We uncover the stories hidden in your data and turn them into evidence, clarity and action.
Cobble Creative is led by a community arts curator who understands the nuances of creative practice, funding and community impact, and a data scientist. Together, we turn fragmented information into clear, compelling insight. We believe creative impact doesn't need to be inflated, it needs to be made visible.
Our mission"Securing the future of creative funding... so great work always finds backing"
Who we help
Whether you're seeking funding or providing it, we turn fragmented data into structured insight, meaningful evidence, and clear stories of impact.
For arts organisations
Strengthen your funding story
Funding is competitive. Clear evidence helps meaningful work stand out.
We turn your ticketing, audience and evaluation data into structured insight about reach, participation, diversity and impact. We deliver funder-ready reporting, visualisations and narratives for applications, board reporting and advocacy.
For funders & trusts
See where your funding makes a difference
Understand the real-world impact of your investment.
We bring grant and programme data together into a clear picture of where funding flowed, who it reached, and what outcomes emerged, highlighting patterns, outcomes and gaps to inform future decision-making.
Data-rich. Evidence-poor.
The information that makes the case is already there. The barrier is time and translation, not a lack of data.
It's scattered
Across spreadsheets, forms, systems and reports that don't connect.
It's hidden
Hundreds of qualitative responses that no one has the time to analyse.
It's underused
So the story of your impact remains incomplete.
How we work
Hands-on from the first conversation to the final report, shaped around your funding cycle and reporting needs.
Our approach
Focused and collaborative
We work closely with a small number of organisations. We offer a bespoke, curated service that is tailored to your requirements.
Start here · fixed scope
The 14-Day Evidence Pilot
A fast, focused engagement. In two weeks, we transform data you already hold into a structured, well illustrated and well researched report with insights ready for funders or boards.
Ongoing
Reporting Partnership
An ongoing partnership aligned with your funding cycle and reporting requirements. We turn your data into decision-ready outputs and board-ready visuals that arrive when you need them, not after the fact.
What our analysis reveals
Illustrative analyses on sample data, showing some of the techniques we bring to messy arts-funding records, from semantic analysis of evaluation text to funding-flow and equity mapping. No real client data is shown.
Illustrative Evidence Report
Cobble Creative · Illustrative Evidence Report
Where five years of funding actually landed
A board-ready view of demand, allocation, reach and strategic alignment, drawn from fragmented application, evaluation and budget data.
Scope~120 applications a year · 5 artforms · 5-year trend
A regional arts funding programme runs an annual contestable round, assessing applications, allocating funding, and reporting outcomes to its governing board. Its annual contestable round now draws around 120 applications a year across five artforms, up from 80 five years ago, with the data sitting in disconnected application forms, evaluation reports and budget files. The board wants a single, evidence-based view of where the money is flowing, who it's reaching, what it's producing, and how that aligns with the funder's strategic priorities.
The brief: bring five years of fragmented application, evaluation and budget data into a single board-ready picture of demand, allocation, impact and strategic alignment.
02Data & method
Data used
Application records: ~120 applications in the latest round (up from 80 five years ago)
Allocation records: 40 projects funded; $775k disbursed in the latest round
Post-project evaluations: participant-reach counts and qualitative impact scores
Open-text feedback: ~2,400 evaluation sentences mined for themes and co-occurrence
Funder priority framework: five strategic priorities mapped against actual allocation
What we analysed
A multi-layered analysis combining structural, longitudinal, semantic and strategic views:
Funding-flow analysis: application-to-allocation flow by artform (Sankey)
Multi-dimensional efficiency: cost × reach × impact at the project level (bubble)
Semantic mining: theme extraction, co-occurrence and clustering on evaluation text (network)
Longitudinal trend analysis: five-year demand, retention and policy-shift detection
Strategy-execution matrix: where allocation aligns with the funder's stated priorities
03Key insights
Key insights
Demand pressure is structural, not cyclical
Applications grew 50% across five years; allocations grew 25%. The pool is increasingly contested. Multi-disciplinary and community work hold the highest success rates; music the lowest.
Small grants deliver outsized reach
A cluster of community and multi-disciplinary projects deliver 3–4× the reach-per-dollar of the largest grants. Identifying these is the lever for next-year allocation strategy.
Outcomes compound, they don't tick separate boxes
Wellbeing, skills and belonging cluster and reinforce one another across the evaluation text. Funding one project produces multi-themed impact, a richer story than any single headline number.
Strategy and allocation are quietly diverging
Te Ao Māori and Local-economy priorities receive less than half the funding share of Cultural connection and Youth, surfacing the gap between the funder's stated strategy and where the money actually lands.
Exhibit 1Funding flow
Of 120 applications across five artforms, 40 were funded ($775k allocated), but success rates diverge sharply by artform.
Multi-disciplinary 50% funded · Music 33%: the kind of structural pattern board reports normally miss.
Exhibit 2Five-year trajectory
Applications grew 50% over five years; funding grew only 25%, so the gap widens every year.
The pool isn't keeping pace with sector demand: a multi-year, change-point-aware analysis the board can act on, not just react to.
Reveals efficiency outliers: small grants delivering outsized reach, and the few high-cost projects that aren't pulling their weight.
Semantic analysis mines free-text evaluations into measurable themes: wellbeing and skills lead.
Themes cluster and co-occur: a single funded project produces multi-themed impact, not a single tickbox.
Exhibit 5Priority alignment
Reveals the silent gap between the funder's stated priorities and where allocation actually lands.
The trustee question this answers: "Is our money doing the strategy we set?"
04What this enabled
What this made possible
Stronger funding applications backed by quantitative reach and outcome evidence
Clearer board reporting: adjectives become measurable themes
Identification of under-engaged communities and priority-alignment gaps
A defensible basis for the next year's funding strategy
Audience-voice quotes ready to drop into reports: sourced, not invented
One dataset that joins demand, allocation and impact across the round
Outcome
The programme now has a structured evidence base that brings together demand, allocation, audience composition and qualitative impact, making it easier to show where funding lands, what it produces, and where to invest next.
Turning fragmented cultural data into evidence that matters.
Our promise on your data
Trust comes first. Everything is defined clearly in writing before any work begins.
Only with your permission
We only access and analyse data you explicitly provide for a defined project. We do not access systems or files without instruction.
Secure and minimised
Data is received through secure New Zealand–based services. We use only what is necessary for analysis and remove direct identifiers wherever possible. Outputs are always aggregated.
Never shared. Deleted when complete.
Your data is never shared with third parties and never used for model training or unrelated purposes. Raw data is securely deleted once the project is complete.
Let's find what's hidden in your data.
We'll reply with how we'd approach it, no obligation.
