, and curate gallery programmes that give visibility to emerging voices. These activities require stability to plan, commit, and deliver responsibly.
How you can get involved
If you are interested in the Academy’s fundraising vision, speak to us :
Rob Pepper, Principal
development@artacademy.ac.uk
The Supper Club is a series of intimate gatherings designed to bring supporters closer to the life of the Academy. These events create space to reflect on progress, share ideas, and deepen understanding of the Academy’s work and direction.
Each Supper Club will foreground student experiences, tutor perspectives, and partner insights, alongside previews of exhibitions and public programmes. Hosted within the Academy, they offer supporters a first-hand sense of the learning, dialogue, and creative exchange their support makes possible.
The Supper Club is also a place to build relationships — connecting donors with tutors, students, alumni, and each other over food and conversation.
It is intended to nurture long-term engagement, helping supporters move from interest to shared ownership of the Academy’s future.
The Giving Circle is a structured community of supporters committed to strengthening the Academy’s long-term resilience. Members make multi- year or recurring pledges to the Resilience Fund, helping to build its core over time and providing the stability required for confident planning.
Giving Circle members receive regular updates on the impact of the Fund, invitations to behind-the-scenes events, and opportunities to engage closely with the Academy’s leadership, tutors, and students. Recognition is thoughtful and proportionate, reflecting the collective nature of the commitment.
While all contributions support the Resilience Fund as a whole, members may choose to align their giving with priority areas such as access and bursaries, community partnerships, or the curated programme, reflecting personal interests within a shared purpose.
For those wishing to make a more significant commitment, opportunities exist to support named bursaries, exhibitions, or programme strands, ensuring a lasting and meaningful legacy within the Academy’s future.
For those who prefer to make a single, meaningful contribution, one-off gifts can play an important catalytic role. These gifts may support defined milestones such as a bursary cohort, a gallery exhibition, or a time-limited community collaboration.
While one-time gifts do not replace the need for long-term reserves, they can be particularly powerful when combined with peer-to-peer campaigns or matched funding, helping to unlock additional support and broaden participation in the Academy’s work.
Supporters making one-off contributions are invited to engage with the outcomes of their gift, gaining insight into how targeted investment complements the wider Resilience Fund and contributes to the Academy’s stability and impact.
Businesses, foundations, and philanthropic partners play an important role in strengthening the Academy’s long-term resilience. Through structured partnerships, organisations can support the Resilience Fund while also engaging meaningfully with the Academy’s educational and cultural work.
Partnerships may include support for bursary clusters, exhibitions, or community programmes, as well as opportunities to co-host Supper Club events, offer professional mentorship, or collaborate on projects aligned with shared values and social impact goals.
These relationships extend beyond financial contribution alone. They connect the Academy more deeply to London’s cultural, civic, and business communities, bringing skills, networks, and perspective that help multiply impact and reinforce the Academy’s role as a creative and educational anchor.
The Academy is committed to transparent, responsible stewardship of all gifts. Donors at every level will receive regular updates on the performance of the Resilience Fund, alongside clear reporting on student outcomes and community impact.
Supporters may choose to be publicly acknowledged or to give anonymously, according to their preference. Recognition will be thoughtful and proportionate, reflecting the collective nature of the Fund and the trust placed in the Academy.
Beyond reporting, the Academy will seek to create meaningful opportunities for supporters to engage with its work — through events, dialogue, and access to learning and creative activity — ensuring that generosity is met with care, respect, and lasting connection.