Article 3: Scaling Creative Impact and the Role of Intermediary Organisations

Introduction

Creative impact can be defined as the positive societal change resulting from the intentional use of creative practices, cultural expressions, and collaborative strategies around cultures to address societal challenges. Scaling entails extending creative impact beyond its original niche to achieve broader relevance; it bridges the gap between localised success and widespread impact.

Without integrating scaling into the discussion of creative impact, the full potential of cultural and creative interventions remains underutilised. However, scaling creative impact is inherently complex, as it cannot be reduced to fixed linear or standardised parameters. Unlike traditional market-driven models, scaling creative impact involves navigating shifts in resources, practices, relationships, power dynamics, and beliefs within the social systems it seeks to influence. It is not a simple act of replication but a process of adaptation, embedding, and co-creation across diverse contexts.

It is important to note that not all artistic and creative endeavours aim for scaling. While many seek to achieve broader societal influence, others prioritise individual expression, aesthetic exploration, or the intrinsic value of the creative process itself. Recognising this diversity of intent is crucial for understanding the scope and purpose of work in cultural and creative economies (CCE).

This article addresses two key questions: How can the concept of scaling be understood within the framework of creative impact? And what role can intermediary organisations effectively play in scaling creative impact initiatives?

Understanding Scaling in Complex Systems

Impact and scaling are deeply interconnected; achieving broad impact often necessitates scaling. In traditional market terms, scaling refers to expanding operations, production, or market presence. This is typically achieved through strategies such as increasing output, entering new geographic regions, targeting new customer segments, or enhancing market share within existing segments. Economies of scale play a critical role, as higher production volumes reduce average costs per unit. Likewise, standardisation ensures consistency through established procedures and protocols. This approach works well when addressing business considerations, where complexity is relatively linear and predictable.

However, this framework falls short when addressing societal problems, which are inherently complex. Such challenges, often described as „wicked problems,“ are characterised by unclear cause-and-effect relationships (Kohl 2021), diverse stakeholder interests (van Hout et al. 2024), and significant uncertainty (Westley & Antadze, 2010). The climate crisis illustrates this complexity, as efforts to mitigate urban heatwaves require adjustments in urban planning and the development of effective health plans. Actions taken to reduce heat exposure in cities may inadvertently affect other aspects of urban life, such as energy consumption or public access to green spaces. This highlights how solutions must navigate interconnected systems, where interventions in one area can trigger unexpected ripple effects, and new dynamics emerge from interactions between system components.

This complexity demands a rethinking of how scaling is conceptualised. Westley et al. (2006) use analogies to illustrate varying levels of complexity in scaling social innovations. For instance, baking a cake exemplifies a simple process: it follows a clear recipe with specific ingredients and precise steps, yielding predictable and repeatable outcomes. By contrast, social innovation resembles raising a child, where success with one child offers no guarantee of success with another. Each child responds uniquely to their environment, parents, and societal context, with unforeseen challenges often altering outcomes. Similarly, social innovations are shaped dynamically by interactions within diverse environments, institutional frameworks, and broader societal dynamics, requiring adaptability and responsiveness rather than fixed „recipes.“

This has led to a growing focus on systems thinking and systems change in the literature on scaling, recognising that scaling societal innovations is far from a „plug-and-play“ process. More importantly, traditional scaling is just one of several pathways to achieving large-scale impact (Kohl, 2021). Sustainable scaling entails transformative changes across ecosystems, organisations, policies, environments, and value chains. Scholars such as Moore, Riddell, and Vocisano (2015) have introduced a framework distinguishing between strategies for scaling: expanding an innovation’s reach (scaling out), driving institutional transformation (scaling up), and fostering cultural and behavioural shifts (scaling deep). This nuanced understanding has influenced impact discourses. For instance, Social Finance (2021) defines „impact at scale“ as the sustainable expansion of reach, embedding change within systems, or shifting societal and cultural perspectives. In this context, scaling outcomes often converge with systems change, where success depends on reforms and transformations in conditions as integral elements of broader societal progress.

Scaling as systems change and the role of creative impact

Creative impact embodies a systemic approach, operating across five of the „six conditions of systems change“ framework (Kania, Kramer, & Senge, 2018): resource flows, practices, relationships, power dynamics, and mental models (see also Article 1). By leveraging networks, creative impact redistributes resources to bridge gaps and ensure alignment with community needs. It embeds culturally relevant practices into systemic solutions, fostering contextual relevance and long-term sustainability. Through fostering trust and collaboration, creative initiatives strengthen relationships that amplify collective impact. They also empower marginalised voices, challenging hierarchical power structures and promoting inclusivity in decision-making. Additionally, creative impact transforms mental models, using storytelling and cultural heritage to shift societal beliefs and drive foundational systemic change.

Mapping the dimensions of creative impact onto the scaling framework proposed by Moore, Riddell, and Vocisano (2015) provides a nuanced lens to understand how creative impact expand influence and foster systemic transformation. The following illustrates how these dimensions align with the principles of scaling out, scaling up, and scaling deep:

Products and Services: Scaling Out

Creative impact through products and services often aligns with scaling out, as it involves the replication and dissemination of tangible outputs to reach larger audiences. Examples include innovative technologies, artistic works, and educational programmes, which can be adapted for new markets or demographic segments. By expanding reach, these initiatives amplify their impact through quantifiable and replicable models.

For instance, CIRCE’s Fellowship pilot Trousers to Climb Trees exemplifies scaling out by developing and distributing sensory-friendly clothing. Originally designed to meet the needs of neurodivergent individuals, this innovative attire addresses a diverse range of sensory and physical requirements. Its adaptable design makes it suitable for professions requiring high flexibility, such as firefighting or performing arts. By extending its application to various sectors, the initiative not only broadens its reach but also addresses inclusivity and adaptability in occupational attire.

However, it’s crucial to recognise the tension between scalability and originality: not all creative products and services are replicable. Standardisation risks undermining authenticity and the intrinsic value of unique artistic expressions. Furthermore, not all artistic and cultural work aims to expand impact or achieve replication, as the intrinsic value of creative exploration may be a central goal in itself.

Practices: Scaling Deep

Scaling deep emphasises the transformation of values, beliefs, and behaviours, making practices a key lever for systemic change. As institutionalised patterns of behaviour, practices resonate strongly with the concept of creative impact. Novel practices can cultivate new cultural norms that in turn can empower communities, encourage active participation, and foster a sense of ownership and commitment.

An example of this is CIRCE’s Fellowship pilot Körperkino, which integrates participatory storytelling methods into media workflows. By embedding these approaches within organisations such as Deutsche Welle—Germany’s international broadcaster— the initiative fosters a shift in underlying values and norms, embodying the core principles of scaling deep. As these practices become more widely accepted, they open pathways for scaling up, allowing them to influence larger systems and embed themselves within structures across sectors.

Relationships and Networks: Scaling Deep and Scaling Up

The cultivation of relationships and networks through creative impact also reflects scaling deep. By generating connections among and between different stakeholders, such as creative communities, policymakers, citizens and others, these networks build the relational infrastructure necessary for systemic change. Their scalability depends on societal factors, including incentive alignment, intergroup trust, cultural context, and time which influence the capacity of networks to drive collaboration and systemic transformation.

For example, the Fellowship pilot Caring Cultures in Slovenia strengthens ties between creatives and policymakers, creating a shared vision for the significance of culture to societies. As these relationships mature, they also open pathways for scaling up by influencing policy decisions and driving structural changes that extend the initiative’s impact beyond initial connections.

Ideas, Stories, and Cultural Memes: Scaling Deep

Ideas, stories, and cultural memes operate within the realm of scaling deep, as they have the power to transform societal narratives and reshape mental models. These intangible elements spread exponentially through digital platforms and networks, resonating widely and shifting public perceptions. By sharing compelling stories and impactful ideas, creative initiatives can challenge entrenched paradigms and inspire cultural transformation. Memes and symbols, in particular, deeply influence collective values and identity, embedding themselves in the fabric of society’s shared consciousness.

For example, the CIRCE’s Fellowship pilot Reimagining Stories in the Anthropocene demonstrates the transformative potential of cinematic storytelling to inspire environmental action. By embedding environmental awareness into popular culture, the pilot highlights the role of films in shaping attitudes and behaviours, demonstrating how creative narratives can drive significant shifts in collective consciousness.

Mechanisms for Scaling: Engagement, Collaboration, and Co-Creation

It becomes apparent that creative impact relies on engagement and collaboration to scale effectively. Whether scaling out, scaling up, or scaling deep, partnerships and co-creation are indispensable. As highlighted in earlier articles, creative impact utilises cultural participation to bring together diverse stakeholders around shared challenges. Creative formats serve as powerful tools for fostering dialogue, reflection, and emotional connections. These connections are critical for building trust and securing long-term commitment. Importantly, engagement transforms communities from passive consumers into active co-creators, enabling them to shape and contextualise creative outputs and enhancing their relevance and sustainability. In that, cultures, as a shared framework of values, beliefs, and practices, play a pivotal role in scaling societal transformations. By embedding solutions in cultural contexts creative initiatives can resonate more deeply with society, fostering sustainability and driving systemic change.

The Role of Intermediary Organisations in Scaling

Creative impact scales systemically—out, up, and deep—through engagement, collaboration, and co-creation. Intermediary organizations and networks play a pivotal role in enabling this process, as they are uniquely positioned to connect creative practitioners with funders and policymakers. Therefore, these organisations can themselves engage in the various dimensions of scaling, particularly scaling deep and scaling up, to enhance the systemic outcomes of creative impact initiatives. However, the dynamic and emergent nature of creative impact poses significant challenges for scaling, requiring intermediaries to rethink traditional approaches and adopt innovative strategies.

Challenges in Scaling Creative Impact

Creative practitioners face numerous challenges in scaling their impact. According to literature (e.g., Eiselein & Dentchev, 2021) and CIRCE’s survey results, these include financial constraints, time limitations, and the need for specialised skills. Fellows have reported difficulties in securing long-term funding, managing burnout, and navigating shifting political and economic landscapes. Typically, the lack of care structures within existing and more conventional programmes further exacerbates the strain on creative teams jeopardising their ability to sustain meaningful work.

On the side of funding organisations, the core issue lies in the misalignment between traditional funding practices and the complex, iterative nature of impact-driven work. Conventional funding models are often designed for predictability and control, prioritising accountability and risk minimisation. However, these approaches struggle to accommodate the fluidity and uncertainty inherent in creative and systemic change initiatives. This disconnect creates significant challenges for both funders and the projects they aim to support. Reliance on rigid evaluation¹ and reporting frameworks—while crucial for safeguarding public funds—places excessive bureaucratic demands on project teams. These demands divert valuable resources away from innovation and implementation. Moreover, traditional result-oriented models, which focus on predefined outcomes and performance metrics, are poorly suited to the unpredictable nature of impact work. Such frameworks can incentivise data manipulation, hinder adaptive learning, and perpetuate systemic inequalities by excluding less experienced or marginalised groups from funding opportunities. Consequently, the potential for transformative change is stifled (Lowe, 2023).

Key Contributions of Intermediaries

To overcome these barriers, intermediary organisations must innovate, adopting strategies that balance accountability with flexibility, reduce procedural burdens, and foster trust-based relationships. Their contributions can be outlined in three key areas:

• Supporting Creative Practitioners: Intermediaries must empower creative practitioners by providing tailored support such as capacity-building programmes, facilitating access to follow-up or alternative funding sources, and establishing care structures to prevent burnout. These measures include promoting knowledge transfer, building a learning community, and offering mentorship opportunities. By ensuring practitioners have the flexibility to experiment, iterate, and learn from diverse perspectives, intermediaries enable them to navigate the complexities of impact-driven work effectively.
• Becoming relationship builders: As connectors between funders and creatives, intermediary organisations are essential for relationship building. They are thus also responsible for scaling deep and scaling up. They help to align diverse interests, ensuring that the objectives of both practitioners and funders resonate with the realities and needs of the respective other side. This bridging role fosters a shared understanding of challenges and opportunities, enabling more cohesive and impactful collaboration. Relationships rooted in trust are essential for implementing structures designed for creative impact. Open communication, where all parties feel empowered to discuss challenges and co-create iterative solutions, is vital. This dynamic fosters transparency and creates a partnership-oriented funding ecosystem, essential for navigating the complexities of creative and systemic change.
• Engaging all Parties in Transformative Learning: Intermediaries play a vital role in guiding practitioners, funders, and policymakers through this transformative journey (Cole & Hagen, 2023). This process requires recognising and responding to the unpredictable nature of impact work by employing suitable tools and strategies, such as flexible funding models, adaptive timelines, and community-led approaches. At the same time, intermediaries must critically examine their own practices, addressing systemic barriers that hinder innovation and progress (Kania et al., 2018).

CIRCE exemplifies how an intermediary organisation can address the challenges of scaling creative impact through an experimental approach. As a prototype, CIRCE fully embraced transformative learning by applying a philosophy of „learning by doing“—or more precisely, learning by collaborating and co-creating. CIRCE implemented experimental governance models that prioritised inclusivity, responsiveness, and adaptability. While fully aligning funders‘ frameworks with the fluid nature of creative impact remained challenging, CIRCE succeeded in fostering dialogue and promoting incremental adjustments in funding practices. These efforts created a foundation for more flexible and responsive support structures. For further insights, the publication Prototyping Collaboration explores CIRCE’s learnings in depth.

Conclusion

Scaling creative impact is an emergent process that evolves as practitioners actively engage with it. It operates across multiple dimensions—resource flows, practices, relationships, power dynamics, and narratives—to address the underlying conditions that sustain societal challenges. Each element of creative impact, whether it involves products and services, practices, relationships, or narratives, scales through distinct pathways: scaling out (expanding reach), scaling up (influencing policies and structures), and scaling deep (shifting cultural norms and values).

These dimensions interact dynamically, often generating synergies that enable systemic transformation where the total impact exceeds the sum of its parts. This multifaceted process represents the essence of scaling creative impact.

Successful scaling relies on key principles, including contextual fit, embracing complexity, maintaining flexibility, and ensuring sustainability. Above all, scaling creative impact depends on engagement, collaboration, and partnerships, which are essential for fostering trust and securing long-term commitment. These connections enable scaling across the dimensions of out, up, and deep.

Intermediary organisations play a pivotal role as connectors and facilitators between creative practitioners, funders, and policymakers. They should address the unique needs of creative actors while fostering trust-based relationships and co-developing solutions. By embracing transformative learning, experimenting with governance models, and adapting strategies based on real-world insights, intermediaries can unlock the full potential of creative impact and amplify its reach.

References

Cole, M., & Hagen, P. (2023). Scaling deep through transformative learning in public sector innovation labs – experiences from Vancouver and Auckland.

Eiselein, E., & Dentchev, N. A. (2021). Scaling social impact: What challenges and opportunities await social entrepreneurs.

Kania, J., Kramer, M., & Senge, P. (2018). The water of systems change.

Kohl, R. (2021). Crosscutting issues affecting scaling: A review and appraisal of scaling in international development.

Lowe, T. (2023). Explode on impact. Retrieved from https://toby-89881.medium.com/explode-on-impact-cba283b908cb

Moore, M.-L., Riddell, D., & Vocisano, D. (2015). Scaling out, scaling up, scaling deep: Strategies of non-profits in advancing systemic social innovation. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, (58), 67–84.

Riddell, D., & Moore, M.-L. (2015). Scaling out, scaling up, scaling deep: Scaling innovation. J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.

Social Finance. (2021). Changing lives, changing systems: Building routes to scale.

Social Ventures Australia. (2024). Impact at scale. Social Ventures Australia.

Van Hout, E., et al. (2024). Designing an instrument for scaling public sector innovations.

Westley, F., Patton, M. Q., & Zimmerman, B. (2006). Getting to maybe: How the world is changed. Toronto: Random House Canada.

1. For further insights on the evaluation and measurement of creative impact, see CIRCE’s Working Paper „Transcending Measurement: Creative Impact as ‚Currency‘ for Social Change“. ↩︎